A sad time...

Today is the tenth anniversary of the death by crashing of Saint Diana the Adulterer and if I see one more shot of John Stapleton stood outside Kensington Palace trying to rustle up a crowd whilst reading random cardboard notices that some saddos have nailed to the gates there, then my size ten's and the tv screen really will conjoin in a conflict with only one conclusion.

Having said that this country is poorer for the demise of the union of St Diana and Dodi, for having a muslim as step father to the British King would have been a useful Ace to keep up our sleeve in future.

Still, eh ?

The first day...

...and so the first day at Grammar School arrived and clad in our new Rawcliffes uniforms, red and black stripey blazers unmarked, unspoiled by school dinners and ink wells, we alighted from the bus on the opposite side of the road and perused the welcoming committee of second formers who awaited us at the gate.

It was an unwritten rule at Leeds Modern Grammer School (think Tom Browns Schooldays without the enlightened attitude to bullying) that the new first year boys were at the mercy of the second years for the first day of the autumn term, call it a sort of softening up process, a throw back to the days of fagging and toasting young boys against an open fire in the prefects dorm, the masters turned a blind eye to the ancient practice of turning over the new starters, after all, it had happened to the second formers last year and they were now perfectly poised to exact a sweet revenge.

Fortunately I had arrived on the bus with two friends and we knew what awaited us as we'd had a tip off from my mother who's friend Mrs Brown had a son Nigel in the fourth year - he'd sent word not to wear our school caps, ever, the black and red striped school cap so beloved of mothers all over north Leeds would be the first target of the second years - our caps were safely tucked away inside our backpacks.

Incidently Mrs Browns son Nigel had a rather unfortunate nickname - innocent in 1968 but now very much a no-no, for in 1968 inside every childs paint box was a colour described as "nigger brown" which is about as good a nickname for someone called "Nigel Brown" as you'll ever get - to those of tender years sitting there with gasping mouths, this is all true.

We crossed the road in tight formation and ran the barrage of pushing, thumping, shoving, tripping and jeering and when we'd emerged at the other side we were accosted by a shriveling, weedy little kid who danced in front of us and demanded to see our pen licences.

Despite being a year older than us he was smaller then us, wore short trousers (mummys boy) and his voice hadn't yet broken, any one of us could have flattened him but with the second form lined up two paces behind us watching, it was perhaps not the most advisable action.

"Pen licence, pen licence" he shrilled, holding his hand out in front of our noses, we scurried on, he danced in front of us, "Pen licences are a shilling, you have to buy one off me", how on earth he expected this pathetic scam to work on three kids who just weeks earlier had passed their 11 plus I don't know, he'd have been far better employed trying his sales pitch on the thick kids who had failed and were even now having their heads kicked in by the much rougher bullies at Moor Grange Secondary Modern School just down the road.

Suddenly another scammer danced into view back peddling in front of us as we picked up the pace,

"Pen licence, pen licence, sixpence"
"Oy, they're my customers"
"Get stuffed Jenkins or I'll flatten you"
"Thats not fair I saw them first"
"Piss off Jenkins, I mean it, I'm having these"
"They were buying one off me, anyway pen licences are a shilling"
"Mine are sixpence"
"Well thats not right, we agreed..."

...and we left the pair of them there at the gate, arguing as to the true market price for a pen licence whilst their "customers" beat a hasty retreat to the far end of the ancient main building where lay the lower school yard.

As we turned the corner into the lower school yard an amazing sight greeted us for there in the yard were over a hundred first years, like ourselves, but in various disheveled states some with bloody faces already, the air thick with school caps spinning throgh the air as the same number of second formers had their fun, snatching caps from heads and throwing them, spinning up onto the roof of the toilet block, those foolhardy new boys who put up a fight were pounced upon by the mobs like a pack of hungry lions on a broken legged antelope

When all of the caps had been liberated from young heads and stacked three deep upon the toilet block roof they started on those who carried satchels - quite rightly too in my opinion, my mum had threatened to buy me a satchel but on the advice of "Nigger" Brown I'd been given a couple of quid to go to the Army surplus store and buy a haversack instead.

Just as it seemed that an actual first year boy would soon be sent spinning up onto the toilet block roof to join the caps and satchels a voice bomed out across the yard and within a single breath silence filled the air apart from one small boy who sobbed quietly in the corner, almost naked, his cap, satchel, blazer and short trousers now hanging off the drainpipe on top of the toilet block.

A tall and imposing figure clad in a long black gown and an actual real mortar board hat stood at the top of a flight of stone stairs, with one click of his fingers the second years all formed themselves into four lines of thirty, another click and they trooped silently into the lower school entrance, their fun over, first year baiting now in close season...

This and more on the life of the young Jerrychicken can be found on Jerrychicken.co.uk

School uniform

On the flimsiest of excuses - a half heard radio interview on the cost of school uniform (where still applicable) - and being pertinent to the time of year - I present "The Day that the Young Jerrychicken had his School Uniform fitting".

I passed my 11 plus exam, that is I scraped through by, as I later discovered, just one mark, if I'd spelled my name wrong (entirely possible) then I'd have been bound for Secondary Education and a life spent in manual labour.

But I passed and to my fathers dismay I was required by the Leeds Modern Grammar School to aquire a complete uniform by the time the Autumn term of 1968 commenced.

All of which meant a trip to Rawcliffes.

Only two shops in Leeds sold school uniforms and one of those was a new upstart, Hornes, but mothers being mothers only Rawcliffes would do and tales abounded of how Hornes sold shoddy goods, how the knees in their trousers soon wore through, how their blazers were, horror upon horror, made ABROAD, deary me, no mother in her right mind would send her kinder to school in a blazer made in Hong Kong.

No, it simply had to be Rawcliffes and so on one warm August day during the school holiday our mum bundled me onto the number 33 bus into Leeds where we met our dad outside Rawcliffes during his dinner hour - he had to be there as he was paying by cheque and the bank account was only in his name, in fact the only person allowed to handle money at all in our house was our dad, our mum never owned a bank account in her name, ever, for she was a woman and not capable of understanding such things.

Rawcliffes was an old fashioned clothing store dedicated entirely to school clothing and August was obviously its very busiest time and so we stood in line with lots of other mothers and fathers (other fathers on their lunch breaks who had to sign the cheques) and offspring until it was out turn to step up to the large glass topped and glass fronted counter to be served by a man who told you what you had to buy.

"School sir ?" he would simply ask.
"Leeds Modern" our mother answered and proudly looked around at the queue of other parents to see if they were impressed, for many of those other parents would be buying uniforms for the lowly Secondary Modern Schools, and would rightly be both ashamed of their own children and impressed by me, I looked around too with an air of "I'm good, me"

And the man behind the counter would flip through a few pages on his clipboard until he reached the list of clothing for Leeds Modern, then he would start opening and closing large wooden drawers and placing various items of clothing on the counter for which we were given no choice in the purchase thereof...

"Grey socks, three pairs of"
"White nylon shirts, three"
"Leeds Modern tie, one"
"Gym shorts, one pair"
"Reversable rugby/football shirt, one"
"Gym vest, one"
"School cap madam ?"
"Yes please"
"No thank you"
"Shutup you, you will wear a cap, lets hear no more"
"School cap, one"
"Black shoes, one pair"
"Gym plimpsols, one pair"
"Football boots, one pair, he can use these for rugby too madam"
"Thank god for that"
"Pardon sir ?"
"Nothing"
"Blazer madam, all black or black and red stripes ?"
"Black please, ouch"
"Don't be impudent, you'll have a stripey one, I think they're smart"
"Yes madam, the red and black stripes are recommended for first years"
"And now madam, shorts or long trousers ?"

And I held my breath, this was a rite of passage moment for at Junior School we had always worn shorts "let the sun get to your legs" our mums had said to us all, but the big boys at Grammar School all wore long trousers except for the tortured few who's mothers were not prepared to let loose the apron strings on their beloved sons and still insisted on letting the sun get to their legs on into Grammar School...

She looked at me, we had discussed this at home, at length, for six whole weeks we had discussed this, she still wanted the sun to get to my legs for at least another year as if my legs would wither and die if covered by cloth...

"Long trousers please"
"Long trousers it is madam, one pair"

I breathed a sigh of relief.

"Is that it" asked our dad hopefully
"Madam will require a school badge for the blazer"
"Doesn't it come with one" asked our dad, astonished that the red and black monstrosity of a blazer did not include the school badge, i mean who the hell else would buy such a thing if not a Leeds Modern School first former ?

"No sir it does not"
"We'll have two please" and that was the final word on the matter as our mum gave our dad a look that said "shut up and pay" although why she bought two school badges for the one blazer I still do not know, I also still do not know why I found both school badges in a box of her belongings when she died and I also do not know why I myself have now kept them - its a mystery.

"Is that it" asked our dad again, in a far more worried voice than before, his lunch break was nearly up and so was his bank account judging by the huge pile of clothing gathered on the counter in front of us.

"Will madam be requiring name tags ?"
"Oh yes please"
"He knows what his name is"
"Shut up"
"They come in packs of fifty madam"
"FIFTY !"
"Shut up, yes fifty will be fine thank you"
"Where are you going to use fifty name tags"
"Shut up"

And then it was finally time to write out the cheque and our poor dad had to sit down and bite on a piece of cloth to stop himself bursting into tears while he did it and after all of these years I am still suprised that he didn't try and "do a deal" with the Rawcliffes man as I never saw him buy anything else ever in his life without "doing a deal" with the seller.

"It'd better be worth it" he warned me as he spun on his heel and walked out of the shop back to his nearby office leaving me and me mum to lug the new school uniform home on the bus where she would take it out of the bags several times a day to show to envious friends and neighbours, "its got two badges for the blazer you know" she'd tell them proudly and they, like I, wodered why the hell that should be.

The Arts...

Hands up all those who think that the picture above is too dark ?
No thats not too many then.
It, and its twin painted in winter conditions just been rejected from the web site that sells my stuff with a recomendation that I photograph it again "in better lighting conditions"

I photographed it outside in the frikkin sunlight for gods sake, maybe god could send me some better lighting, after all the sun has probably seen better days.

In other arty news the sculptor Anthony Gormley, he of "Angel of the North" fame is having problems replacing the arms on one of his 1984 "standing man" statues in Peterborough after it had its arms nicked at christmas, eight months later the artist has appealed for knowledge as to who has the arms or where they have dumped them as he states that the only way to repair it is to have the originals back - the originals that were cast from moulds made from his own arms, forgive me for stating the obvious for I know nothing of sculpture, but surely he still has the originals from which to mould some more ?

Earlier this year Mr Gormley made the news as he erected 31 life sized sculptures of his own naked body all around London atop buildings and public walkways with a random arty excuse and synopsis that man is taking over the world and assorted other crap whereas in fact he just gets a kick out of erecting mannequins of his own naked body in conspicuous places, so would I given half the chance and it weren't for the fact that the farmers around here petitioned for my mannequins to be kept under lock and key during lambing time in order to prevent mass spontaneous sheep abortions.

And finally, the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh is reporting the loss of £8 income from its Andy Warhol exhibition last week when it is believed that one visitor sneaked into its galleries without paying - disgraceful behaviour I say.

It happened like this - The Scottish National Gallery consists of two pseudo Greco-Roman temple stylee buildings on Princes Street seperated only by a 50 yard open courtyard which last week was turned over to the performing arts. I was strolling around said courtyard last Wednesday when I noticed that the rear of the two pseudo Greco-Roman buildings was advertising a William Blake exhibition and better still it was free entry - being the art buff that I am I took advantage of their tax-funded generosity and had a wander.

The front half of the building was fairly boring stuff, portraits of long dead strangers and whole gallery devoted to religious iconary (incredibly tedious stuff) but the rear upstairs had a most passable collection of Impressionist and Pointillist Post-Impressionist paintings (how pretentious does that sound), several lesser known Monet's, a Van Gogh, some Seurats, and some of Gauguin's polynesian stuff - very nice.

I discovered a flight of stairs which seemed to descend into the very bowels of the earth and indeed thats where they went for the gallery also has a series of basement rooms in which were housed some fine Dutch Renaissance paintings and the William Blake etchings as well as, finally, some Scottish painters.

I wandered, lonely as a cloud, from basement gallery to basement gallery until I eventually found myself in a room where the walls were covered in what was obviously a series of Andy Warhol prints, I'd forgotten about the Warhol exhibition although I'd noticed it advertised, and realised that I'd obviously wandered underground, right underneath the courtyard, and was now in the basement of what I now know to be "The Academy", the front one of the two pseudo Greco-Roman buildings.

Warhol is ok, but boring, being that most of his work is based on repetition and whole gallery rooms clad in multiple dayglo photos of Marilyn Monroe do nothing for me, I wandered a bit more, had a smooch in the gallery shop and then headed out thorugh the front door of The Academy building where to my suprise I noticed two officials restricting entry to the huge queue of people waiting outside.

I never knew art was so popular thought I as I exited past the huge banner that stated "Adults £8, Concessions £6".

Pay to get in ?
Fook off.

I laughed out loud, the Warhol galleries had been rather full and here were at least another 100 fools willing to pay £8 each to view the crappy wallpaper prints and as I walked down the queue I looked for some poor people to enlighten with the fact that if you walked across the courtyard to the far less popular National Gallery you could not only get in for free, view some nice Impressionist stuff, but also sneak in to the £8 exhibition for free - but everyone looked wealthy and foreign so I heeded my tongue and The Academy only lost my £8 and not a whole bunch of others.

It did my careful Yorkshire wallet no end of joy and I'm still chuckling about the day I screwed £8 out of the Scots.

Celebrate Britishness...

"A new bank holiday should be created to celebrate Britishness, help build a national identity and thank community heroes, a "think tank" is urging Prime Minister Gordon Brown."

So spaketh The News today.

Notice how every time that Gordon Brown is mentioned in the media the words "Prime Minister" have to be prefixed to him just in case we forget ?

The Institute For Public Policy Research are the people responsible and they recommend the Monday after Rememberance Sunday as the day when we should all not go to work and instead sit at home and think about being British and roam the streets looking for community heroes to thank, presumably the community heroes could stand at their garden gates with a "comunity hero" sign hanging around their neck, shaking hands and accepting thanks as the nieghbourhood troop past in single file, doffing their caps.

I think it would work.

I can see the queue stretching down the street now, its pissing it down because of course this "British Day" bank holiday is in November, but still undaunted the crowds come to pay homage to Doris Wainwright, the lady who lives at number 42, for Doris is a community hero.

For Doris it is who guides their children across the busy main road to their school every morning and then again in the opposite direction every evening, not one day in thirty years has Doris missed, even on the day of her replacement hip operation she insisted on doing the Lollipop duty first thing in the morning with an ambulance waiting to rush her to the waiting surgeons, and then at 3.30pm she was there again, still groggy from the anesthetic, wrapped in a blanket with her nephew to push her and her lollipop in the wheelchair back and forth across the busy main road to ensure that the kinder of the community did nnot end up squished under a bus.

Today, on British Day, the community queue in the rain to honour Doris, their hero.

Even the knuckleheads in the community have left the daily comfort of their pub bench for they too, once upon a time, were small children guided to safety by Doris and now they stand, huge as a barn door, awkwardly fumbling with baseball cap in hand while they mumble under their breath "Doris Wainwright, I am honored and grateful that you have invited me to your Brit...British Day... on the day of your British Day celebration. And I hope your first child be a masculine child. I pledge my ever-ending loyalty."

Thats exactly how it will be in my local community, no-one will spend all day in the pub or watch Derek Acorah on a Living Channel "Most Haunted" 24 hour bank holiday special, oh no, it won't be like that at all.

Memories of Dennis...

I'd like to dedicate this post to Dennis Creasey, a service engineer of note that I once employed for 15 years or so.

He hasn't died or anything, or at least I don't think he's died since he retired five years ago, now you come to mention it he may have died and not told me, but not to worry, carry on...

Dennis was unique.
Dennis had Tourettes Syndrome.
Dennis interspersed most sentences with the word "fuck", or a fizzing noise, or a noise like an alarm clock spring breaking when under full tension, and like that alarm clock Dennis would make these noises when under tension.

Its not funny laughing at peoples afflictions, Dennis couldn't help his Tourettes, but lets all be honest, if you're going to pick a disability to laugh at, in a totally inappropriate and un-PC manner, then Tourettes is the disablement of choice.

And of course the fact that he was a service engineer meant that he spent all day long visiting our customers premises, swearing at them and making noises like an alarm clock spring breaking under full tension, at totally inappropriate times.

Fortunately Dennis came from Hull and Hull and the East Coast was his service patch, so such behaviour is not seen as being particularly unusual or anti-social there.

For instance I recall being with him on a job at a large office complex where I was configuring the software in one of those "goldfish bowl" offices, an office with glass walls in the middle of a large communal office with thirty or so women busy tapping away at keyboards. There I sat in the goldfish bowl puzzling at the computer screen whilst on the floor underneath the desk, unseen to anyone outside of the goldfish bowl, sat Dennis, puzzling at a bunch of cables that all needed to be connected to the computer - and the more puzzled he got, the worse his Tourettes became.

Eventually the string of "fuck", "brrrrroing", "fzzzzz", "hup", "fuck", "hmmmmp" and another "fuck" for good luck attracted the attention of all of the women in the office, all of whom were staring straight at me wondering how I made those obscene noises without moving my lips, if I kicked him under the desk then he'd stop for a minute or two but because he didn't know that he did the Tourettes thing he didn't know why I kept kicking him, and I kicked him for nearly half an hour until we finished the job, me in tears of laughter, him with a puzzled look on his face and covered in bruises.

But it wasn't just the Tourettes that made Dennis such a weird character, he was just weird.

He once came to me and explained that he had had his van broken into and all of his tools stolen, I told him to replace his tools and send the receipts to me and I'd claim off our insurance. A week later I got a bill for £12.58, the total sum of his replacement tools, and that included the toolbox as well.

When I asked him how the hell you could replace a toolkit with just £12.58 he showed me a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, his total toolkit, and he was happy with those. He did explain however that he hadn't been able to find "one of those battery drills" and asked me to obtain one for him. Now at the time you couldn't buy battery drills, they were a thing to be yet invented, we only used mains voltage drills in our work, I told Dennis that there was no such thing as a battery drill and what did he mean.

He insisted that he had a battery drill and even made the motion of someone drilling a hole in a wall, swearing, just to prove that he had once had a battery drill, I insisted that we had never purchased such an article, he demonstrated the drilling mime again, "a 'fuck' battery one, 'zzzz-ip', you know" he said, unconvincingly.

After twenty minutes discussion we finally arrived at the conclusion that he meant the Black and Decker battery screwdriver that we had given him to try out, except that he didn't know it was a screwdriver, he'd been using it to drill holes in brick walls with, sometimes for hours on end he'd stood there with the battery screwdriver whirring slowly away making not the slightest indentation in the bricks - he thought it was so good that he wanted another one.

Shortly after that I found out why his van had been broken into - he'd taken a very long set of ladders to work with him that morning, why I do not know, they weren't our ladders, and in order to get them inside the van he'd had to leave the back door wide open - and he had then left the van parked in a street for an hour while he went and called on a customer - Dennis was the only person who was totally flabergasted at the damn cheek of these theives when they had casually opened the already open van door and removed all of his tools, and the ladder, I didn't bother to inform the insurance company of this anomoly in our working procedures.

The advent of the mobile phone was also a red letter day in our catalogue of Dennis-isms, we had set up his mobile phone so that all he had to do was answer it, press the green button and answer it is what we told him, we didn't explain anything else to him, keep it simple we thought, don't let him start pressing buttons and things, press the green button Dennis and talk into the phone.

Three weeks later he came into the office all excited, he'd discovered that he could actually dial his home number, using these buttons on the front, and Eileen his wife would answer the phone at their house and did we know that we could do the same ?

"Why would we want to ring Eileen at your house" we asked.
"No, no, 'fuck', 'brrrring', I bet you could 'hmmmmp' ring your home number and 'fmmmp' speak to your wife" he explained, still excited at the theory of the telephone.
"Why would I want to do that ?" I asked, and indeed, why would I ?

Three months later Margaret, our secretary and general "does everything in the company, or likes to think she does" apprehended Dennis and mentioned to him that she'd just rung him and left a voicemail message and so to ignore it.

He looked puzzled.
It was the "voicemail" bit that was puzzling him

Margaret explained again that she had left a voicemail message for him to ring the office, as she did on four or five occasions throughout every day and that seeing as he had just turned up in the office he could now ignore the message.

"Voicemail" he asked, "what 'fuck' is 'hrrring' voicemail"

We explained the practice of leaving voicemail mesages on mobile phones and at the end of the explanation he told us that it sounded like a good idea and why hadn't we been doing it for the last three months.

"We have been doing it for the last three months" we all told him in unison, and indeed we had, four or five times every day.

I took his mobile phone off him and pointed to the little symbol on the screen that indicated that a voicemail message was waiting for him, his face lit up with some sort of recognition,

"Ah yes" he said "the ring the office indicator"
"Pardon ?"
"The ring the office indicator, whenever I see that I just ring the office"

We checked his voicemail, he had over 300 unanswered messages, all of them being Margaret asking him to ring the office in various levels of frustration, some of them going so far as "for gods sake Dennis, will you ring the flipping office" this being extreme swearing in Margarets books, it took nearly an hour for us all to take turns at deleting all of his voicemail mesages.

But the reason for not letting him into the innermost secrets of the mobile phone became apparent the day that he managed, by pressing random buttons, to divert all of his incoming calls to Hanson Electrical in Hull, a wholesaler that he visited on a regular basis.

He managed to do this with such frequency that Hansons would take messages for him, we'd ring up our own service engineer to pass a call on to him and Hansons would answer the call, take a message and then pass the call to him the next time he called in, which sort of obviated the whole point of having mobile phones in the first place.

I have fifteen years worth of Dennis stories, the story of how as a boy, his parents sent him to work on a farm but didn't tell him to come home on a night so he slept in a barn with the cows for six months until his parents came to find out what had happened to him, his only ever trip abroad on a ferry to Amsterdam where he never got off the boat because he hadn't been told about the theory of passports, the incident at the funeral of one of our sales reps when I had to bundle him out of the house at the wake before he upset the widow beyond suicide point, the time when he lost his paycheck out of the sunroof of his car on the M62, and then went and did exactly the same thing the following week - these and many more Dennis-ism tales remain as yet untold, for now...

Car Dealers - again

We're almost there now, the Audi A6 is now favourite for me, just under budget although it doesn't have the full colour satnav that I currently have in the Nissan, but it has a cheapo satnav which will probably do the job just as well.

So I went to the Leeds Audi dealer today to have a sit in one of them to refresh my mind.

They have lots of Audi's at the Leeds main Audi dealer, which is what you'd expect really, but they didn't have the one that I want so I sat in one that costs £20k more than the one that I want and tried to pretend that it wasn't the posh version of the one that will be mine.

Also the person that I need to speak to (for all of the sales reps that you see in car showrooms don't "do" business contracts) was not in today, so I have to speak to him on Monday instead - I want his quote in writing because suprisingly I have nothing except a verbal price from him and his business card, maybe they just work on trust ?

Later I found myself near Harrogate and as luck would have it found myself just 100 yards away from the Harrogate Audi dealer and so availed myself of another sit in an A6 - to refresh my mind again.

They have lots of Audi's at the Harrogate main Audi dealer, which is what you'd expect really, but they didn't have the one that I want and so I sat in one that costs £20k more than the one that I want and tried to pretend that it wasn't the posh version of the one that will be mine.

I was lucky to get to sit in one at the Harrogate dealer for no-one could find a key for any of the A6's on the forecourt, or maybe they just told me that because I don't look like Audi material. Eventually they did find one key and the rep explained that they can only take one set of keys out at a time by handing in their own smart fob in exchange for a set of car keys - the rep that told me this didn't have his own smart fob with him because he'd given it to another rep who needed to take out two sets of leys - so that system works well doesn't it - my rep had to borrow someone else's smart fob so presumably that other rep will be telling the same story to another potential customer.

This whole thing about buying a new car from a main dealer has been a complete pain in the arse for the last two months, only one (Mercedes) have bothered to ring me back with prices and they just take the piss with their rates, the four (count them) four Ford dealers in Leeds have, to a man, failed to make any contact with me regarding my need for two new vehicles for October delivery, I've had to ring them each time to ask for prices and arrange a test drive which is still not arranged because none of them have arranged it - I honestly believe that Ford have told all of their dealers not to sell any more cars this year, maybe Ford don't make cars anymore.

The Harrogate Audi dealer gave me the name of their business sales rep today and asked me to ring him on Monday, I said I would but know that I won't, they didn't even take my name so on Monday their business sales rep will be told by one of his collegues "someone wanted a quote from you on Saturday" and when he asks who it was he will be told "I don't know".

Fortunately we use a broker who will quote us on any vehicle, source the vehicle from existing stocks (no arseing about with two month delivery periods like the main dealers like to hold you to), and do it cheaer than the main dealers will quote, but best of all because his business is purely in organising leases for vehicles he is acually keen to have your business, rings you back when he says he will, sorts your queries out, all that good stuff that gives you the impression that he actually does a job when he turns up at the office every morning - unlike the reps who work at main dealers.


Oh yes, the picture ?
I think its gone wrong.

Arlo Guthrie & Emmylou Harris

Its well recorded around these parts that I am a big Arlo Guthrie fan and there is a whole bunch of his own videos on YouTube, placed there by a member of his family, this is not one of those but it features Emmylou Harris too so life just can't get much better than this.

"Deportees" is a protest song written by Arlo's father Woody Guthrie and refers to an aircraft crash in Los Gatos Canyon, California in 1948 when four American citizens and 28 illegal immigrant Mexican farm workers who were being deported were killed.

Guthrie noted that in radio and newspaper reports the four Americans were all named and family backgrounds mourned over but the 28 Mexicans were simply refered to as "deportees", indeed only 12 were ever formally identified and all were buried in a mass grave.

An old fashioned picnic

A day off today, cooler bags packed, folding chairs in the car boot, flasks filled with coffee and off up Wharfedale we ventured...

...to Burnsall (see picture) where we paid a farmer £1.50 for the privilege of parking in his farmyard - who needs to raise sheep when you can fleece tourists - and dragged our stuff down to the river where we set up base camp right in front of that bridge you can see in the piccie.

A proper old fashioned picnic with sandwiches, pies, cake, wasps and lashings of ginger beer, or coffee.

A snooze in the hot sun and everyone got burnt, English people don't use sun protection when in England, we do when we're abroad because that sun is different sun to the sun we get in England, in England the sun is weaker and it doesn't burn you does it, so we don't use sun protection of any kind and we get suprised every time when we get burned to a crisp in the hot English sun.

Three hours of burning with no protection later we loaded up the car with the folding chairs, the cooler box, the cooler bag, the blanket on the ground, the library books and the raincoats (just in case) and set off further up Wharfedale to Grassington where for the sum of £2.20 I was allowed to park my car in a National Trust car park for two hours, thank you, you bas'tads.

It seemed a shame to let all of Grassingtons pubs go to waste so we picked on at random and drank some beer, there is nothing quite like drinking beer on what should be a working day for you whilst sitting outside an English pub in the Yorkshire Dales on a hot summer afternoon, nothing quite like it at all.

From there it was a drive over the top of Wharfedale into Nidderdale and down into Pateley Bridge and a visit to the oldest sweet shop in the world, ever - cavemen invented this sweet shop and stocked it full of pear drops, acid drops, gummy bears and parma violets and it seemed like such a shame to ignore the place, so we didn't - I was however very disappointed to note that when asked if they stocked every type of old fashioned sweetie in the world, and they replied in the affirmative, that they could not then produce a single pack of American Civil War or Mars Attacks chewing gum cards, the bas'tads.

And then back over the moors, back into Wharfedale again and home, with a quick stop at the Royalty pub on Otley Chevin, a pub that has seen better days I'm afraid, but at least they dont throw darts at you when you're sat there minding your own business like they did with me once when I was younger and more stupid - I learned that day never to sit underneath a dart board and believe the two players facing you when they tell you it will be ok, just sit still - I still have the hole in the back of my hand and they had to saw the arm of the chair off and take it to casualty with me, being as it was also pinned to the back of my hand.

Hot sun, food, beer, Yorkshire Dales.

As Lou Reed once sang, its just a perfect day...

Memories, observations and overheard conversations...

8.30pm, Wednesday evening, its been a scorcher all day and whilst the sun is now disapearing behind The Mound the air is still warm, shirt sleeve warm, no need for jackets to the theatre tonight.

And yet the genteel Edinburgh theatre folk still dress for the theatre, the elderley ladies all resembling, and sounding like, Miss Jean Brodie in their tweed twinsets and the obligatory string of pearls, their menfolk suitably attired in light coloured "slacks" and a blue blazer, some with panama hats.

We're queueing on the street outside The Assembly Rooms, to one side of the main entrance a less well attired queue snakes down the pavement away from us, they are the Fringe rabble, they are here to watch a common comedian who probably swears a lot in his act, they wear jeans and t-shirts, they shout and laugh a lot and are considered ill-mannered by the genteel on this side of the main entrance.

Our queue does not snake away from this side of the main entrance, our queue is straight and well formed, no-one laughs out loud or shouts to friends over the street for our queue is the Edinburgh society turned out to show The Fringe how The Assembly Rooms survive during the 49 weks of the year when the rabble are not in town, we are here to watch a singer in the small downstairs auditorium, many of the people in this queue are Friends of The Assembly Rooms and know the manager by first name, and as if to proove our elitist-ness the manager sends out two of his staff with an iced tray on which stand a bottle of white and a bottle of red wine with glasses for the patrons on this side of the main entrance to sip and refresh themselves during the warm and almost stifling wait.

I stand alone on this side of the main entrance, a thorn amongst the Edinburgh society roses, I dressed in the same jeans and "grandpa" t-shirt that I have been wearing all day, I resemble Serpico on a scruffy day, for I have no time to return to the hotel throgh the day, they're twelve hour days for me here, out in the crowds, hustling and bustling, dashing from gig to pub to gig to pub and I've just arrived to the queue from a rather pleasant couple of pints on the Royal Mile and find myself wedged between two "ladies who dine" and a pair of retired couples, all of whom speak in that soft Edinburgh Scot accent that instantly informs that these people are genteel.

From the ladies...
"Have you met your new neighbours yet ?"
"Oh yes, a nice young couple, they have children"
"Oh how old are they"
"The children ?"
"Yes"
"Och, the girrrl wil be aboot sax maybe and the wee boy is underrr five because he still goes to nurrrserrry"
"Oh thats nice"
"Yes"

From the couples...
"...so I got talking to him and straight away I could tell he was a Lanark man..."
"Oh look, here is the manager with some wine, how nice"
"...I could tell by his accent you know..."
"Wine Peter ?"
"...jast a small one then..."
"Red or white ?"
"...red, ah could tell by his accent he was a Lanark man and I thought to myself, oh here we go..."

From the ladies...
"...he was being a wee rascal when I went aroond to welcome them though"
"Oh the dear thing"
"...the mother was at her wits end, she wished they were back at school..."
"yes it is a long holiday for the wee things"
"...the boy was being very obstroperous..."
"Och..."
"...he was standing on a chair when I walked in, shooting"
"Well,"
"...shooting his wee head off he was, shooting and yelling for attention..."
"Dear me"
"...aye, ah said to her, do not give that child any attention, thats what he was doing you know, attention seeking"
"Och aye"

From the couples...
"...ah thought, here we go, a Lanark man, we're in for a long night"
"Och yes you would be"
"Well you know how they can talk"
"Aye ah doo that"
"In the end I drove away and he was still talking ..."

From the Ladies...
"How is the rewire coming along ?"
"They still haven't started on my apartment yet, I think they're coming next week"
"Och, are ye moving out ?"
"Will ah need to ?"
"Oh most certainly"
"Do you thing ah'll heff tey laft the carpets app ?"
"Well I would think so, they'll need to be under the floorrrs surely ?"
"Thats what I thought"
"Maybe you won't need to lift all of the carpets"
"Well ah'm not lifting them, they'll heff tey do that for me"
"och yes, they'll heff tey do that"
"I suppose they'll heff tey move some furrrniture too ?"
"Aye, ah supose they will"
"Och what a mess it will make"
"Och aye, there will be mess, no doubt..."
.............................................................................................

Earlier that day I had stood in front of the Scott Memorial on Princes Street in the blazing sun with a crowd of a couple of hundred watching the Lothian and Borders Police Pipe Band resplendant in full kilt uniform, drummers and pipers, they played a long mournfull refrain of "Amazing Grace" and the hairs stood up on your back, if you have a hairy back that is, and two very small children at the front ran across the grass to drop coins in a violin case for the Police Band Charities and an old lady in front of me wiped away a tear as the snare drums rolled and the massed pipes joind in the full blood-chilling last verse and chorus.

It was so fucking corny that Walt Disney could have written the script.

But it was right, it was just the right place at the right time, bagpipes should not be heard outside of Scotland, except perhaps at the funerals of exiled Scots, for they are a vexation to the ears but in Scotland they just fit, they are just right, right place, right time.
....................................................................................................

And at the bottom of a huge flight of stone steps that millions trudge to reach The Mound stands an old man, dancing on the spot whilst singing a song about Gods Telephone and how one day we are all going to have to pick up the phone and speak to Him but fear not for the call is free and salvation awaits and loads of other crap like that and as I pass him I notice that he has lined up a dozen cans of Coca-Cola on the wall and although its only 10am he's already opened two of them and maybe this is what makes him dance and sing songs to strangers about Gods Telephone and as we make eye contact I shake my head and wonder at the culpability of his priest for educating the mentally ill in such ways, if they can't convert the rest of the world they'll go for the easy targets - the old and lunatic.

Edinburgh Fringe - Day Three

Day Three
In which I go all cultured and finish off the gigging with the voice of an angel.

"...I spoke to your waaf las night...yes, your waaf...she say she got may nambar from your telfon beel...I say'd your telfon beeel...she say'd that you haf to leave now...yes she tell you tonight...she say she have enough...she know about you and me...from the telfon beeel...you have to leave her tonight...and she sack me today..."

Hands up, you'd be interested wouldn't you, you'd be interested if the attractive mid-european girl who was sat behind you on the bus was having that one sided conversation with her married boyfriend who's marriage appears to be up shit creek wouldn't you ?

You'd miss your stop to see how it ended wouldn't you ?
I did.

And so the last day started and as I walked ever so slowly back to the half price ticket booth, walking slowly as my feet were still throbbing and raw stumps of flesh from yesterday, walked so slowly that an old lady wobbled past me on a walking stick, walked so slowly, and I'm not joking now, that a blind man with a white cane pushed his way past me, and when I finally got to the half price ticket booth the queue was halfway around the block.

Bollacks to that thought I, I queue for no man woman or club turn, I'll go to the Assembly Rooms ticket office and have a look at their gigs for today - I had a ticket to see the re-arranged Eva Cassidy tribute for this evening and I wanted to check out the afternoon performance of Alan Bennets Talking Heads production, so I only really needed one more gig to fill in the day, and I found a cracker...

Got talking to a leaflet-er outside the Assembly Rooms and he told me of the noon performance of "Forgotten Voices", it was £12 but was a full length production, as was Talking Heads, I bought the tickets...

Forgotten Voices - in the 1960's the Imperial War Museum in their infinite wisdom started a project recording the stories of those who had been involved in the First World War, they now have a huge archive of recorded voices, most of which are now long dead, telling the true history of what it was like to be involved in The Great War, both at home and in the armed forces, and this play is based on some of those tapes.

The stage is very simple, it takes place in a waiting room at the Imperial War Museum where five elderly individuals, a female munitions worker, an army Private, a Sergeant and a Captain, and then joining them (fittingly) towards the end, an American GI, are all gathered after being interviewed - and they tell their stories to each other.

Its fascinating, even more so when you remind yourself that the stories that they are telling are not fiction but are transcribed from the archive tapes, nearly two hours of high emotion, humour, anger and just downright tragedy played out on stage by five incredibly talented actors, only one of whom I recognised as Mathew Kelly, former frontman of "Game For a Laugh" and former defendant in a child abuse trial for which he was completely exonorated, strangely enough his CV in the programme notes mentioned neither of these facts and I pondered for a while as to which of the two he would be most ashamed of, my guess would be that if pushed he'd probably allow mention of the child abuse trial for which he was completely exonorated as long as no-one mentioned "Game for a Laugh", ever, ever again.

It was so good that I bought the script in the lobby outside afterwards, I've never done that before.

Talking Heads - one of Alan Bennets outstanding TV success's this full length stage version featured two of the stories which for the uninitiated are simply monologues spoken to camera (or in this case audience) set in a single room, each episode being the story of an ordinary person, in an ordinary life, in an ordinary setting, the outstanding dialogue and attention to minute aspects of everyday life being the one thing that Bennet does ever so well and prevents the whole from becoming desperately mundane.

Two stories told by two actors, 40 minutes apiece, each on stage for only their half of the programme, each simply telling their tales. To those who know the TV series the first story was of the middle aged unmarried man who still lives with his elderly mother and as far as he is concerned always will as she needs him for care, support, and his opinions. As the story proceeds we discover that he does not work since he had a breakdown but attends a day centre once a week in order to talk through his "problems" and his reliance on his mother, although of course he insists that she relies on he. One day they are out for a walk when his mother takes a fall and is assisted by a nice old gentleman who befriends her, calling for her in the weeks to come, taking her out for rides in his car, shoving the son to one side, alienating him to the extent where they announce their planned wedding and the son is asked if he'd consider living in a hostel for men with "problems".

You're interested in the story aren't you ?
See how Alan Bennet drags you in ?

The second story was one that I remember from TV, the one that starred Thora Hird as the old lady who is being assessed by social services and threatened with rehoming in a care home if she won't let her home help take care of the housework from now on - "The Ewbank is mine now love, your Ewbank days are over, you're a lady of leisure now Doris..." the home help tells her. But Doris knows the home help doesn't dust her Wilfreds photo properly and when she climbs on a stool to check it she falls and breaks her hip. The rest of the play takes place with her laying on the floor, unable to move for days, simply talking her life story to the audience, finding an old Jacobs Cream Cracker underneath the settee, "I knew she didn't Ewbank this carpet properly..." until one night a passing policeman notices that her light has been left on for a few nights now and calls through the letterbox to see if she is ok, and in typical stubborn old lady stylee she shouts back to him that she's ok, she just fell asleep, he leaves and some time later she dies.

Hayley Clare - Songbird, a Tribute to Eva Cassidy - and finally, to round the night off, the gig that was cancelled on Monday night, and how worth it was it ?

Very.

There are no words that can describe how well this woman can sing, there are no words to describe the amazment I feel that she has not yet appeared on our TV screens, that she is not a household name, that everyone in this country has not had the absolute pleasure of listening to her voice, even Gareth fookin Gates got two shots at TV stardom, for christ sake.

www.hayleyclare.com is all I'll say, click it, bookmark it, check it monthly, and if ever she appears at a gig less than 50 miles from your home then do yourself a huge favour and travel to see it, life is too short to miss talent like this, there I've said it all now.

The only other thing that I'd say is that she needs to drop the Eva Cassidy tag and include some other stuff in her repetoire, a night with Hayley Clare and her four piece jazz combo, in a jazz club, unlimited cold Guinness to hand with painkillers to stop my beer headaches, cheese and onion sandwiches brought to the table on demand - this is my dream night.

And so ends my Edinburgh sojourn, today was filled in with lots of strolling and a couple of hours in a pub sat at a window, lager in hand, people watching, its been red hot today and I've been happier than a pig in deep, deep shit, I'll summarise the whole trip on another occasion, but like an Austrian Californian Governor once said in a film, "I will return".

I think it was him anyway.

Edinburgh Fringe - Day Two

Day Two In which I get lost, miss a gig and damage my feet, probably for ever.

You see its alright getting in touch with my feminine side, speaking in glowing terms of Carl Wilde, going to watch "Poof Loose" yesterday, painting flowers even, its one thing doing all that, but quite another to lose my male inherent sense of direction and ability to map read.

It all started so well, had a quick smooch around the Ocean Terminal shopping centre which is opposite my hotel but summised within minutes that it had nothing whatsoever to do with me, I needed not a shopping trip but more of the same from yesterday, so on the bus I hopped and into central Edinburgh I hurried, £1 a trip, still can't get over it, and the buses are all new and clean and the drivers are all smartly attired and say "please" and "thank you" and stop at bus stops when requested and all the good stuff that bus drivers should do - something I've noticed while here is that everyone is quite polite, when they get off the bus they all thank the driver, the bus is full of signs requesting that everyone respects everyone else, offer seats when old people get one, make space for women with pushchairs - and guess what - it works, ask people to be outwardly polite and if enough people do it, it spreads like a nice disease.

Hopped off the bus on Princes Street again right outside The Fringe box office and half price ticket booth, I had one show already purchased and the whole day to fill in but in a jiffy had three more shows booked and had spotted a free comedy show in a pub just off Princes Street at noon, had a bit of a wander around the old town and then with the aid of a free map from a free copy of The Scotsman I plotted my route down from the castle to the part of the business district at the end of Princes Street where the pub was.

Those with a knowledge of Edinburgh will know that the castle is at the same end of Princes Street as what I loosely term "the business district", in fact its all contained within a quarter mile square, it was an easy 15 minute stroll, most of it downhill.

And then my map reading went all to hell.

I walked for an hour, from 1130 to 1230, up and down streets with no sense of direction, three times when I stopped to check the map I was actually walking in the wrong direction completly and once I walked right off the edge of the map, in the wrong direction - I hadn't a clue what I was doing and at no time was I ever more than two or three streets away from the bar I was looking for, I'd check the map, say to myself "ah yes, its just around the corner" and then walk off in the opposite direction.

I missed the free show at noon, obviously, I was nearly in Glasgow by then and it was only by concentrating really, really hard that I managed to get back to Princes Street again, it was a lucky break as by then I hadn't a clue which city I was walking in - just like a woman.

This has happened before.

A couple of years ago I and three friends spent a night in Barcelona and we did exactly the same thing. "Wait a minute" I hear you all call, "How can that be so, Barcelona is built on the American Grid system, its impossible to get lost" Yes I reply, but we managed it, four of us, we walked for two hours that night and we know it was two hours because a bar refused to serve us at midnight when we were on our way back to the hotel - it was 2.10am when we walked into the hotel lobby and in all that time we had never been more than two blocks away, we even thought of calling a taxi in the end and its a good job that we decided not to as we were only 50 yards away from the hotel entrance when we changed our minds.

So I got lost today and tramping the streets for an hour has wrecked my feet, I sit here in my room now with two throbbing feet and the skin missing off both heels and a small patch under both big toes, tomorrow I shall seek a venue where I can stay all day with a bus stop right outside it.

But what did you see today you all cry...

Woody Sez started the afternoon after the free show was lost to the streets. The story of Woody Guthrie, his life and times and travels told in a narrated and sung through style.

It was superb, I love the music of Woody's son Arlo but Woody Guthrie was very much a traditional American folk singer and you will certainly have heard of at least two of his songs during your lifetime even if you don't know it yet. It was a story where tragedy was always around the corner, from the Great Depression to the dirt poor farm in Oklahoma where Woody was raised and where one day a huge dust storm hit the town and wiped out a whole years crop causing the family and hundreds of others to travel to California seeking work - its the story as told in the film ********* and one of the songs in the show is dedicated to Tom Joad, the Henry Fonda character.

The main tragedy in the Guthre household was the undiagnosed Huntingdons disease that his mother suffered from and the depressions within her that the disease caused, she burned down one of the family houses and then in another year one of Woodys sisters was killed when she caught fire in the house, no-one thought that the mother may have been responsible for the fire raising but when his father also caught fire one day then his mother was confined to a lunatic asylum for the rest of her life - it does sound like a comedy script when you write it down though.

Eventually Huntingdons caught up with Woody Guthrie in the 1970's and he died a folk music legend with his son Arlo to continue the tunes - I read in a newspaper article just last week that Arlo has refused to be tested for Huntingdons although his children have and been declared clear.

This was a bloody good show, well sung by very talented Texan musicians and very touching in parts, I loved it and a very good start to the day.

Tom Tom Club were next, in the Udderbelly venue, a huge 30 foot high inverted purple cow the size of a circus tent pitched on the university campus.

Tom Tom Club consisted of four young australian gymnasts stripped to the waist and performing some quite impressive feats of tumbling, accompanied by a DJ who indulged in the sort of thing that DJ's do now, ie "scratching" and "rapping" (whatever happened to Jimmy Savile), a drummer who drummed just about anything and everything and another young lad who did exactly what the DJ did but with only the aid of his voice and a microphone - it was a high energy action show which required lots of applause and whooping from the audience, I don't whoop being of the frame of mind that I am there to be entertained and not provide the entertainment, but still, it was noisy and fun.

Guy Pratt, My Bass and other Animals was up next, back at the Underbelly railway arch venue from yesterday. Guy Pratt is a bass guitarist who has played with Pink Floyd, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Robert Palmer, Crosby Stills & Nash and a host of other well known names and his talk show involves stories from his experiences working with the big stars over the past 25 years. It was very funny, very intimate in a small venue with about 50 people present and had the feeling that you were sat in a pub with him while he told his story for an hour - my cousin is in the music business and can also talk for hours on lots of similar incidents so it was a very pleasant way to spend an hour.

Stewart Lee back at the upside down purple cow was the last show for today before I limped back for the bus, and to be frank he was a disappointment.

To be fair he is not a gag-cracking stand-up comedian, most of his comedy is of the "clever" genre rather than slapstick, observational or simple jokes - he tells long convoluted stories often repeating the same line over and over again and revisiting the same line again several times during the set, its a sort of "in" joke with his audience, a sort of "this is what I do" and if you're in on the "in" joke you'll laugh, otherwise it gets a bit tiresome.

I didn't laugh out loud once during the 70 minute set but I smiled all the way through, it wasn't a bad way to spend 70 minutes and it wasn't £12 wasted but I expected something different and didn't get it - everyone else in the room did though so maybe its me, maybe our humour flavours are different.

A damp day, it rained on and off all day, but enjoyable and I'm still loving this festival even if my feet aren't - tomorrow the re-arranged Eva Cassidy gig beckons in the evening and I'll try not to get lost again.

Edinburgh Fringe - Day One

Day One
A Poof, Two Comics and a Bad Throat.

I like this city, I love this festival.
This is how it works.

You get the programme in the post, all 287 pages of it with details of the 1500 or so shows that are on during the three weeks, make your choices, book tickets online if its a popular show - like the Ricky Gervais single performance this year at £37.50 a ticket - I wouldn't pay 37p and go to the end of our street to watch the over-rated non-comedian, but his single show sold out nevertheless so what do I know.

Alternatively you do what I did today, you don't book anything but turn up at the fringe booking tent on Princes Street and if you are also a Yorkshireman you will instantly spot the booth labelled "half price shows" and browse the list of what is cheap today.

Most of the comedy shows are around £8 full price, the musical acts anything from £8 to £12 - so you can see just how much Ricky Gervais over-rates himself - and this year there are press reports that whilst crowds are steady there are just far too many shows for their own good, all of which is great for the punter as the slowest selling ones - which aren't necessarily the worst, just the least known - get flogged off at half price every day.

Arrived at the hotel at 2pm, checked in, set up the wireless network thingy, then caught the bus outside the hotel into Edinburgh - a bus every ten minutes, brand new and clean and all for £1, thats what I call public transport.

Spotted the half price booth immediately and almost as quick spotted my first show, headed down to the Underbelly building on Cowgate, a multi roomed venue in what seems to have been a warren of a warehouse and just time for a pint of expensive (£3.25) Kronenburg before ...

Poof Loose - Fresh from Jonothan Ross's "Four Poofs and a Piano", Stephen De Martin presents his own song and dance act armed only with his own poof on a piano and interspersing the songs from the shows and his own compositions with humourous stories. He was good, had some good lines, he's Australian and so had some very good stories of how and why he left Aus and his gay family (his brother and sister and brother in law are all gay and he's not so sure about his parents either, apparently), he can certainly belt out a show tune and the fifty minute show inside what appeared to be a railway arch passed quickly, a sure sign of a good act.

Just time for another quick pint of expensive Kronenburg and a visit to the box office to buy a ticket for Stewart Lee tomorrow and was tempted by the next performance in the same railway arch by...

Toulson & Harvey - A pair of comedians in the traditional double act sketch show stylee. They started very well with a sketch about a pair of singing Spanish brothers, a very funny start for the first ten minutes of their fifty minute set, but then it went downhill. The remaining forty minutes had its moments, I'm not saying they weren't funny, they were, but they weren't constant belly laughs like the opening sketch was, they've been nominated for a Perrier Best Newcomer award and for their first sketch I'd say they were well worth it but can't help but think that out there in the fringe there is bound to be someone better, still I left the building smiling.

Time for a stroll around the Royal Mile where dozens upon dozens of street performers hold court, every ten yards or so there is another act previewing their show and you soon collect a whole heap of leaflets and flyers, its a good way of assessing the acts and I picked out two in particular who I will be seeking out.

A big black coffee and panini and ticket purchased to see one of the acts that I had picked out of the programme at home last month...

Hayley Clare - "Songbird - a Tribute to Eva Cassidy" promised to be an outstanding show, its reviews have been faultless and she has been viewed and approved by Eva Cassidy's parents, this is no ordinary tribute act, this is as close to the real thing as you can get since the death of Ms Cassidy ten years ago.

It all started so well, a small theatre venue, an acoustic setup with four piece band, a darkened stage and then the unforgetable opening bars of "Fields of Gold" sung beautifully although from my second row seat there was just a hint of a wobble on some of the final notes. The second song, an Irish folk tune accompanied only by a violinist was faultless and then came the Eva Cassidy jazz classic "Walk on the Water" which was halted in the second verse with an apology and a dash from the stage by Hayley Clare.

She did not return and the show was abandoned "due to ilness" - I've got a replacement ticket for Wednesday night so second time lucky, if she is still "ill" then I'll buy her CD, I've heard enough already to know she is a class act.

I've bought a ticket for a 17.30 performance tomorrow by Stewart Lee, a well respected tv comedian and have now got several other performances red-ringed including one by Rich Hall and a free lunchtime review of various comedy acts at one of the venues tomorrow, but the plan is to get to the half price ticket booth early and find three shows to lead up to Stewart Lee and then one afterwards.

What a bloody good idea this festival is, I'm loving this.

The eagle has landed.
I guess this means I'm here
Right - I'm off out now

Edinburgh bound

Today I venture four hours north to Scotlands capital city of Edinburgh, and a fairer, nicer capital city you could not wish to have - I like Edinburgh.

Which is more than can be said of the current Mrs JerryChicken as three days ago she threw a tantrum and informed me that she would not be accompanying me on my voyage north, and nor would our daughters.

For nearly five minutes I was almost pitched into a fit of depression at the thought of the wasted family room at the Holiday Inn, a fooking expensive family room at the Holiday Inn as August is Edinburgh Festival month and hotel rooms are top whack - and paid in advance - I paid for this one back in June.

I say I almost pitched into a fit of depression and I almost set off down the path of trying to persuade her to change her mind, but then Plan B kicked in and the devil sat on my left hand shoulder whispered in my ear and reminded me of just how many extra shows I could get to see when I'd just be paying for one person and not four - I concurred with the devil and these past three days I have not tried to swing the vote at all - I'm on me tod for four days of music and comedy clubs from lunchtime to late at night - how fookin good is that.

The Edinburgh festival is three weeks of high-faluting opera and drama at the posh joints in what is quite a posh city, but thats not what I'm going for, oh no.

"The Fringe" is an alternate festival which tagged itself onto the high-faluting festival a few decades ago and now consists of literally thousands (2000 + I think) of acts performing across the city anywhere where there is a public space with some seats and beer on tap.

Anyone can perform at The Fringe and often anyone does although many of the acts are professionals and there is a great tradition now of comedy acts making The Fringe there own - the catalogue of events is over 150 pages thick and to be quite honest its overwhelming but I'm informed that there is a daily newspaper issued giving timings and locations of all the events that day and I'm looking forward to making full use of each hour.

Most of the acts do just one hour maximum meaning that a single venue can host several events in a day and I've already got two locations pencilled in for attention - mix in some lunch, beer, an evening meal or two and more beer and I'm bloody glad that these sulking females aren't coming with me.

I can't wait to get started.

So the next time I post it will either be to test the hotel wireless connection or it will be Friday when I return, this is like the moment when the Apollo command modules went behind the moon breaking radio contact, and the world held its breath to see if it would re-emerge - I may be gone for some time.

Clubbing - another "when I wor a lad" post

Some readers may know that I also inhabit a forum known in these parts as RLFans, a loose and numerous collection of rugby league supporters sharing opinions about The Great Game, and other things

In order to make visits to Headingley, and Leeds in general, more interesting to visiting supporters we prepared a "How to find us and then how to enjoy Leeds" thread and from that was spawned the "Leeds Night Life" article.

It opened my eyes I can tell you.

The contributors to that "Night Life" article speak of spending whole saturday nights in clubs that charge a fortune to get in but ply you with free drinks, glowsticks, face paint, interactive plasma tv screens, a bag of monkey nuts, a new suit, and a dolly bird to take home - ok ignore the bit from "monkey nuts" onwards., I made that up.

Well actually I didn't make it up, I snaffled it from the excellent "Capstick Comes Home".

Any road,

One thing that they don't seem to do now is insist on any sort of a dress code other than sometimes advising on a shirt and a pair of shoes, seems strange being naked from the waist down apart from a pair of shoes but if thats what floats your boat then so be it.

So here's where todays sermon really begins...

"It wasn't like that in my day..."

In the olden days we had nightclubs of course, in fact I think in this great city of ours we had at least three, the jewel in the crown of which was Cinderella/Rockerfella a dual nightclub where plebs like me could just about gain entry into the Cinderella door, the Rockerfella side being reserved for those of Rockerfella status and wallet, a place where rich and more elderly clientele took their dolly birds for a chicken-in-the-basket meal and a disco dance later while their wives stayed at home, knitting, thinking they were down the club playing cards and dominoes.

Nightclubs were for "birding", that strange ritual where groups of males congregate for the purpose of finding a girl who is willing to dance with them to the funky disco beat and then maybe have a shag later.

I say "dance" in the loosest possible sense of the word of course for we were nobody's John Travolta, or more fitting for the era of which I speak, Peter Gordeno.

You've never heard of Peter Gordeno ?

Of course you haven't, those of you too young to have grown up with Cilla Blacks Big Night Out on saturday night TV will not recall the lithe dancing greasy twat with his trendy bubble perm on his head and chest, and mouth full of shining teeth - you don't know how lucky you are to have missed Cilla Black's Big Night Out.

I digress,

Nightclubs were something you did after you had got yourself totally and utterly blathered in a pub or pubs of your choice for no male with any sort of pride would actually dance to the funky disco beat unless totally and utterly blathered - this will answer a lot of question to those younger readers for whom disco dancing to the funky beat is second nature and performed easily without the aid of alcohol - now you know why your fathers and uncles have to get totally and utterly blathered on beer before they will dance and subsequently make fools of themselves at weddings.

We'd all meet up in town early on a Saturday neet in order to give ourselves maximum exposure to beer and the first half hour would be spent laughing at each other dressed in our suits, shirts and ties, for no-one, I repeat no-one, would be allowed admission to a nightclub without suit, shirt and tie, it was the law.

At 10.30pm sharp last orders would be called and with a round of whisky chasers for good luck we'd make our way up through town to Cinderellas, for there was very little other choice but Cinderellas for our disco dancing fun. We'd join the queue outside and hope that we were smart enough and sober enough to get past the doorman and it would usually be sometime around now that someone in our all-male party would notice that most of the other males outside would all be stood with a bird of their choice on their arm, this news would be treated with despair as a nightclub full of couples is no use whatsoever for a gang of lads out birding.

Our last few pounds would be spent trying to raise enough money to get us all past the ticket office, inevitably one or more of us would be skint and much rummaging for coins of the realm, right down to the bottom of all of the pockets in our rarely worn suits, would ensue until finally, and with a huge heap of old coinage and trouser pocket fluff on the counter and a look of distain on the ticket office lady's face, we would be allowed entry by the bouncer on the door who would scrutinise each one of our faces for signs of blathered-ness or "you're the one I chucked out last week".

The night would be spent in a fruitless search for unattached females, a species which was rarer than hens teeth at Cinderellas for females are wiser than the male and simply did not pay to go in nightclubs preferring to attach themselves to a lad who looked like he had cash in the pub beforehand and get him to pay their entry in - of course this meant that the cheapskate female had some sort of obligation to stay with him for at least a few minutes after gaining entry, more if he bought her a drink, more still if he was willing to buy her drinks all night, and so us unattached lads stood by the dancefloor, blathered, concentrating on standing up straight without swaying, desperately trying to focus on the totty on the dancefloor in the full knowledge that we'd be leaving this establishment, once again, bird-less, skint, and with a long walk home for taxis were for those with birds, and money.

Thus was our nightclubbing experience, 'twas the same at each and every visit, I never scored in a nightclub, was thrown out of two, once for snogging some random slapper in a dark corner and once for a crime that I know nought of, sorry I was thrown out of three - I forgot the night that I was thrown out of The Cats Whiskers in Meanwood - a truly filthy and horrible dive - for being too drunk to stand...or speak, one again I don't know how I got home that night, only that I awoke at some unearthly hour in our back garden taking a leak in our mums herb garden having climbed out of my bedroom window to do so rather than walk the few steps down the hallway to the bathroom - how fortunate I was that we lived in a bungalow and how fortunate that I awoke whilst whizzing on the mint so that I could refuse it on my lamb the following lunchtime.

They dun't know they're born these days...

Update

A postscript to those who have been good enough to contact me via various resources regarding Amanda's University vs Job decision - she rang both jobs yesterday and explained that she wanted at the very least a day release scheme to study for some bone fide qualifications and neither place were willing to discuss that, she told them that in that case she wouldn't be interested.

I don't really understand that attitude from two very large companies in their respective fields , they both seemed to be of the impression that an 18 year old joining at the bottom of their ladder could not possibly be interested in bettering their positions - still, their loss.

So its Leeds Uni in the bag then and three more years of "Dad, can you help me with this ?" and when I sit down to write her thesis she buggers off to the pub.

Thanks for all the advice folks.

Dear Diary ...Sat in class, listened to Hey Jude all afternoon...

December 1968

Dear Diary,

Sat in English class all afternoon and listened to "Hey Jude" continuously for two hours as Earnshaw said he liked it very much, then went home to start christmas holidays.


Yes thats how it happened.

In September 1968 the fresh faced and innocent 11 year old Jerrychicken started Leeds Modern Grammar School in his brand spanking new stripey blazer and long trousers with The Beatles "hey Jude" at number one in the hit parade.

By December none of the first year lads in our all male school were fresh faced or innocent anymore but we still knew not to talk back to the masters (they weren't "teachers" they were "masters") , to stand to attention when they walked in the room and stand aside inthe corridor as they swept past, black gowns wafting a trail of chalk dust and tobacco in their wake.

All except for the English department where the masters were also fresh faced straight out of teacher training college and slightly more liberal and easy going than the older bastards, some of whom had been teaching at the school for ninty years or more.

Earnshaw was our English master, not "Mr Earnshaw", just "Earnshaw" unless he was in your presence in which case it was "Sir", and so it was with some suprise that he walked into our form room for the last English lesson before the christmas holidays with a portable gramaphone player under one arm, plugged it in and asked if anyone had any records that they wanted to play.

It wasn't such a stupid question for rarely a day went by without at least one boy in our form bringing a single or LP to school to lend to someone else - Rob Vasey the class bully had such a record with him that day - The Beatles "Hey Jude" and Earnshaw's's eyes lit up, his favourite tune.

We spent the rest of the afternoon, a whole double period, eighty minutes listening to "Hey Jude" on repeated playback (you take the arm off the central record loader to make it repeat the disc its just played - you haven't a fekkin clue what I'm talking about have you ?) over and over again it played, and we loved every minute of it.

I still do.


The full and yet incomplete version of Jerrychickens Schooldays can be found here.

Finished

Finished.
Done.
White Rose and some other flowers. (note to self, think up a more pretentious title)
Watercolour and gouache and watercolour pencil
Inspired by Ann Blockley, painter.
Click it and it gets bigger.

Next up - a sunflower.

How Sod's Law Works...

Amanda, the oldest of the two offspring, 19 in a handfull of weeks has been dreading this day for weeks and weeks - the day of the A level results.

She has had a provisional acceptance from Leeds University to go and study business accounting but of course needs the grades.

And as school finished (for good) for her and with a young lady's clothing and entertainment budget to finance she has been looking for work these past few weeks, her night time bar job brings in money and tips but she hates it, in particular she hates the chef there as does everyone by the sound of it - why do "burger and salad in three different ways" chefs act like twats, surely they don't imagine themselves to be Gordon Ramsey do they ?

So she's been shoving her CV through as many office doorways as she could and she's registered with a couple of staff agencies and sent in an application for a permenant job with one eye on the possibility that she won't get the grades and may have to take Plan B with full time employment and day release study.

Plan B is my idea by the way, I drill it into them all the time to always have a Plan B, you don't get suprised or disappointed that way, I sometimes have Plan C and Plan D too.

And nothing came of her efforts, her friends all have day jobs working in clothing stores and the like, but she gets nothing, she gets the shitty end of the stick sometimes.

So today comes and she logs onto UCAS and she is accepted by Leeds which means that her grades are good enough, and so they should be with the hard work she's done over the past two years, the stories in the news media that exams are getting easier simply because grades are getting better really annoy me after seing just how much work the kids put into their courses and just how pressurised they are to succeed - it fooking annoys me plenty actually that our press just cannot accept that perhaps standards are improving.

Anyway, she got the grades, she got her place and I am as proud as the proudest thing you can imagine, she's already gone further int he education system than any of my family, or Suzannes family, ever have, ever and now she's the first one in our lineage to got to University - tell me that standards have fallen to allow this to happen and I'll marry my fist with your newly squashed nose.

And then sods law happens.

Two hours after receiving her results, ten minutes after signing the acceptance form for Leeds University, two minutes after returning from the post box where she's posted it, she gets a phone call...


...its from the place where she applied for a full time job as a personal asistant to one of the directors at a large construction company and they tell her that if she's still interested in the job then can she call in for an interview.

So now she doesn't know whether she wants Uni or full time employment with money to burn.

And then...

...half an hour later another company who have been the recipient of her CV ring and ask if she'd like to come in for an interview for a trainee legal assistants job.

Thats sods law.

Ronnie Lane and Slim Chance and Me

I love this bloke, in a bloke sort of way.

Ronnie Lane left The Faces in 1973 to persue a solo career and live out a gypsy lifestyle complete with a travelling circus, buying a derelict farm and an old fashioned circus tent and showmans caravans and trucks he took his folk/rock inspired new band on the road with the intention of simply stopping wherever they liked, setting up tent and having the show right there that night, in true Mickey Rooney stylee.

It was a complete balls-up and he lost a fortune.

But the following year he was back with his band of nomads doing the university dining hall gigs in the traditional way and it was then that I went to see him at Leeds Poly with the ensemble in the video and Gallagher and Lyle guesting in the band (none of you have the faintest idea of whom I speak have you), two wonderful gigs I saw him perform in Leeds in succesive years, 74 and 75 and it was at the second gig that a friend dragged me away during the final encore to traverse a maze of passageways behind and under the stage to finally emerge in the dressing room just as the band came off stage - we spent 30 minutes with them drinking their beer and slapping backs and pretending that we were part of their entourage until a security chappie rumbled us and threw us out on our arses.

Two years later while recording an album with an old friend and admirer of the "fuck 'em all I'm off to be a gypsy" attitude, Pete Townsend, Ronnie Lane was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and in 84 he took off to Austin Texas where the climate was beneficial to his health but a disasterous business venture was less than favourable to his health and he almost ended up in jail.

Skint and more disabled by the month, a series of benefit concerts organised by fellow Small Faces band members Kenny Jones and Ian McLagen raised enough cash to get by with until he finally seccumbed to the disease in June 1997.

I have three albums of his somewhere (I know where two of them are but I'm buggered if I can find the other) and I treasure each one, even the lost one, i love this music.

Fight For Life

I mentioned the TV programme "Fight For Life" a couple of weeks ago when the subject matter was how resiliant young children and teenagers are to serious illness and how quickly their bodies recover.

Monday night the final episode was still on the same subject - the remarkable ability that the human body has to recover from illness and trauma - but this time the last programme in the series had come full circle, this time it was the turn of old people and their reaction to serious illness.

One remarkable snippet to come out of the programme was that elderly people react better to chemotherapy than young people, simply because their body does not replace cells as quickly, its a problem when you are waiting for your bones to knit of course, but when you have cancer it actually helps that your rogue cells are not duplicating as quickly as they would have done had you been 60 years younger - cancers in young people develop much quicker than cancers in old people, I never thought of it in quite that way.

Another angle on the "cancer will affect one in three" motto is that its a direct result of better diet and living conditions, we are all living so long now that cancer is about the only thing left that will kill most of us - just two generations ago we had all sorts of good diseases and filthy living conditions to die from.

And yet another snippet - every ten years we add another two years onto our life expectancy, I quite like the osund of that one as I am very optomistic in the belief that I am only half way through my life yet - don't smoke, don't drink, don't dance, I'm going to live forever.

And of course the programme showed three old people who were admitted to casualty for a range of ailments and with the aid of surgery we saw how their bodies fought against the problems and won some more time for them - and then into casualty came an 82 year old Welsh man who was the sweetest old man you'd ever wish to meet and who looked remarkably like Johnboys grandfather off "The Waltons".

He had bad pains in his stomach, blood tests showed a high level of acid and a suspicion that his problem lay in his bowel - a scan confirmed this and the camera was privvy to a long conversation that he had with the doctor who was assigned to him in casualty in which he explained why he was living in Birmingham (he had moved there five years earlier to be with his childhood sweetheart) and how he had fought on the Normandy beaches during the war and all the other good stuff that sweet old grandfathers come out with, and the doctor kept promising him that his life wasn't over yet and that they'd have him fit and raring to go right soon, just as soon as the surgeon came down to speak to him.

And the surgeon came and sat down and held his hand and explained to him that whilst technically they could remove his damaged section of bowel, it would involve a very risky operation for someone of his age and that given his already weak heart the surgeon could not guarantee that he would survive the time that he would spend in theatre and even if he did he seriously doubted that this sweet old man would ever wake up again from the anesthetic.

The surgeon basically told him that he wasn't going to operate and that this was the end of the road and try as I might I just couldn't put myself in that surgeons shoes, say that and then sign off my shift, go home and not think about my decision for the rest of the week.

The old man was very philisophical, he simply said that he'd had a wonderful life and asked what would happen next, he was told that he'd be taken to a ward and made comfortable, which is a codeword for "pumped up with morphine until you die".

It was gripping television and while I watched this upstairs my family sat downstairs goggle-eyed at "Big Fekking Brother" - Channel Four should have their licence removed for force feeding shite down the throat of gullible fools for six months of the year whilst other broadcasters have to actually put some thought and money into their output.

It all reminded me of the time that our dad died, he'd flown home from Benidorm four weeks beforehand with pains in his liver and although we all knew that it was possibly terminal we never actually said anything to each other, I kept taking him for tests and because it was nearly christmas and the consultants were all finishing a week early we never actually got the diagnosis until he was in too much pain to stay at home, it was left to a young chinese doctor, four days before christmas to actually find his files and come into a small interview room to tell us that his liver was completely fooked from cancer and that there was nothing else that they could do - he looked very worried while he told us this as if it would be a terrible shock and when I said "yes I know" the relief on his face was tangible - just like the old man on TV last night our dad was "made comfortable" until he died on Boxing Day 1998 and just like the old man in TV last night he seemed perfectly at peace with the end result of his years of making merry in Benidorm.

Another fifty years of writing this crap and I'll be ready for my "make him comfortable" moment...