Its another quiet weekend...

I'm inspired by Whit over at HoneaExpress to write about the poo side of life too, even though in our house the poo days are still funny - to me anyway - so this is me opening my soul in a manly stylee...

Thats my wife on the left, in my self penned portrait of her this weekend, she is in a big sulk with me this weekend, again.

This is how the big sulks start out in our house...

...but first let me explain, I have known this woman for 27 years and for all of that time I have known that I can make her lose her temper like "that" (I'm clicking my fingers once right now), just lke that, as quick as that, I've known for 27 years that her temper is short, for 27 years I've likened her temper to one of those big fireworks that you take out of the box and with a sinking heart you realise that its been manufactured all wrong and the fuse has fallen down inside the tube leaving just the tiniest piece of blue paper to light.

And you stand and stare at the big firework with the one second fuse and you know, you just know that you should throw it away, you know if you attempt to light it then its going to explode in your face, you know that for sure but you stand and stare at it and you think, "if I'm really, really carefull, if I sort of stand to one side, then ..." and even though you know you shouldn't, you light the match and you gently hold it underneath the fuse, it lights and instantly it explodes in your face just like you knew it would,

Well, my wifes temper is just like that firework, always has been.

...so this is how the big sulks start in our house...

Initially I am never involved, initially its never anything to do with me, but ultimately its always my fault and its always me who's the target of the three or even five day sulk, Friday night was a classic example. Friday night Jodie was out at her boyfriends but she hadn't told us when she was coming home, Amanda was out but she's old enough now not to have to ring in every hour, Jodie is different, she has to check in and let us know when she is coming home, she didn't.

You'd think that was her fault wouldn't you ?
You'd be wrong, it was apparently my fault (shrugs shoulders).

I had my mobile phone thrown at me at around 9pm and was told in a semi-annoyed way to ring Jodie and find out where she was, I rang, there was no answer, I sent her a text, there was no answer, ten minutes later Amanda came into the house and two minutes after that I heard the pair of them arguing in the other room - Amanda was taking some of the flak for Jodies non-appearance, I lay low, I don't stand between the females in this house when they row, I get into enough trouble by not getting involved to know that they would probably kill me if I did get involved.

They went quiet after a while and during that time Suzanne managed to speak to Jodie on the phone, after a few more minutes of peace I reckoned the worst was over so I tiptoed into the room where they were watching some crap on TV and sat down.

Thirty seconds passed before I gently asked the obvious question, "what did Jodie say "

Remember the firework and the one second fuse ?

It blew up in my face.

I took a barrage right across my bows, a full blown rant on how I should have contacted her and how blah, blah,blah - I wasn't listening at this point, I have an automatic shut-down during firestorms like this, ears close, mouth is locked tight and brain engages a short film of something more interesting instead as long as its not funny, I cannot be sitting there during a barrage and then start laughing at something thats just run across my brain, for that would result in certain death.

I sat there with a short film show inside my head of me painting in the sun on our last holiday to Menorca until a slamming door signalled an end to the tantrum and a beginning of the silence, time will tell whether this is a three or five day sulk, I'm going for a five day one for yesterday (saturday) I did not do one of the jobs around the house that I said I was going to do - thats the best bit of these sulk weekends, I don't have to do anything because the sulk means that she wont talk to me.

Ironically these sulks are never extended to the two daughters, yesterday they were spoken to perfectly normally even though it was them who started it all, its just me that gets the sulk.

Still, it means that I get to paint in peace and yesterday afternoon instead of purchasing and fitting three new bedroom doors like I was scheduled to do so, I went out with camera in hand to take some more landscapes and fiddle with my new panorama stiching software (see result below), so its not all bad.

Five day, I reckon this is a five day one.

Its a right crime hotspot is this...

This area in which I live, this district, its a right crime hotspot it is.

We have a free monthly booklet pushed through the door every, erm, month, I say booklet because magazine is too grand a word for it, its a booklet, A5 sized, 30 pages of adverts and some local gossip...

...and a monthly article by our very own community police superintendent who without fail uses the same Word document every month to urge us to lock our doors and report all crimes no matter how small, for here in this area of this great city we have a zero tolorance on everything, everything, the police get called out for spitting, throwing cigarette butts on the floor, murder, anything,

This month there has been a terrible tsunami of crime in the district as our favourite community police superintendant reports that a car was stolen from an unlocked garage and left burnt out in a far more crime ridden district of the city, fancy that, how awful.

A woman reported being kicked at a bus stop, how awful too.

And we are being urged to look for a set of door keys as an old man lost them probably on Green Lane, how awful.

And thats it, three crimes reported last month then.

Oh, wait a minute, there is a stop press - an uninsured car was seized by an eagle-eyed officer too, so remember folks, lock your doors and insure your cars and maybe we can start to make redundancies at Weetwood Police Station from next month onwards...

What we gonna do ?

Another week another Saturday video...

But its not the obvious choice from Disney's "The Jungle Book", the obvious choice would be "I wanna be like you", no, instead this is a largely ignored one minute clip that is lodged in the Museum of Recollections portion of my brain.

Why ?

Because its a routine that we used to go through every single week in the pub on a saturday night, word perfect we were, four of us 18 year olds sat there, pint in hand at the start of another saturday night, prime of our young lives we should have been in the big city, bright lights, haunting the pubs and clubs of downtown Leeds searching out the company of young ladies of easy virtue (hopefully) and getting blind drunk enough not to be able to take advantage.

Instead we'd sit in a scruffy suburban pub, four of us perched on stools around a small circular table with not one clue of what we wanted from the night or where to go and get it.

"What we gonna do ?" one would ask
"I don't know, what do you wanna do ?" another would reply...

...and we'd have to go through the vultures script, word perfect, Ringo impressionist too, until the one with the main speaking part would jump up from the table and wave his arms around shouting "I say what we gonna do, you say I don't know what we gonna do, LETS DO SOMETHING"

It means nothing to no-one else, it sounds stupid to anyone else, but its there, lodged and im-moveable in the museum and its instantly accessed whenever anyone asks me "What we gonna do ?"

Coming home a cowboy...

"...like I say Elsie, I just don't know which way to turn since he came back, he's a bloody handfull I'll tell you that"
"I'll bet he is love, ah don't know 'ow you cope with the police round your door every verse end"
"Ah know, they were 'ere twice yesterday"
"Ah know ah saw them"
"Ah thought you would"
"Ah wasn't nosy-ing or anything love"
"Oooh no, ah wasn't saying you were"
"Ah wor just looking through curtains when they came"
"Course you were"
"What did they want any road ?"
"Shooting his guns off again in t'bloody Arndale Centre"
"Nivver, not again ?"
"Aye, and give 'is wrong name out again"
"Who is he this week then ?"
"Same as last"
"Wyatt Earp ?"
"Aye, Wyatt Earp Clutterbuck, bloody stupid name if you ask me"
"Still its better than Hopalong Clutterbuck"
"Ah suppose so"
"Did they tek his guns off him this time ?"
"No they said they can't, they're only kiddies cap guns"
"Thank god for that"
"I'm at me wits end Elsie, so are the bobbies, they say if they have to arrest him any more they'll ave him put away"
"Put away, eeeh they wouldn't"
"They would Elsie, they put that Arthur Braithwaite away last month when he came home"
"Aye but he thought he was Winston Churchill, you can't go round thinking you're Winston Churchill, it confuses people"
"How would it confuse people, he looked nothing like Winston Churchill"
"Yes but they're not to know are they, for all they know he could be the real one and the next thing you know Arthur Braithwaite 'll be leading us all off to war again"
"I don't know who's more crackers, my Norman or you"
"You never know love, you never know, think on"

"Ah can't get the bloody grass stains out of his shirts either"
"I heard he fell off his horse, was he alright"
"I wish he was alright, but he's bloody not is he, not in the head, it might do him good if he fell on his head next time"
"They are nice shirts though aren't they, those cowboy shirts, very nice, I told my George, very nice I said, mind he thought they were a bit effiminate but you know my George, if its not a blue shirt then its effiminate"
"They're a bugger to iron, oooh they're a bugger, right thick cotton they are and them tassles on the sleeves, I've told him, I'm not ironing them tassles, but he won't have it"
"You're a saint love, I don't know how you cope"
"I've to put up with it Elsie, what can I do ?"
"You can only do your best love"
"They should never have sent him home a cowboy like that"
"I don't know what they were thinking sending him home like that, its not right"
"You send your lad off to war like they say you should and that how they treat you, send him home a bloody cowboy, never a by your leave nor anything"
"Well you never of sent him if you'd known would you ?"
"Known he'd come back a cowboy, 'course I wouldn't have"
"Arthur Braithwaite came back as Winston Churchill"
"I know, I know, thats not right either"
"Course its not"
"And what do they do to help ? Nothing thats what"
"Haven't they sent anyone round ?"
"Have they 'ummers like"
"eeee, thats awful love"
"They sent him home with a brown paper parcel with his demob suit in and a packet of pills for his nerves, god knows where he got the cowboy outfit from"
"Didin't they provide the cowboy outfit then"
"Well I don't know, they niver said, they've not been in touch since he came home, I mean, when his pants wear out I don't know where the next pair are coming from"
"No, I don't suppose you do love"
"I mean, where do you buy sheepskin chaps from ?"
"Is that what they call them, chaps ?"
"Aye, so he says, they're a bugger to wring out, oooh they hold the water you know"
"Don't Schofields have any ?"
"No, I've asked"
"Can't they order a pair in ?"
"They say they don't get any call for sheepskin cowboy chaps in Leeds, to be honest I didn't like the way they looked at me Elsie"
"They've allus been like that in Schofields though haven't they, snooty"
"Oooh snooty, I'll say, bloody stuck up cows, they're no better than us you know"
"I know, that one off Max Factor counter, she lives down the Normans you know"
"Does she, eeeh and she acts so high and mighty behind that counter, just you wait till I see her again, I'll give her 'Normans"

"He'll be wanting his tea soon"
"Is it beans again ?"
"Its not the beans I mind Elsie love, its cooking them out in't yard over a fire that I object to, not when we've a perfectly good cooker in t'scullery"
"I know love, I had smuts all over my Georges shirts last Monday"
"Well I'm sorry love, but he insists you see, he has to cook outside and while he's doing that he makes his father keep an eye down't back alley for Indians"
"I wondered what Don was doing walking up and down't alley"
"He's looking out for Indians see, they get attracted by't fire"
"Do they ?"
"So he says"
"Well I niver"

"...and if I've told him once I've told him a thousand times, that horse does not belong in our lavvie, its not right"
"Its not hygenic for one thing"
"Well its not hygenic in't middle of't night when you want a jimmy and the 'orse is in there fast asleep"
"Well, no..."
"I had to use yours the other night"
"I thought someone had had our paper"
"I'll replace it don't worry"
"No I was saying thats all, I noticed someone had had our paper, I'm not saying, just, thats all"
"I've got an Evening Post you can tear up, just as soon as Dons finished with it"
"I'm just saying thats all"
"You don't have to Elsie, I'll tear it up myself"
"Well thats good of you love, where did his horse come from anyway"
"A rag and bone man down on Burley Road, its got mange and it stinks to high heaven"
"We have noticed love"
"Still the kids like it"
"Its not right though, coming home a cowboy like that"
"They've niver said a word either"
"Its not right..."

Dan at All That Comes With It has set the questions, I simply have to supply the answers, so...

With the help of your handy time machine you are putting together a supergroup of musical artists.
What's the lineup and the band's name?
Vocals : Rod Stewart 30 years ago
Lead Guitar : Keith Richards
Rythmn and Lead : Ron Wood
Bass Guitar : Guy Pratt (only because I've met him)
Drums : Zak Starkey (who plays like Animal off the Muppets)

Accompanyment on specific tracks : The London Symphony Orchestra, Lothian and Borders Pipe Band (I cried when they played Amazing Grace recently), and The Nolans (they are nearly family).

Name of the band ? Time for Cocoa Mr Robinson

What time do you write you blog? Judging by when it gets updated you must be getting up at 4am every day.
Well, just recently, ie during the school holidays, I've been the only one to get out of bed at 6am, so I sits with me coffee and corn flakes and I writes - and now that school is back this year there is only one daughter that needs the bathroom at that time so the timetable is not so tight and I have time to write.

But sometimes I write at night too and just post it in the morning

You paint, you write; and do both extremely well. Do you ever feel you missed your calling or are you satisfied with these being hobbies?

Flattery will get your questions answered :)

I'm extremely happy to have painted all my life, its filled in many empty hours and I've spent whole days in blissfull ignorance of anything at all around me when hours pass like minutes but to do it as a job I'm not sure.

I'd love to earn enough from selling artwork to make a living but it would then bring its own pressures and deadlines and that isn't what painting is all about for me, in fact its all about the exact opposite and if a painting turns out crap (which lots of them do) then I just throw it away and its only my leisure time thats wasted.

I came within "this much" (holds thumb and forefinger very close together) of starting out my working life as a graphic artist in the days when you altered photographs for advertising purposes with a brush and a jar of chemicals, but I'm pleased that I didn't if only for the fact that the company went out of business the following year.

Writing is something that I've only been doing for a few years and yes, I'd love to do it for a living, but then again the deadlines come into the equation and where do you cross the line between enjoying something and it becoming a chore again ?

Do you have your chips wi' bits?

No, never have done, even as a kid, you get more chips in the bag without and anyway I don't like the idea of eating stuff thats dropped off someone elses food. My chips, and especially my fish have to be soaked in vinegar though, absolutely soaked through, I have annoyed lots of chip shop owners in the past for emptying their bottles.

Who will be first against the wall come the revolution?

TV producers who think that I'm a fekkwit, treating me to prime time huge dollops of celebrity dancing or celebrity cooking or celebrity singing or celebrity sitting-in-a-fake-house-for-two-weeks or non-celebrity sitting-in-a-fake-house-for-twelve-weeks or non-celebrity stranded on a desert island etc etc etc

Or TV producers who think that Coronation Street is a gritty northern drama because of course we all live on cobbled streets oop north, shop for everything in a tatty corner shop and work within fifty yards of our own doorstep.

Or TV producers who expect me to believe that people in London spend all of their lives in one pub in a tatty little square and never think of catching the tube into the city and alternative entertainment, who simply buy the tatty pub when the landlord walks out regardless of the fact that they don't hold a licence and have never run a pub before, and that all Londoners live, eat, drink and work no more than twenty yards from their houses - and fight often.

So it would be TV producers then

Local lunatics...

Everyone has them - your local nutter.

I was reminded of ours when someone mentioned him on the radio the other day, Geoffrey, our walking monk.

To be honest Geoffrey is a bit of a disappointing name for a monk, I would have much preferred him to be a Dominic or even a Jesus (an underused name for anglo saxon children), but still, Geoffrey it is.

Brother Geoffrey walks the streets of west Yorkshire in an aimless fashion with a permenant fixed smile on his face, he has been sighted, clad in regulation monks habit, bare feet and sandals even in the depths of winter, walking the highways and byways all over the county, I personally have seen him often in Leeds but also in Huddersfield and to the east in Castleford where he is regarded as normal, Castleford having more than its fair shar of nutters and monks walking the streets being par for the course.

Why Geoffrey walks, why Geoffrey prefers the monks garb, why Geoffrey doesn't own a decent pair of walking shoes is a mystery for Geoffrey will not give interviews or indeed speak to anyone save smile at them, the man is an enigma and has been walking these parts for at least thirty years yet never ages at all.

But in my childhod we had a much better nutter.

The newly opened Arndale Shopping Centre in Headingley was the home of our local cowboy, a nutter who dressed from head to toe in a manner that resembled Woody from Toy Story, if Woody had been invented in the 1960's, which he wasn't, but still...

Our cowboy, who preferred the name "Hopalong" when being addressed, strode up and down the precinct every day with a couple of childrens cap guns thrust into a pair of holsters and if you stood and pointed at him he'd draw both pistols and shoot them in the air making shoppers dive for cover in shop doorways and behind litter bins.

On the days when the police had confiscated his guns he'd carry a huge bull whip and as he strode the mall he'd sing the Doris Day song "whip crack-away" from "Annie Get Your Gun", cracking the whip inches from the noses of terrified women.

I even saw him with a horse some days, a horse in the Arndale Centre precinct took some doing but this horse was a beautiful thoroughbred and clad entirely in keeping with the cowboy theme with a proper western saddle, highly decorated harnes and a bed roll across his back - he must have liberated the horse from a rag and bone man as all of the dwellings around those parts were back to back terraces and entirely unsuitable for horse-keeping.

Unlike our current day monk the cowboy nutter was always regarded as an unsafe nutter, probably because he'd shoot you or bullwhip you if you stared at him and whilst us kids wanted to watch and laugh, our mothers would always scurry us away with the mumbled explanation that "he wasn't a well man" and when asked why, "he came back from the war like that".

"He came back from the war like that" left more questions unanswered to me as a kid, I just never recalled The Kings Own Corps of Cowboys fighting on the Normandy beaches but the thought of a whole battalion of nutters in "Woody off Toy Story" outfits racing up Omaha beach, cap guns firing in the air, a-whooping and a-hollering, would surely make even the most ardent Nazi flee his gun post.

"Thures cattle to be rounded up all across occupied Europe boys, lets go git 'em..."

Geoffrey the walking monk is very tame by comparison...

Late Edit...

I've been musing for the last hour on our mothers comment "he came back from the war like that" and can't get rid of this scene from my mind now...

...its 1946 and Sebastapol Terrace has the bunting out, the streets lined with tables covered with union jack table cloths straining under the weight of sandwiches and fairy cakes and big pots of tea, a street party awaits for Norman Clutterbuck who is today returning from the war after five years of fighting for King and Country.

His proud mother Edna Clutterbuck stands waiting at the end of the cul-de-sac surrounded by friends and neighbours all waiting to join her in celebration, all clad in regulation clean pinnies, Edna having bought a new headscarf for the occasion stands wringing her pinnie in anticipation...

Kids run amongst and underneath the folding tables and chairs, a huge hide and seek game ongoing in the excitement of their hero 's return and suddenly all is brought to a standstill as a young man from three streets away skids to a halt at the street corner and yells "he's just got off the tram..."

And they all stand in silence, a sob blurting from Edna's throat, not long now love, welcome home love...

The silence is pierced by a huge scream and the sound of gunfire and with an ear-rendering "Yeee-hawwww" Norman Clutterbuck, now Hoppalong Clutterbuck, leaps into view from around the corner of the street, twin Smith and Wesson chrome six shooters spurting spark and flame as shoots his celebration rounds into the air, "Yeeee-hawww, your boys home ma ..." he yells as the crowd stand staring, stunned into silence.

"Oh my giddy aunt" one of the neighbours murmurs, "he's come back a cowboy..."

Ancient Video Uncovered...

Such a shame that there's only one minute of this video surviving so that you don't get to see the cool rabbit tell the annoying little singer that his voice is "too piercing man, too piercing, like it hurts my ears man"

"like ooh man I don't dig spiders"

On Sainthood...

Local radio discussion around these parts today is one of sainthood, and in particular the prospective Saint Bob of Knaresborough, a nutter who lived in a cave for 40 years and gave away all his land and possesions to the poor, making him poor and a possible beneficiary for his own altruism.

And it struck me that being a nutter is a principal requirement for being a saint, whether its living in a cave for 40 years when the rest of the world have discovered houses and heat and light that aren't provided by setting fire to something - or simply living on top of a pole for the whole of your life depending on your public to put food in a basket that you lower to the ground every day - hopefully you manage to perform your bodily functions without hitting either the basket or your public.

You've also got to be something of a nutter to allow other people to nail you to a tree and hang you upside down like St Andrew did, all for the sake of saying "yes its a daft story isn't it" when the Romans pointed spears at him and told him to repeat those scurrolous rumours of miracles and suchlike - someone points a spear at you and asks you what happened with those fishes and that bread and your average Joe-in-the-street would just say "I don't know I wasn't there", but not your nutter saint, oh no, he has to go and tell the whole story and then keep repeating it even after they've nailed him to the tree, and hung him upside down :

"Deny your Christ or I'll nail you to a tree",
"OK then"
"Well thats alright, don't let it happen again"
"Sorry"
"Its OK, sorry we caused you so much trouble"
"Cheerio then"
"Bye"


(waits 'till they're around the corner)

"Not"

Deja vu...

I accidentally revisited my past yesterday.

Leeds Met University Freshers Family Day on the Headingley campus was the place, otherwise and formally known to me as Beckett Park campus, formally known to me because its where my mother had a part time job cleaning at one of the halls of residence.

Beckett Park Carnegie College in those long distant days was one of two sporting colleges of excellence in the UK, the other being an identical campus in Loughborough , and during our school holidays our mum would take us to the campus and let us run riot in the place while she went about her cleaning duties at Bronte Hall with the rest of the cleaner women who were collectively known as "The Bronte Ladies" (nothing to do with the famous literary sisters of the same name by the way)

So yesterday's open day was an opportunity not to be missed by me to wallow in nostalgia and the campus didn't really let me down - the place is not wholly a sports college anymore as its now part of the much larger Leeds Met Uni and many of the halls of residence that my mother cleaned are now offices and lecture rooms but it was nice to wander around on "the acre" (the central grassed square around which all of the old buildings are arranged) and recall those school summer holidays when we played football right on that very spot.

But that wasn't my moment of deja vu, oh no.

Whilst our eldest daughter was chatting to some of her friends, all excited at the prospect of starting there tomorrow, I wandered off with our youngest daughter to browse the large, imposing and opulent main admin building, a huge portico'ed grand edifice which now houses the main campus library over three floors of literary works and research bays, we wandered the massive expanse of these rooms and I got a hankering to want to come here and study something, these 18 year olds are such lucky bas'tads to have these facilities at their disposal - I'd been working for two years at their age.

And then as we were leaving, I had my moment of deja vu.

We were walking down a grand corridor, stone columns and elaborately decorated ceilings stately as a stately home, when we passed a large glass panelled door which I glance through - and then stopped dead.

I took two steps back and peered through the door into a huge darkened hall beyond, my youngest walked back to where I stood, nose pressed against the glass. She asked me what it was, I told her I'd been here before.

But when we were kids playing on the campus we weren't allowed to go into the admin building for that was where important people worked and they didn't want to be interrupted in their important work by cleaners kids, no, I had been here before, but not when I was a kid.

Remember in the film "The Shining" where Jack Nicholson spends time in the hotel ballroom and while he is in there he becomes part of an illusion that he is attending a ball with lots of people present, and he spends time talking to the bar tender ?

Thats what happened to me yesterday, a flashback, peering through the glass door the darkened room was still darkened but suddenly there were flashing strobe lights in the great hall and a live band on stage playing punk music, the room was crowded with students and me and a small group of my friends were in there too, how I don't know, for access to the campus was strictly controlled by security to prevent local plebs like us mixing with the sports students, but we'd snuck in somehow and I recalled standing by that very door as a mate tried to chat up a very bored girl who clearly wanted nothing to do with him.

All of this flashed past in a couple of seconds as I stood at that door yesterday, grinning like an idiot, my youngest daughter stood staring at me like I was, well, a grinning idiot - I explained that I'd been here before, she looked as bored as that girl did when my mate tried to chat her up and she dragged me away to join her sister and my wife outside who were waiting there impatiently - "Ive just had a flashback" I explained while they all stared at me wondering whether this was the time to take me to a home for the bewildered.

If I think about it long and hard enough today I may even remember the name of the band that were playing there that night, the flashback almost caught the name, but not quite, how annoying is that ?

Music what I like...

Its Saturday so its "Music What I Like" again...

Don't ask me why I like Iris DeMent, I just do, maybe its her unique voice, maybe her exceptional storytelling songwriting skills, maybe its the crossover between folk and country keeping one foot firmly in both camps, I just don't know - I bought the album "My Life" in '94 after reading a review and have been hooked ever since.

My wife and offspring think that she is truly awful, dreadful, a wailer who's voice grates inside them like the two raw ends of a broken tibia rubbing together - "mum, he's playing THAT woman again" is the cry in the house whenever I put on any of her recordings so I have to now listen via headphones, a secret tryst exists now between me and my Iris DeMent recordings - "What are you listening to ?" they ask and I have to lie and say something acceptable to them, "Elvis" I usually reply.

John Prine is another one, a truly exceptional storytelling songwriter with another unique voice in a world where record executives seek the bland and usually manage to find it - Prines voice is the perfect foil to DeMents and its no coincidence that they have recorded together often.

One day I will educate this family in the art of appreciating great music rather than accepting the platter of mundane, safe and totally bland crap that the mainstream record companies are lazy enough to consder fit for their consumption, until then I'll keep it in my headphones...

The day I did my back in...

Jeff from View from a Cloud has been whineing like a bloke over his injured back so I reckon its my turn to complain about "the day I did my back in".

Every male has a story about "the day I did my back in" because the truth is that the females on this planet flog us to death for much of our life until we eventually "do our backs in" and then die much younger than they do.

The day I did my back in wasn't really a day as such, it was an accumulation of days - let this be a warning to those new dads out there - an accumulation of carrying our newborn infants around instead of using one of those nancyboy slings, backpacks, or just making the little buggers walk.

The lower back pains built and built until one day I suddenly couldn't bend down any longer, and later on that day I couldn't stand up any longer either, neither could I lie down, the pain was like no pain that any man should bear, far worse than childbirth just in case any woman feels like entering that into the debate, far worse, women just don't get back pain like men do.

Off to the doctor for one of only a handful of visits in my life, "who are you" she asked, "a patient" I replied, "lie on the couch" she instructed, "thats why I'm here" I said, "I cant lie down and anyway your couch is too high, I can't lift my leg up that high either, not now, not with my back I can't" I further moaned to her, "who are you anyway" she enquired.

She confirmed that I'd done my back in, which I knew anyway, she told me to go home and lie on the floor and eat painkillers, "here" she said, handing me enough painkillers to enable me to amputate all my limbs without even noticing (apart from the arm doing the ampuating of course).

I did as I was told, I lay on the floor in front of the gas fire and in front of the TV, hey there was no need to be uncomfortable was there, and I ate painkillers for several days - at night my children, who lets not forget had caused my back problem, came and kissed me good night while I growled and shook my fist at them and my wife came and threw a quilt over me and I lay there on the living room floor in the dark, munching painkillers, our huge German Shepherd dog trying to drag the quilt off me and claiming the pillow too.

I lay there for a couple of weeks and the back got no better.

The doctor came to see me and she sat there on the settee with my wife drinking my coffee and eating my chocolate biscuits and they both laughed at me, then she told me I'd crushed a disc and it was pressing against my spinal cord, hence the pain and lack of feeling in my left leg - she gave me an appointment card to see a physiotherapist at our local hospital.

I screamed in pain all the way there as I drove myself to the hospital for my appointment and after she had finished laughing at me the physio, Mrs Goering, strapped me to a hospital bed, a large leather strap across my chest and another across my feet, then laughing like a crazy Dr Frankenstein she told me of the medievil torture machine to which she had just tethered me - she pressed a button and the bed started to part, the top half seperating from the bottom half.

She closed the curtains and left telling me not to scream too loud as she was going for a coffee down the hallway, it was then that I realised as the bed seperated in the middle that my legs were tied to the bottom half and the rest of me tied to the top, something had to give and it wasn't going to be the machinery, it was going to be my poorly back.

She left me on that Nazi instrument of hell for half an hour and when she came back I was eight feet tall, but I still wouldn't tell her my bank PIN number and she had to reluctantly let me go, making another appointment for next week which I never kept.

My doctor, when contacted, suggested that a chiropractor might be of use, warning that they were all charlatans and that the NHS wouldn't employ not one of them and I'd have to pay to see one, "but still" she said, "its worth a try isn't it", the subtext being "because theres fookall else I can do for you".

I went to see the chiropractor, another woman, Mrs Menegele, who made me take all my clothes off and then stand at her front window where all the passers by could see me, and laugh.

"Stand up straight" she instructed, "I am standing up straight" I informed her, "No you're not" she said, "your backs all twisted", "Thats why I'm here" I informed her, patiently.

She told me to climb on the couch, I told her I couldn't, she shouted at me, so I climbed on the couch, then she told me that she was going to "crunch" my spine which I thought was a strange turn of phrase seeing as I'd already done a pretty good job of crunching my spine and it was surely her job to uncrunch it.

She massaged the base of my spine for a short while and then without warning jumped on it, I mean literally jumped on my spine, I reckon she'd climbed on the couch without me seeing, it felt like she'd used a sledgehammer to hit my spine with, which is actually another option that she might have used, whatever it was I felt my spine crunch, she wasn't joking when she said she was going to crunch my spine, she fooking crunched it good.

I crawled out of her consulting room half dressed and with an appointment card for next week which I didn't keep and she charged me an extortionate amount of money for making my back worse than it was before.

To be continued....maybe

Why I don't save anymore...

Yesterday I hinted at my distrust and the inadequacies of the banking system, to be more precise my doubt that any money that I pay in there is not wrapped up in a rubber band with my name tag on and placed on a particular shelf inside their safe ready for when I need it back - I don't think that it works like that at all.

In fact I know it doesn't work like that at all for I have secretly written secret codes on several bank notes when depositing them and guess what - on every occasion I've been given different notes back when I withdrew the same amount, in other words they have given me someone else's money, which I don't mind of course, but who is getting my money ?

This deep mistrust of anything with the word "bank" in it started when I was young, when I was very young in fact...

Its 1961 and the young Jerrychicken is five years old and in his second year at school, yes due to the vaguries of the Leeds City Council school starting age policy I had to attend school when I was four and not five like everyone else, I like to think its because I was special, and I think the Council thought that too for the word "special" arose at several points during my schooling.

For some weird council inspired planning reasons we had to attend two infants schools in the inner city slum that was Burley, the first one for the first two years of your school life and then another much bigger infants school later, maybe they were just trying to use up all the possible combinations of classrooms that they had a surfeit of, maybe they were just deliberately arsing about with our young lives.

Suffice to say that in 1961 I was in the second of two years at the first infant school when Miss Trenholme, an imposing matronly headmistress with a remarkable resemblence to Hattie Jacques walked into our small classroom and announced that it was about time that us poor slum clearance children were taught the value of saving money and she instructed us to tell our parents to send us to school the next day with a sixpence clutched in each childs sweaty palm.

She further informed us that each child would recieve a savings book from her and if we brought sixpence each week then by the end of the school year when we moved to "the big school" then we'd have the grand sum of ten shillings saved up - wouldn't that be good - and of course they all nodded "yes Miss Trenholme".

All except me, I saw through her little scheme straight away, even at six years of age I saw exactly what her conniving was all about - she had negotiated a good deal on a loan or a mortgage with her local building society on the strength that she would sign up thirty kids and get them to pay in sixpence a week - the scamming old cow could not pull the wool over my young eyes, oh no.

But I paid in my sixpence every week and she signed my little savings book and totted up the savings every week until right at the end of the year we all had the grand sum of ten shillings in each of our accounts - and then she introduced the sting in the tail.

On the last day of term she gave us all a long talk on how us six year olds were the future of this once great country of ours, and how we needed to be financially astute in order to make our way through life, and how our once great country actually needed our sixpences in order to rebuild our empire after the battering that we had taken fifteen years earlier in the war (she unfurled a union flag at this juncture in her speech and saluted it ), and that the thing that she sincerley hoped that we would all do now is to allow her to pass all of our savings accounts onto her building society manager where he would ensure that we could continue saving sixpence a week at "the big school".

She was lying and I saw straight through her scam.

She walked around the classroom collecting the savings books from each child, each child aqueiscing to her demand, except me, I kept a tight hold of my pass book as she took a hold of one corner and tried to tug it from my grasp, she told me to let go, I told her that I'd like to keep it please.

Her face turned to thunder, I remember still the look on that huge face of hers, its the look that is reserved for dog shit when you discover it on the sole of your shoe.

"It would be much better if you gave me the savings book so that I can transfer your account to the big school account" she explained.

"I want the ten shillings" I informed her

"You shouldn't spend your savings" she explained, then turned to our classroom teacher, "do these childrens parents not understand the value of savings" she asked pitifully.

I still wouldn't let go, she left my desk staring over her shoulder at me, memorising my face, I was in big trouble, every other child in the class handed over their savings books and little did they know at the time but that was the last time they would ever see those books and their precious ten shillings.

My mother came to pick me up and was commanded to see the Head, who explained, nicely at first that she would like me to hand over the savings book like all the other children had done so. My mother looked down at me, still clutching my precious maroon savings book, "I want the ten shillings" I told her.

"He wants his ten shillings Miss Trenhome" my mother explained

Miss Trenholme set off on a long discourse on how valuable a lesson saving money was and blah, blah, blah, the flag unfurled and saluted again, blah, blah, blah...

..."He still wants his ten shillings Miss Trenholme" my mother insisted.

There was impasse, both women stared at each other over the desk.

Miss Trenholme slowly reached into a desk drawer and withdrew a locked tin box, fumbled somewhere deep down inside her ample busom and produced a key with which she slowly unlocked the box, all the while continuing to stare out my mother.

"This is most irregular" she said

"He wants his ten shillings" is all that my mother would say

The box was full of sixpences and Miss Trenholme counted out twenty of them and pushed them very slowly across the desk to my mother who counted them again and with a satisfied grin poured them into her purse.

We thanked Miss Trenhome and left the school for the last time.

My fellow six year old pupils never saw their twenty sixpences again, no savings books appeared at "the big school" and as no scandal erupted I assume that no-one complained and for all I know the old cow may still be working the same scam in an old maids nursing home somewhere.

I spent my ten shillings on Lego.

I have never saved since.

Only old people save...

Once again the press have demonstrated just how much hold they have on the populations mind and behaviour - reporting on the fact that the UK bank Northern Rock had applied to the Bank of England last Thursday for the facility to draw on an emergency loan to tide them over a possible future cash shortage has caused panic and hysteria in the legions of old people who use the bank as a savings tool.

For five days now thousands of old people have gathered outside branches of the beleagured bank in order to draw out their savings, within two days up to £2 billion had been withdrawn and presumably stuffed under their old people mattresses or tucked up inside their knicker elastic - and the women probably did something similar too.

All of this despite the Northern Rock chief exec imploring old people to "fook off and leave the money with me" and insisting that his company's £24 billion worth of investments was safe with him at home and he wouldn't let the nations old folks down would he ?

All of this panic despite the fact that even if the directors of the bank did a runner with the £24bill (how many suitcases ?) the old codgers savings were guaranteed to the sum of the first £2000 and then 90% of the next £33000, but no, this was not good enough for the nations saver pensioners who have now queued for five days in their thousands, most branches of the bank only serving ten or so people an hour because when they finally get to the front of the queue most of the customers are unsure of what they were queuing for.

Finally and in order to stop death by malnutrition in the streets of our city, Prime Minister Golden Brown (notice how we still have to prefix his name with "Prime Minister", it'll be a few years before we stop saying "Chancellor" ) had to step in and personally guarantee the assets of Northern Rock, in effect he ironically sold them a mortgage and so he now owns them, where on earth he found the £24 billion I don't know, maybe the Parliamentary Priviledges Commission should have a look at his pay slips sometime soon, he seems to be throwing his brass around a bit too freely for someone who "only" earns £170,000 a year.

The most ironic comment that I have heard came from an old lady who had queueing in the street of an anonymous town somewhere for three days to withdraw (her words) "my life savings", she further went on to say that she knew she shouldn't be doing this because it would only make the situation worse by making panic withdrawals, but, well, look, everyone else is aren't they...

So she stood in line for three days and the interviewer told her that as she was 100th in the queue it was unlikely that she'd be seen that day but she insisted that she'd stay there until her life savings were safely tucked up her knicker elasctic at which point she'd be mugged on the way home as were all of the investors who left the bank clutching wads of old style pound notes and white fivers, these representing their "life savings" for as everyone knows when you pay cash into a bank it goes in their safe wrapped up in rubber bands with your name on until you need to withdraw it again.

I can afford to be smug, for I have no "life savings", I don't comprehend the word "savings" and nor does anyone under the age of 60, when my bank goes bust I will laugh at the statuatory body's who can no longer leach money from my account via the direct debit scheme.

PS - in a final twist of irony the queueing pensioners were never told that a much simpler way exists of withdrawing your money from your bank account - write a cheque payable in cash to you and take it to another non-queueing bank.

Where I wandered...

Yes I know that as a panorama photo its not stiched together very well and you can see all the joins but I only did it for reference for the next painting I am now cracking on with - and the "panorama" module for Photoplus 10 costs £20 that I haven't got at the moment.

But, thats where I wandered yesterday - free to wander anywhere I cared on my birthday day off I chose Saddleworth Moor in preference to Nidderdale.

The reason ?

Saddleworth and Rishworth Moor (Rishworth to the left, Saddleworth to the right) is the area that you cross when at the highest point of the M62, Britains highest motorway (so we're told) and at this time of year I am always amazed by the colours on the moor, especially higher up the hills where the colouration ranges from straw to patches of dark rich ochre, reds, purples, to almost black where the peat breaks through and when the sun hits the hill face then the palette changes again - and on a day like yesterday with white cloud blowing across the sun the colour changes were like a living kaleidoscope in front of your eyes, two minutes after I'd taken those photos the colour scheme had changed again.

The Lancashire moors are not so well known or picturesque as the Yorkshire Dales but are beautiful all the same, the drive off the M62 at the Saddleworth junction takes you straight onto the moor - where that photo was taken is within two hundred yards of the motorway junction which is hidden in a fold of the land just below where I stood - and from there the journey over the top of the hill is one of those where, if you're driving, you watch the landscape at your peril for you'll find yourself wandering all over the carriageway while you gaze in awe at the landscape.

Saddleworth Moor has a sinister name for anyone who has ever heard of the names "Brady" or "Hindley" for it was here, high on the moor that their child victims were buried in the peat bogs, one of whom has never been found, but yesterday the moors were simply open plains of colour with the road winding across pools of every earth colour known to Daler-Rowney then dropping down into villages that have made no concession to tourism but remain still functional three hundred years after they were established, you won't find gift shops and boxes of "Lancashire Fudge" here but instead will notice shops that died off years ago in your own city, places like the village baker, a butcher, and a pub that doesn't belong to a nationwide chain - a rare sight indeed.

On to Delph (to visit John McCoombs gallery), Saddleworth, Diggle then over another moor and back into Yorkshire to stop off in Holmfirth and visit Ashley Jacksons gallery - 'twas indeed a perfect day.

It was 51 years ago today...

51 years ago today the Yorkshire Evening Post announced the arrival of the infant JerryChicken, a momentious occasion for me which was largely overlooked by the rest of the world.

Overlooked by everyone apart from both my parents larger families who instantly started a fight over what my middle name should be, each side of the family requiring that their family name be donated to the cause.

So it is that I bear two middle names, one from each side, no-one else that I know has got four names on their birth certificate apart from Prince Charles, so theres something else that he and I share.

Today I have taken the day off work, for if you read the post below this one you will also note that it is our wedding anniversary, yes I got married on my birthday, "it will save you having to remember a different date" she told me, in reality it means that I have to buy her something on my birthday, an inequality that I have never quite got my head around, there are some very suspicious and ingenious workings in this womans mind and if I live for another 100 years (which is quite likely, don't smoke, don't drink, don't dance, I'm going to live forever) then I will never, ever understand this role that I have in lifes great tapestry.

It was 24 years ago today...

That the current Mrs Jerrychicken lured me down the aisle to a suprise wedding ceremony at Seghill Church, Northumberland.

For years and years whenever any poor sap proposes to someone on a tv soap my children turn to me and ask "how did you propose to mum ?" and the truth is - I can't remember ever doing so.

I can't remember the time that we actually decided to get married, which makes me entirely suspicious about the whole affair, if I can't remember agreeing to do the deed then how can it be legal ?

Its a flimsy defence I know and over the years several solicitors have advised against using it as a get-out clause, but what do they know ?

I do remember the night before when my brother Ned turned up at my small one bed flat to spend some time with the condemned man bringing with him an overnight bag and a large flat box which he placed on the floor.

I asked him what it was and he said nothing but unwrapped its brownpaper wrapping to reveal...

A 5000 piece jigsaw puzzle.

And I got the joke immediately.

There is an old Laurel and Hardy film where Ollie is marrying a rich heiress and on the morning of the wedding Stan turns up with a similar jigsaw puzzle and the pair become so engrossed in finishing it, as do the assorted callers to the house during the morning, including a policeman who has been sent from the church to find out where they are, that they miss the ceremony completely.

What a magnificent masterplan.

How I wish we'd finished the jigsaw off instead.

So its 24 years ago today and in a similar manner to the previous 23 anniversaries I will be expected to have bought her something while I get nothing, and next year I am even now being informed that I should now be planning some sort of big event for our silver wedding anniversary - quite frankly I give not one flying fook for the whole anniversary thing and if she ever reads this while I am still alive then I am dead, so to speak.

It was 30 years ago today...

...that Marc Bolan died, death by catapultion from a car following engagement of said mini car with large tree.

The crash site has since become a shrine to Bolan especially since his son Rolan (yes, Rolan Bolan, these wacky rock stars eh? ) unveiled a plaque there five years ago and no doubt today a notorious tree in Barnes, South London, will be plastered with pictures, goodbye messages, and teddy bears, there are always teddy bears at times like these.

In a rather sick twist to the story Bolans home was looted within minutes of the news of his death, no doubt if they'd had eBay in 1977 then someone would have made a killing which is a rather inappropriate and unfortunate turn of phrase, but strangely befitting.

I liked Marc Bolan, he and his band T Rex were a part of my teenage-hood and while devotees of the earlier incarnation Tyrannosarus Rex would always condemn his commercial output during the period 1970-73, to me its part of the musical wallpaper of my youth, a mixed up, muddled up wallpaper its true for my musical tastes were then, as always, very eclectic, but still...

The song "Jeepster" has the most evocation for me, when I hear it I am instantly transported to those saturday afternoons that we spent in the underground (literally undergrond for it was in the basement of the Mecca Dance Club) hippie market perusing stalls of bead jewellry, silver bangles, puzzle rings, embroidered patches for your jeans and denim jacket, and exotic strips of shimmering cloth to tie "Country Joe" style around your flowing locks, for yes, in those days I had flowing locks, hard to believe now I know, but its true, my locks flowed down over my shoulders, I wore an ex-RAF great coat, loon pants and platform shoes, I was one of the beautiful people back then and I praise God that no photographic evidence exists for I must have resembled the worst sort of twat.

It still shows occasionally now - ust a few years ago we were invited to a 70's theme fancy dress and whilst everyone in the room who was aged thirty and under paraded self conciously in white suits in a John Travolts stylee, I had gone back to my hippie roots and hired outrageous flares, a womans silky, flouncy blouse, pink "John Lennon" sunglasses, lots of glitter and a wig that was intended by the fancy dress shop owner for a Captain Hook outfit, yes I went as Marc Bolan's long lost twin and I relished every moment, keeping the wig on all weekend, a fleeting two days with hair again I can't tell you how good it felt to brush the curly flowing locks from my eyes and have to tie it all up in a bandana.

So we remember Marc Bolan this weekend and in particular we remember "Jeepster", the soundtrack of the underground hippie market and some glorious saturday afternoon browsing...

Turnstile-phobia

I have recently discovered that my wife is riddled with a rare disease.

Turnstileitis.

Having bought a part season ticket for two seats in the posh new stand at the Leeds Rhinos Headingley ground I have invited her to partake of the rugby league action on three occasions recently - and each time she has buggered up the act of passing freely through a turnstile.

Now I've been doing the Headingley turnstiles since I was ten years old so its sort of incomprehensible to me that someone would not know how to use one, but they have become a complete mystery to her.

The first time I took her I explained how they work - you hold your smart card under the scanner with your left hand, it bleeps and shows a green light, you push turnstile with your right hand and you walk through - job done.

So I went first to show her how its done, worked perfectly for me.

She steps up, holds card under the reader, it bleeps, turns green, she stands and watchs the turnstile, it stops bleeping, it won't work again with her card now because you get just one go at it, I have to go and find a steward to unlock the turnstile and let her in manually.

The next home game I explain the function to her again, very slowly this time, she agrees to go first this time so I can coach her as the action happens, she holds the turnstile with her right hand, she presents the ticket to the reader with her left hand, it bleeps, it turns green, she pushes the turnstile with her right hand, it turns, she stands still.

"You're supposed to walk through the bloody thing when it turns" I explain, kindly, as if talking to a five year old.

We go and find a steward who has to unlock the turnstile and let her in manually.

Last night we attended the last home game of the season, she has extensive coaching outside the gate, we repeat the action of pushing and walking at the same time until she gets it right, she goes first, I stand behind her, she is pushing the turnstile before I present the card, this is a good sign, she says "Now ?" I say "Not yet", I present the card, she says "Now ?" I say "Not yet", it beeps, it turns green, she turns and says "Now?", its still beeping, she's not pushing yet, I give her the biggest thump in the back and shout "Now!!!" and she flies through the turnstile and out the other side like a champagne cork out of a bottle and a steward comes over to see why we are fighting inside a turnstile.

She's a bloody embarrassment.

Songs what I like, episode (whatever)...

Introduced by Pete Murray and Fluff Freeman following at the end on what is obviously the Top of the Pops 1967 christmas or end of year special.

I love this song for so many reasons, not least of which is the use of the Hammond organ, an instrument that is so intrinsically linked with 1960's popular beat combo music until the point at which young long haired "bloody layabouts" (to use my dads vernacular) discovered the Moog Synthasizer.

As soon as I hear the opening bars its the summer of 67 again, its a beach holiday at Cayton Bay, its huge groups of people gathered around a tiny, tinny, portable transistor radio (another new invention) listening to a pirate radio station that may or may not have been moored off the north east coast, its illegal and no-one cares, its 1967, you can do anything in these days and Harold Wilson's government are helpless to stop you, finally caving in to public pressure in September of that year to launch a BBC version of the pirate stations.

But the best memory of this song is the August bank holiday of that year and the Church Fenton air show. I don't know why, for we were no family of geeks, but the Church Fenton air show attracted huge crowds on the bank holiday Monday and our dad took us for several years running - but its the 1967 show that I remember purely for the fact that we had a car full, a Vauxhall Viva car full, and when I hear that song I am crammed against a window in the back of that car queuing for half an hour or so to get into the air show car park, its red hot and "Whiter Shade of Pale" is on the transistor radio that is hanging by its leather strap from the rear view mirror - radios fitted into cars? - whoever heard of such nonsense.

A little bit more like the movies...

In a scene reminiscent of a Dirty Harry or Beverley Hills Cop film police shot dead two would-be bank robbers yesterday as they attempted to hold up a security van outside an HSBC bank in Chandlers Ford (pronounced Ch-aar-ndlersFord).

And it makes the news headlines all over this country for police officers do not shoot people, not even bank robbers, very often at all here and we express mock shock and indignation when it happens.

We also, as a matter of course, suspend the armed officers involved from duty, even the ones who didn't fire a shot, until an independant police investigation team can satisfy itself that no prosecution of the officers involved should take place, no correct that, they prepare a file and the Crown Prosecution Service make the decision.

And of course the point deserves to be made to those not of this country that our "normal" police officers are not armed with anything more lethal than a stick and a gas cannister and that the armed officers involved yesterday would be part of a small and elite squad who have had rigorous and extensive training in the art of shooting bad people - we train them as hard and as long as we can, then repeat every month, and when they have to do the job that we have trained them long and hard for we suspend them under threat of criminal charges and often, even if no charges result, remove them from armed duty and put them back on "normal duties".

A close friend of mine is a serving police officer, in fact two of my brother-in-law's are police officers, the friend (and I think the in-laws too) have served in the armed section, its a sort of prestigious branch of your local bobby shop, and he resigned from it after a year in which he was constantly assessed, both mentally and physically and a year in which, when issued with his firearm each shift, he was expected to stand in front of similarly armed maniacs and ask them nicely to lay down their arms twice before shooting them, preferably in the body (no gung-ho Dirty Harry shoulder shots in real life) and then hope that his single shot would miss any vital body parts and that the villian would survive, indeed the police in yesterdays bank raid spent half an hour trying to resucitate one of the shot bank robbers.

The pressure of the job was perpetual and intense and he left that squad to be a police dog handler where if your dog attacks a villian everyone sings your praises and no-one from the Police Complaints Commission comes to interview you and advise that you should have a solicitor present.

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

And in other news, and by way of a complete contrast to bad guys, today is the funeral of Jane Tomlinson, good guy hero of this city, and befitting her status the funeral is to be held in the city's catholic cathedral, closing most of the roads in that area, and quite remarkably such is the expected crowd that the big screens in Leeds' Millenium Square and Bradford's Centenary Square will be relaying the funeral service - 'tis a sad day.

That would do it then...

A quick postscript to the aerial photographs and Leeds Bradford Airport in general...

The Air Accident Investigation Branch today issued their findings on an incident at the airport back in January when a British Midland Airbus burst four tyres on landing, blocking the runway for several hours.

The conclusion of the enquiry was that the pilot, having previously experienced tricky landing conditions at one of the UK's highest altitude airports, applied the parking brakes before the aircraft landed.

That would do it then...

We've lived all over this place...

Dan at All that comes with it started the idea fermenting - post an aerial picture of your house on t'interweb - I've got the boiling oil on the roof ready to repel stalkers Dan...

So instead of zooming right in and showing you the exact house I thought we'd stay up here at 2000 feet so that we could see the last four houses that we've lived in - yes thats right, since 1990 we've lived in all four houses that you can see ringed in yellow, and yes that right, we moved one street at a time.

We're currently at the one at the bottom of the picture, its the smallest house out of those four but I like it the best, don't ask me why, I just do, its just, well its just got a feelgood thing about it.

Moving up the photo and to the left we have the house that we moved into in 1990 and the truth is that we would still be there and we would be nearly mortgage free by now if it wasn't for the fact that a river ran right underneath the house - remember the Meryll Streep film "A River Runs Through It", well they got the title from our house.

What you can't see from the Google Earth image is the hill that we are all perched on, the highest point being the bottom of the page where our current house is - this whole area was one huge big wood until 50 years ago complete with streams and other good stuff like that - the builder who built that first house decided to ignore the fact that the whole of that street stood on top of a water course and so all of the houses down that side of the road had running water under the ground floor floorboards, running water that could be up to three feet deep during heavy rain spells.

We sold that and moved to the one thats further up, almost in the middle of the page - that was a big house, I mean a very big house, the sort of house that people walk into and declare "oh what a lovely big house" while you stand there thinking "you should see the heating bills". Ultimately thats what made us sell that house at a profit of £120,000 in three years - it had cost us nearly that much just to heat the fekking place, the new heating system which Birtish Gas promised us would be far more efficient cost £9000 to install and the next quarters heating bill actually increased, the bastards.

It was a beautiful, big, prestigious house, built in the 1930's with oak panelled walls and a huge kitchen conservatory that looked wonderful but which never rose above freezing point during the winter - all of the heat from the four radiators in that room went straight out of the conservatory roof, but if I earned eight times more than I do then we'd still be living there, I loved that house, Suzanne hated it though, she hated it on the day we moved in, which was strange as she had picked it from the shortlist of three we had.

Finally the house that we moved to after the big house and before this house is right at the top of the picture and those are my cars in the driveway and judging by those cars then that image is about four years old. It was an ok house, still quite big but I never really liked it, never really did anything to it apart from fit three new bathrooms to it (it only had one bathroom but I did it three times - fooking women eh). I also hated the garden as it always seemed to be dirty, yes thats a stupid thing to say but thats how it felt, just fekkin grubby all the time, eeek, I hated that garden.

So there you have it - to all American visitors, yes, we really do cram our houses that close together, you should see the inner city housing, but then again land around these parts isn't ten cents an acre.

My old golf club is top right, thats the 17th green and 18th tee, bottom-right is the shittest pub in West Yorkshire and top left with the green roof is the church where our two kinder were christened and attended until the vicar would sign a piece of paper saying that they could go to the church owned Primary and Secondary schools - thats the church that I have attended the grand total of three times in my life, yes I'm a hypocrite for sending my children to a church school but I'm relying on that bit in the bible that says its never too late to repent, or something like that, I'll repent with my last living breath and jump the queue on all you sad bas'tads who've been going to church every sunday for the whole of your lives.

I don't know where we'll move to next, we've done all of these streets now.


And for another slightly different aerial view of Leeds in general and our house in particular, keep watching the video until you get to 1min 30 secs, and there we are, just near the top of the screen, I may even be waving.

The biggest, worst poo ever...

I've been reading too much of the scaryduck offerings, that much is true for today my thoughts turn to a subject dear to the British male's heart - poo.

For some unearthly reason your average British male cannot allow more than ten minutes worth of a conversation to elapse without mentioning the bottom bodily function, how big, how long, how much it smelled, and as its been several weeks since this blog had a damn good poo then its about time we raised the subject again.

Look away now if you are at all squimish.

Or eating.

Sometime around 1980 it was, my personal best, the best, worst poo I have ever had, and yes, mention this to most British males and they'll remember their's too.

I was working between our Newcastle, Leeds and Birmingham offices and Monday morning was always an early start to get to Brum (well Wolverhampton actually) for 9am, 40 minutes across the M62 and then just under two hours down the M6, I had it timed to the nearest half minute, knew the checkpoints in the motorway when I could tell if I was early or late, Keele services was one such checkpoint.

I approached it on this fine autumnal morning approximately an hour into my journey, I was early, had made up five or so minutes from somewhere, everything was going so well when the overwhelming urge to start pushing came upon me somewhere just north of Keele.

I know now what females feel like when in the final stages of labour, where in all the tv programmes they are shouting "I want to push" and the midwife is telling them not to just yet or they'll tear their arses another hole, I know that feeling for inside of me had built a huge backlog of part digested foodstuff that until then I had been completely unaware of.

With five minutes to spare on the journey I decided to stop off at the service station which even at this early hour was quite busy, fortunately there was a toilet cubicle free and as I removed my lower graments and took up the seat there commenced what is still recognised as the biggest, most prolonged, and worst smelling poo I have ever partaken of.

It wouldn't stop.

Normally you get a breather during the maximum poo sessions, normally you can nip a big one off and rest for a while, wipe your brow and then recommence, maybe even have time to flush the starter course away so that you don't block your u-bend, but this one was having none of it.

On and on it came, endless like a coil of ice cream from a Mr Whippy machine, it made no splash for it did not fall anywhere but simply uncoiled itself out of me and then recoiled itself back up under the water, like a long lazy python it emerged, steaming slightly, paralysing my anal valve making a short break impossible so that I could only sit there and wait, and wait...

And then the end of the first phase came and I could draw breath again and relax, wipe my fevered brow and let out a long and heartfelt "Jesus Christ" a refrain that was echoed by the men outside stood at the urinals, for following the giant poo came a gas pocket, a foul evil smelling cloud that gagged those who stood under its fallout, like a pit of decomposing death suddenly uncapped and released to an unsuspecting world, Beelzebub had put this one aside for me, for me, for meeeeee...

Rough tough truckers who had only stopped for a leak fled in terror, the cleaning crew from Keele services resigned en masse, and a chemical warfare rapid response vehicle was called from a nearby garrison, but there was no time for any of this nonsense in my cubicle for the stomach cramps had started again as the second phase hit me - a stream of thick gooey fluid that erupted forth in a series of parp, parp, parps, hot sticky fluid that bubbled from my anus with a force that could drive a power station generator.

And the smell just intensified - your own poo often does not carry any sort of smell at all for its is the smell of you, you cannot smell your own bad breath nor can you smell your own poo, but this was not made of me, this was the work of the devil himself, my bowels were possesed and producing the foulest creation in Lucifers kingdom, and I had absolutely no control over any of it.

Just as I was fast approaching the point of fainting the liquid ceased as quickly as it had begun, the anal valve closed again, hot and thobbing now, I sat there terrified wondering what next was in store and whether or not it was worth a trial flush.

A knock at the door and a muffled worried voice, "are you alright in there ?", a good samaritan holding a scarf to his nose and mouth, come to rescue me ...

"Save yourself, flee while you can" I shouted, "leave me for I am done for, save yourself, think of the children..."

"Don't strike a match though" I added as an afterthought.


Two whole rolls of toilet paper and seven flushes it took to rid Keele of that monster, 32 minutes from trousers down to emerging sheepishly from the cubicle to find the manager standing with arms crossed and an angry look on his face, behind whom sheltered two mop ladies who obviously would rather have been anywhere else in the world but here today.

I fled the service station, bottom as raw as a baboon's, bowels completely bereft of anything, several pounds lighter and a new notch on the tightened belt.

By god I needed that.

The Baby Patrol...

With the McCanns of Leicestershire sinking deeper and deeper into the mire every time the Portuguese Police have a discussion at the water cooler over the case of the missing Madelaine - {Lang=Portuguese} "Oh yes, I never thought of that {/Portuguese}, we perhaps need to revisit our past to remind ourselves of how we used to deal with the perenial problem of what to do with your children of an evening when on holiday and in need of a blathering down the pub.

You call for The Baby Patrol Man.

Come with me now to 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin is the first man in space closely followed by American Alan Shepherd so that was alright then, Kennedy's American troops make a right arse of invading Cuba in The Bay of Pigs incident, and Earnest Hemingway dies of self-inflicted gunshot wounds which is a nice way of saying that he committed suicide.

And the family of little JerryChicken go off on their annual holidays to Cayton Bay, that fine and dandy caravan park that sits atop the clifftops just south of Scarborough - what finer place for a holiday ?

OK, yes, I can think of loads of finer places, but in 1961 Cayton Bay was the finer place of choice.

And of course the parents of the little five year old JerryChicken and his even littler three year old brother Ned could rest assured every night that as they boozed themselves silly in the camp site clubhouse, dressing up a-fine in silly hats, the air thick with party streamers and everyone singing "community songs" as per the tradition of the day whilst getting well and truly blathered - for let us not forget dear reader that 1961 was slap bang in the middle of the era when everyone was convinced that we would all soon die in one big flash and a bang, the British Isles being located exactly in the middle of two governments who really, really, really wished to launch their new nuclear toys at each other, just give us an excuse Boris, just one excuse, Kennedy had warned, and then turned to his citizens and told them that "all prudent American families should have their own bomb shelter".

So sitting on the North East coast with presidential fingers poised over the match and blue touchpaper, our parents did what all Britons do in times of crisis - they put party hats on, got drunk and sang silly songs to each other all night long, its not the worst way to die.

I never finished that paragraph about how our parents could rest assured - anyway they could rest assured that while they were out merry-making, us small children were safely tucked up in bed in our caravans, doors locked to strangers, sleeping tightly and peacefully in a crazy mad adult world.

How did they know ?
Because they had the Baby Patrol Man and his magic walkie-talky.

The rules were that when you left your kids locked up in your caravan of an evening you left one of the curtains open so that the Baby Patrol Man could peer in through the window during his rounds, shine a torch through the glass even, and check that your children were still tucked up in bed snoring away and dreaming of Noddy, Big Ears and other good racist Enid Blyton novels, or Lego in my case and its miriad uses in constructing things that needed to have square edges, and be red - it was my dream when a child to build my first adult size house out of red Lego bricks, a dream as yet unfulfilled, but its still on the back burner, oh yes.

And woe betide any youngster who was awake when the Baby Patrol Man called, for he would take from his haversack the ex-army second world war walkie-talky set that encumbered his every move all night, it being two foot long with a three foot aerial and weighing a hundred pounds or more, and radio back to The Rendevous Club that a baby was crying in caravan E45.

From here a lacky would speed to the large blackboards at each side of the stage and chalk the number "E45" underneath the heading "Baby crying in caravan..." and amid whispers and much gazing and pointing around the room some poor bastard would rise shamefaced from his chair, midway thorugh only his eigth pint of the night, pick up his coat and his wife and storm out of the clubhouse, entertainment ruined for the night by their screaming kids who would scream all the louder when the parents finally found their caravan amid the thousands of similar ones - not an easy job even when only half blathered - and leathered them finally to sleep just in time to return for last orders.

Indeed the parental warning of choice every night as they locked the caravan door on you was on the lines of "Good night, sleep tight, and you'd bloody well better do, woe betide you if I get called out of that club..." and to our everlasting pride in all our childhood years, me and our Ned never caused either of our parents to break off their blathered song filled evenings.

If only they'd put aside the "paedophile" tag that has since been inextricably linked with the Baby Patrol provision then parents all across this country, including a pair now residing in Leicestershire, could booze the night away safe in the knowledge that their kinder were being peered upon at regular intervals by a man with a walkie-talky.

Meeting Elvis in Morrisons

Elvis was doing his shopping in Morrisons Guiseley store on Saturday.

I have to say that the years have not been kind on the King of Rock n' Roll, he now looks all of his 72 years, seems to have lost all of his teeth and not bothered replacing them, and I'm sorry to say that at 11am in the morning he was sozzled, a lush, obviously fond of the drink is our Elvis, he was staggering, confused and chewing on his gums - and he stank of beer

He was however very nicely attired in one of his Vegas stage suits, in fact it was one identical to the joke Elvis in the photo, but the real Guiseley Elvis wore a gold spangly cape too as he staggered down the aisles with his shopping trolley and dog on a string.

I'd loved to have stopped and chatted to him, asked him how he was finding life in Guiseley, if he resided here for anonimity's sake, perhaps avoiding punitive tax regimes in the deep south of America, asked him if he still sang, maybe in pubs of a Friday night, and of course remind him that our lives have crossed paths once before...

...way back in 1974 it was, February of 1974, when the 17 year old me found myself on a family holiday in Las Vegas at a time when most folk in the UK thought that a fortnight in Cornwall was the absolute limit of navigation capability for your average Briton.

We were there by a fluke, coincidence, chance and being in the right place at the right time, ten days in Las Vegas for £7 each, staying at the Flamingo motel (a slightly down market Bates Motel stylee building in the car park of the famous Flamingo) where Mama Cass was heading the bill just a few short months before she would hockle herself to death on a sandwich in London.

Diana Ross was over the road at Caesers Palace and Elvis was performing daily at The Hilton.

All of these once famous acts of the 1960's had one thing in common - in 1974 no-one wanted to know them, their chart careers were washed up (although Diana Ross made a comeback in 76) and Vegas offered a wage and another opportunity to bask in the spotlight that had now moved on to glam rock.

The most suprising thing about every act at every hotel in Vegas was that they were by and large ignored by the punters, entry to the auditoriums was free, provided that you walked through the casinos first, and people would drift in and out whilst the "turns" were performing - gambling was the big attraction, has-been singers were a definite second choice for entertainment value.

So it was that my dad and uncle Ralph found themselves in the Hilton one night and had a free ticket to see Elvis in the main auditorium thrust into their hands, with nothing better to do they wandered in, watched Elvis for a couple of songs and wandered out again, my dad remarking that "he wasn't bad but I've seen better at Harehills Working Mens Club" - the most important event of the evening was not seeing Elvis in the flesh but Ralph finding a $50 bill outside the hotel on the taxi rank and being quicker to pick it up than the taxi rank marshall who wasn't to realise that he was dealing with a true Yorkshireman in my Uncle Ralph, no-one would have got to that curency faster than Ralph, no-one.

I wanted to remind our Morrisons Elvis about his Vegas years but he was having trouble hearing what the lady on the cooked meats counter was saying to him, he's deaf now as well as drunk, toothless, unshaven and smelly.

Such a shame, but his stage outfit was spotless.

Spoiled by the Poundstretcher trainers, but still