In the spirit of easter week I thought that I should investigate the phenomena of the religious movement Creationism, that band of half-lunatics who follow the teachings of the bible to the letter and attribute most of the scientific understanding in the world today to "The Great Flood" of Noah fame.
The Great Flood made the Grand Canyon and killed all the dinosaurs because Noah didn't check in the dinosaurs on time, its simple really when you think of it, don't know why we never realised it before now.
So in an attempt to reach a greater understanding on what exactly happened when god created the world and exactly how he fucked up with the dinosaurs I undertook some research last night and invested in a few grams of a hallucinogenic substance, purely in the interest of research you understand, in order to arrange a short interview with god, here is the transcript...
Me : Thank you for the opportunity to interview you tonight god, its very good of you to see me at such short notice, and may I say god, that shimmering cloak of many colours that you're wearing is just, like, wow, its so groovy man, how do you make it change colour so often
God : Its actually white Gary, the stuff that you smoked earlier is making you think its a cloak of many colours
Me : Oh, ok.
God : I like your tee shirt though
Me : Thanks, I got it when we went to Centre Parc a couple of years ago
God : Yes I know. Now, what did you want to ask me ?
Me : Do you mind if I take notes ?
God : No, but I'll need to run a copy of them down to St Peter afterwards, just to be safe you know, I get misquoted sometimes.
Me : Thats ok god, no problem, before we start can you turn the lighting down a bit, the backlighting behind your head is making my eyes ache, I get migraines see, your cloak of many colours is going to set one off I just know it is.
God : I can't I'm afraid, its not a lighting effect, its my presence.
Me : Oh ok, I may need to take a solphadine later though. So god, what about all this Creationism then eh ? Phoo, eh ! what do you make of them then, fuckin loonies or what ?
God : What part of their teachings would you like to discuss Gary, which bits make you think they are fuckin loonies ?
{At this point the sky grew dark outside, there was a huge crash of thunder and a loud squeal as if some small mammal was in its death throe}
God : Shit, I forgot again
Me : Forgot what ?
God : Every time I say fuck something sweet and cuddly gets killed, that was a seal pup I think
{The sky grew even darker and another deafening crash of thunder shook the whole of heaven followed by a tiny whistle}
God : Did I say fu... that word again ? Shit, thats a guinea pig.
Me : I think you did god, anyway, where were we, yes, creationism, how did it all start then god ?
God : I made the world and all the living creatures therein in seven days, well six actually, I took a day off on the sunday, I was fucked
{another rumble of thunder, this time further away, and then a clicking noise}
God : A kangaroo
Me : So all that shit is true then, you really did create the world in seven days
God : Six
Me : Six days then, it really happened that way ?
God : Yes, I was good back then, I was younger, more supple, more energy, I got things done, I made my mind up and just went ahead and did it, didn't stop to think of the consequences, 'course I made mistakes, who wouldn't, we're all human aren't we, but still, I didn't do such a bad job did I, in fact even though I say it myself, I think I did a really good job of earth, yes, I'm quite pleased, six days eh, six fuckin hard days.
{a fireball flashed past the window and foreshortened quack}
God : Baby penguin
Me : So, when you'd finished, on the seventh day, and you looked all around...
God : ...and I said that it was good...
Me : ...and you said that it was good, was there anything that you didn't really like, perhaps something that you'd do differently if you had another go ?
God : You're talking about the dinosaurs aren't you ?
Me : I don't know, are you ?
God : Yes, I ballsed up on the dinosaurs, it was late, I'd been working solid for five fuckin days mate...
{burning spear whizzed over my head followed by the faintest of sqeaks}
God : Pygmy shrew, I was tired see, even though I was young and fruitfull I was still tired and I was running out of ideas, well you see if you can create a whole world in six days, you'd be bloody tired wouldn't you, bloody tired I was, it was at the end of the fifth day see and I'd sat down for a few minutes, poured myself a scotch and soda, St Peter was here, we were right here in this room actually when we invented the dinosaurs, Peter was sitting where you're sitting right now, and he was fiddling around with some clay, rolling it into sausages, squashing it on the table, you know, and he sort of stuck two sausages onto a ball of the stuff and then another long sausage with a little head on the end, poked two eyeholes in it, well I pissed myself laughing, it was the daftest thing you've ever seen.
We poured ourself another couple of scotch's and I had a go, it was a good laugh, I made one that stood on four tiny legs but gave it a huge body and a really long thin neck with a minute head, Peter had a fit laughing at that one, so he did one with big wings and pretended it could fly, gave it a beak with teeth in, silly bugger, oh I could laugh all over again thinking of it, anyway, we had a few more scotch's and before I knew what was happening we'd decided to go into production, gave them "osaurous" names, just made them up on the spot, that was funny too, didn't really mean for it to happen but when I woke up on the sixth day there they all were, I had a fuckin awful...
{as sytheing spear whooshed through the door followed by a dull thud}
...photographers chimp, hangover and when I looked out the clouds, there was the earth, populated by these monstrocities, I tell you, it was not good anymore, but I had to run with it, sort of made it awkward for Adam and his missus and their lot for a couple of centuries after that, well you've seen the films haven't you, bloody dinosaurs fighting everywhere, mind there was plenty of meat to go around, but it wasn't how I'd planned it see, not like the plans at all, no sir, a bloody mess it was actually.
Me : So what did you do about it, when did you decide to get rid ?
God : I left it for a long time, too long really, thought they'd all die off pretty quick see, me and Peter, we'd forgotten to give them brains, well we were just messing around weren't we, anyway, they didn't die, they bloody thrived on earth, just my bloody luck, so I had a good long look around to see if I could find a human who was smart enough but stupid enough to follow my instructions without asking questions, thats another thing I did wrong, made humans question me all the time, always asking bloody questions they were. Anyway I find this one called Noah, had a quick word with him, told him to build a fuckin ...
{a bolt of white flame hissed by the window and a scream chilled me to the bone}
...ooh shit, that was a human, told him to build a big boat out of gopher wood, whats gopher wood he said, I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and stuffed him up a bleedin gopher tree, thats gopher wood I told him, I said build it three hundered cubits by fifty cubits by thirty cubits, whats a cubit he said, I tell you, I nearly told him to sod off and send me a carpenter instead, but I drew him some plans and do you know he wasn't that bad with a plane really, the ark was a bit shoddy when he'd finished, I mean you could tell that he'd only done a bit of DIY before he built the ark, didn't dovetail anything just used big nails and brute force, but it looked like it would float so I told him to gather all ye animals around him on his ark, except the fuckin dinosaurs...
{wham..blinding light…screech}
…parrot, don’t bring the fuckin…
{whoom, whooosh…thump}
…easter bunny, dinosaurs I said, why he asked, I grabbed him by the throat and shook him for a minute or two, because I fuckin…
{whap. Slap, eeeek}
…piglet, said so that’s why you dumb fuck..
{kazaaam, stick, eurgh}
…lamb, and he nodded his head and just got on with it, took some getting through to him but he did a good job in the end, got most of the stuff I wanted to keep on board, maybe I should have told him to make the ark three hundred and fifty cubits long and we could have got some more things on board like the unicorns, the fantasmotrons, and the organaphallus’s, a gmupf or two would have been nice too, but hey, we got what we could and then I made it piss down for forty days and forty nights, like leaving the bath taps running it was, lost everything we did, everything except what was on the ark, all apart from the fnarks who jumped overboard chasing a ball one day, bloody idiots, anyway after that we started again, its been ok since.
God : Are you still awake ?
Me : Whaaa, whaat ? Me ? Yeah I’ve been taking notes god, all the time, you got any coffee I could have, I’m getting a bit of a headache.
God : No, so is there anything else ?
Me : Yes, erm, let me see {consults notepad which is blank} erm, so this flood story, how did it all happen again ?
God : You haven’t listened to a word I’ve said have you ?
Me : It’s the cloak of many colours man, its just vivid, know what I mean ? Its just so vivid man, can you turn it off ?
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Have you had the back off ?
The easter eggs arrived yesterday - hurrah !!!
Just one each, one for each daughter and one for me, but we've been warned by the wife and mother, no sproaching (as she says in her geordie terminology, no we don't understand her either).
What she means is that we are not to eat the back out of the eggs before easter sunday, she knows me so well.
I told my youngest the story of how, when my brother and I were kids, we would each receive around ten easter eggs each and by the time easter sunday came around we'd have eaten the back out of all of them.
We were experts at carefully removing the packaging from the back of the easter egg box and then picking away at the chocolate and the smarties or chocolates inside, leaving the front of the egg in pristine condition so that our mum would never notice when she was cleaning around them, every year, every one of our eggs had no back left in them by easter sunday.
Until one year when our posh auntie popped around on easter saturday with a couple of easter eggs for us in her wicker basket, our mum had not bought an egg for our posh auntie's daughter and so she grabbed one of our eggs off the sideboard and gave it to her.
My brother and I nearly choked trying to keep the laughter down and after they'd left we just exploded with hysteria, it was probably an hour later that we finally admitted to our mum that the egg that she'd given to our cousin had no back in it, and no smarties either.
As usual she used the age old mothers threat "wait 'till your father gets home" but when he got home he was drunk again and found the whole thing even more hilarious than we did, our posh auntie was his posh sister and I reckon he'd been waiting all his life to put one over on her.
The back will be out of my egg before sunday.
Just one each, one for each daughter and one for me, but we've been warned by the wife and mother, no sproaching (as she says in her geordie terminology, no we don't understand her either).
What she means is that we are not to eat the back out of the eggs before easter sunday, she knows me so well.
I told my youngest the story of how, when my brother and I were kids, we would each receive around ten easter eggs each and by the time easter sunday came around we'd have eaten the back out of all of them.
We were experts at carefully removing the packaging from the back of the easter egg box and then picking away at the chocolate and the smarties or chocolates inside, leaving the front of the egg in pristine condition so that our mum would never notice when she was cleaning around them, every year, every one of our eggs had no back left in them by easter sunday.
Until one year when our posh auntie popped around on easter saturday with a couple of easter eggs for us in her wicker basket, our mum had not bought an egg for our posh auntie's daughter and so she grabbed one of our eggs off the sideboard and gave it to her.
My brother and I nearly choked trying to keep the laughter down and after they'd left we just exploded with hysteria, it was probably an hour later that we finally admitted to our mum that the egg that she'd given to our cousin had no back in it, and no smarties either.
As usual she used the age old mothers threat "wait 'till your father gets home" but when he got home he was drunk again and found the whole thing even more hilarious than we did, our posh auntie was his posh sister and I reckon he'd been waiting all his life to put one over on her.
The back will be out of my egg before sunday.
Monday, April 10, 2006
Cardboard coffins and syncronicity
I love syncronicity - those moments in life when things come together randomly and yet seemingly by prior arrangement.
Was driving along the Leeds ring road today and saw a breakdown truck - that was broken down, nothing to do with the rest of this piece but it looked beautiful, a breakdown truck broken down at the side of the road with its bonnet up and the driver scratching his head staring at the engine, and it got me thinking, if an AA truck breaks down, do they call out the RAC ?
Anyway, back to the title.
Just after I'd passed the poorly breakdown truck I got stuck behind a hearse on a bit of the ring road thats single carriageway, had to follow it for five minutes or so at 40mph, there was just the hearse on its own, no courtege, but it had a coffin in the back and a single bunch of flowers and just two undertakers - the song that was playing on the radio at the time was Eric Carmens "All by Myself", syncronicity at its best.
So I'm driving behind this hearse with its lonely looking coffin in the back and I notice that its a white coffin and its quite square for a coffin, or at least the back of it looks square, not slightly pointed like coffins are supposed to look, and then as I concentrate on the coffin a bit more I notice that it looks, well, sort of like a cardboard box and I think that maybe the undertakers have just picked up a box of coffin handles or something from their wholesalers.
Just then we reached a bit of the ring road that turns into a dual carriageway and I pull alongside the hearse at some traffic lights and get a good look at the coffin.
Its is a coffin, its a cardboard coffin, its got three bits of string hanging out of this side of it presumably as handles and the top looks just like a filing box lid thats been hastily shoved on top because it looks lop-sided, and as I pull further alongside the hearse I can see the other end of it and its like one of those fold-flat cardboard boxes that you make up by folding one edge over the other to make them lock together, you can tell this because there's a gap all down the side of the cardboard coffin that you could easily get your fingers inside.
And its been puzzling me all morning, these cardboard coffins are promoted as being "green" and "environmentally friendly", but what is more environmentally friendly than a wooden coffin anyway ?
I'm all for eco-friendly stuff and a coffin made of chipboard is obviously not as eco-friendly as one made of pine or even mahogany (as long it they are from renewable sources of course), but the cardboard coffin that I saw today just looked cheap and nasty and if I'm going to meet my maker (whoever my maker was, I can't find my warranty record), then I don't want the last word from my relations to be "oooh doesn't that coffin look cheap and nasty, suits him doesn't it "
Was driving along the Leeds ring road today and saw a breakdown truck - that was broken down, nothing to do with the rest of this piece but it looked beautiful, a breakdown truck broken down at the side of the road with its bonnet up and the driver scratching his head staring at the engine, and it got me thinking, if an AA truck breaks down, do they call out the RAC ?
Anyway, back to the title.
Just after I'd passed the poorly breakdown truck I got stuck behind a hearse on a bit of the ring road thats single carriageway, had to follow it for five minutes or so at 40mph, there was just the hearse on its own, no courtege, but it had a coffin in the back and a single bunch of flowers and just two undertakers - the song that was playing on the radio at the time was Eric Carmens "All by Myself", syncronicity at its best.
So I'm driving behind this hearse with its lonely looking coffin in the back and I notice that its a white coffin and its quite square for a coffin, or at least the back of it looks square, not slightly pointed like coffins are supposed to look, and then as I concentrate on the coffin a bit more I notice that it looks, well, sort of like a cardboard box and I think that maybe the undertakers have just picked up a box of coffin handles or something from their wholesalers.
Just then we reached a bit of the ring road that turns into a dual carriageway and I pull alongside the hearse at some traffic lights and get a good look at the coffin.
Its is a coffin, its a cardboard coffin, its got three bits of string hanging out of this side of it presumably as handles and the top looks just like a filing box lid thats been hastily shoved on top because it looks lop-sided, and as I pull further alongside the hearse I can see the other end of it and its like one of those fold-flat cardboard boxes that you make up by folding one edge over the other to make them lock together, you can tell this because there's a gap all down the side of the cardboard coffin that you could easily get your fingers inside.
And its been puzzling me all morning, these cardboard coffins are promoted as being "green" and "environmentally friendly", but what is more environmentally friendly than a wooden coffin anyway ?
I'm all for eco-friendly stuff and a coffin made of chipboard is obviously not as eco-friendly as one made of pine or even mahogany (as long it they are from renewable sources of course), but the cardboard coffin that I saw today just looked cheap and nasty and if I'm going to meet my maker (whoever my maker was, I can't find my warranty record), then I don't want the last word from my relations to be "oooh doesn't that coffin look cheap and nasty, suits him doesn't it "
Friday, April 07, 2006
Bird flu could be a good thing...
I'm standing by this weekend.
Standing by ready to torch my neighbours pigeon coops, I only need just one word from the government, the first government minister who mutters the words "bird flu" and "pigeons" in the same sentence is the only excuse I need, I've been waiting for this moment for four years now.
Our next-door-but-one neighbour is crazy, a first class, qualified, certified nut. In his normal, suburban garden, in this leafy middle class suburb of north Leeds where people get on with their lives quietly and without disturbance to others, this man keeps pigeons in his garden.
Pigeons, flying rats, filthy flying shitting machines that he keeps locked up in sheds, only letting them out to fly about twice a day, their numbers vary but there has never been less than 20 and often more than 40 circling around my house every day, shitting on my house, sitting on my roof shitting on my house, they are a friggin nuisance, and so is he and his rat-faced noisy family.
And he keeps chickens too, and a fucking cockerel that wakes everyone up at 4am during the summer. He also has ducks in his garden - this isn't a big garden we are talking about but he keeps all of these birds penned up in his shit filled garden for fun, spending most of his day walking amongst them talking to them, I tell you, he's a nut, I can hear his friggin ducks quacking now as he feeds them.
The funniest thing by far that happened last summer was when his terrier dog got into his chicken coop and killed three of his avian friends before he could drag it out backwards by its tail, I applauded his dog on that day for its responsible citizenship.
So all I need is one word, one word is all I need, I have kindling wood and accelerant and torches ready for lighting, say the word and I'll be through our hedgerow like a possessed demon, with roast pigeon and duck on the menu tomorrow.
Standing by ready to torch my neighbours pigeon coops, I only need just one word from the government, the first government minister who mutters the words "bird flu" and "pigeons" in the same sentence is the only excuse I need, I've been waiting for this moment for four years now.
Our next-door-but-one neighbour is crazy, a first class, qualified, certified nut. In his normal, suburban garden, in this leafy middle class suburb of north Leeds where people get on with their lives quietly and without disturbance to others, this man keeps pigeons in his garden.
Pigeons, flying rats, filthy flying shitting machines that he keeps locked up in sheds, only letting them out to fly about twice a day, their numbers vary but there has never been less than 20 and often more than 40 circling around my house every day, shitting on my house, sitting on my roof shitting on my house, they are a friggin nuisance, and so is he and his rat-faced noisy family.
And he keeps chickens too, and a fucking cockerel that wakes everyone up at 4am during the summer. He also has ducks in his garden - this isn't a big garden we are talking about but he keeps all of these birds penned up in his shit filled garden for fun, spending most of his day walking amongst them talking to them, I tell you, he's a nut, I can hear his friggin ducks quacking now as he feeds them.
The funniest thing by far that happened last summer was when his terrier dog got into his chicken coop and killed three of his avian friends before he could drag it out backwards by its tail, I applauded his dog on that day for its responsible citizenship.
So all I need is one word, one word is all I need, I have kindling wood and accelerant and torches ready for lighting, say the word and I'll be through our hedgerow like a possessed demon, with roast pigeon and duck on the menu tomorrow.
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Will the real Lionel Richie please stand up ?
Speaking of Lionel Richie, who was, me, see the post below..
Speaking of Lionel RIchie, my cousin is a not-so-famous professional guitarist who is partnered up with a famous ex-singing star of stage, screen and Top of the Pops, but guitar-ism isn't what its cut out to be and the big money is in promotion, for promotion read exploitation of ill prepared young aspiring soon-to-be pop stars, and so he promotes more than "guitars" now.
He especially promotes several look-ee-likee tribute acts, one of whom is the aforementioned Lionel Richie, or as he is better known, Lionel Richards, a white guy who has a good wig, flares and lots of theatrical make-up in various shades of brown.
Last year my cousin took a phone call from a charity event organiser who was organising a very big gig in London for a retiring England Rugby Captain, money was no object and they were talking of raising a six figure sum for charity and needed a big star name to attract the silly money that those soft southern nancies in London like to throw around as if they had no pockets to keep their money in.
My cousin nodded and "ummed" at the end of the phone and wondered all the time why the fuck this promoter had called him, a penniless ex-guitarist living in Blackpool trying to get gigs for poor look-a-likeees at crappy working mens clubs, but all soon became clear as the promoter mentioned that he wanted Lionel Richards to appear at the top of the bill.
At least thats what my cousin thought he said and he confirmed that indeed he was Lionel Richards agent but just before he was about to mention his £40 plus travelling expenses and a ham supper fee, the promoter spoke those magic words, "we'll pay whatever it takes to get him over from Paris that night".
It was around this time that my cousin realised that the promoter was speaking of the real Lionel Richie, luckily just before my cousin mentioned the fact that Lionel Richards was actually booked in Skelmersdale that night not Paris.
He told the promoter that he'd make enquiries and get back to him with a price.
Fortunately with his partner being a famous ex-singing star of stage, screen and Top of the Pops, she still had contacts "in the business" and he found the real Lionel Richie's agent who is based in London, relayed the story to him but somehow gave him the impression that it was my cousin that was promoting the event, a deal was struck at £46,000 for the evening, plus a private aircraft from Paris and suitable limousine transport for Mr Richie, his band and entourage, Mr Richie would perform in Paris, hop over the channel for the charity gig sometime after midnite and then return to Paris to continue with his European tour, my cousin added £5000 to the figure quoted, rang the real promoter back and was instructed to go ahead with the deal.
The only down side to the story is that my cousin arranged a backstage pass for himself and his two stepsons but after the real Lionel Richie (who my cousin admitted was marginally better then Lionel Richards) had finished he and his entourage were off into the night in the hired limo's as fast as a well enema'ed bowel.
Still £5000 for taking a phone call...
Speaking of Lionel RIchie, my cousin is a not-so-famous professional guitarist who is partnered up with a famous ex-singing star of stage, screen and Top of the Pops, but guitar-ism isn't what its cut out to be and the big money is in promotion, for promotion read exploitation of ill prepared young aspiring soon-to-be pop stars, and so he promotes more than "guitars" now.
He especially promotes several look-ee-likee tribute acts, one of whom is the aforementioned Lionel Richie, or as he is better known, Lionel Richards, a white guy who has a good wig, flares and lots of theatrical make-up in various shades of brown.
Last year my cousin took a phone call from a charity event organiser who was organising a very big gig in London for a retiring England Rugby Captain, money was no object and they were talking of raising a six figure sum for charity and needed a big star name to attract the silly money that those soft southern nancies in London like to throw around as if they had no pockets to keep their money in.
My cousin nodded and "ummed" at the end of the phone and wondered all the time why the fuck this promoter had called him, a penniless ex-guitarist living in Blackpool trying to get gigs for poor look-a-likeees at crappy working mens clubs, but all soon became clear as the promoter mentioned that he wanted Lionel Richards to appear at the top of the bill.
At least thats what my cousin thought he said and he confirmed that indeed he was Lionel Richards agent but just before he was about to mention his £40 plus travelling expenses and a ham supper fee, the promoter spoke those magic words, "we'll pay whatever it takes to get him over from Paris that night".
It was around this time that my cousin realised that the promoter was speaking of the real Lionel Richie, luckily just before my cousin mentioned the fact that Lionel Richards was actually booked in Skelmersdale that night not Paris.
He told the promoter that he'd make enquiries and get back to him with a price.
Fortunately with his partner being a famous ex-singing star of stage, screen and Top of the Pops, she still had contacts "in the business" and he found the real Lionel Richie's agent who is based in London, relayed the story to him but somehow gave him the impression that it was my cousin that was promoting the event, a deal was struck at £46,000 for the evening, plus a private aircraft from Paris and suitable limousine transport for Mr Richie, his band and entourage, Mr Richie would perform in Paris, hop over the channel for the charity gig sometime after midnite and then return to Paris to continue with his European tour, my cousin added £5000 to the figure quoted, rang the real promoter back and was instructed to go ahead with the deal.
The only down side to the story is that my cousin arranged a backstage pass for himself and his two stepsons but after the real Lionel Richie (who my cousin admitted was marginally better then Lionel Richards) had finished he and his entourage were off into the night in the hired limo's as fast as a well enema'ed bowel.
Still £5000 for taking a phone call...
Real Songs #1
Aren't love songs nice eh ?
A sugar-coated view of life, an unrealistic sugar-coated view of life, totally unrealistic, in fact unfairly unrealistic.
In order to try and redress the balance so that young people don't think that love and marriage are always like Lionel Richie tries to sing it, here's the first in a series of REAL love songs, this is the way that Kenny Rogers wanted to sing it but his agent made him do the sugar-coated version instead...
She Believes in Me
Kenny Rogers
While she lays sleeping, I stay out late at night and play my songs
And sometimes all the nights can be so long
And it’s good when I finally make it home, all alone
While she lays dreaming, I try to get undressed without the light
And quietly she says "Where the bloody hell do you think you've been then, out 'till this time of bloody night, and don't go giving me that "playing my songs" shite, you're a lying bugger you are, my mother said she never trusted you and I bloody know why now you fuckin gigalo bastard you"
And I come to her and say "It was alright" and I hold her tight - and she takes a swing at me with the bedside lamp and catches me on the top of the head with the hot light bulb which shatters into the bed and opens an angry gash on the top of my head which bleeds like a butchered pig all over the eiderdown.
And she believes in me, sort of, I'll never know just what she sees in me
I told her someday if she was my girl I could change her world with my little song
I was wrong, in fact I can't sing a note in tune to save my life, I mime to backing tapes at all my gigs and my guitar has no strings but the audience at the working mens clubs are usually too pissed to notice
But she has no faith in me, and so I go on trying faithlessly because I've having it away with a blond I met in Cleckheaton Miners Welfare one night
And who knows maybe on some special night, if my song is right I will find a way, find a way.
While she lays waiting for a second swipe, I stumble to the kitchen for a bite
And I see my old guitar in the night just waiting for me like a secret friend, and theres no end
While she lays bitching again I fumble with a melody or two
Then I'm torn between the things that I should do but the bedside cabinet comes flying down the stairs and I take some spare blankets from the airing cupboard and go spend the night in the car again.
While she waits, while she waits, for me, so she can have another go at taking my head off with a blunt instrument
A sugar-coated view of life, an unrealistic sugar-coated view of life, totally unrealistic, in fact unfairly unrealistic.
In order to try and redress the balance so that young people don't think that love and marriage are always like Lionel Richie tries to sing it, here's the first in a series of REAL love songs, this is the way that Kenny Rogers wanted to sing it but his agent made him do the sugar-coated version instead...
She Believes in Me
Kenny Rogers
While she lays sleeping, I stay out late at night and play my songs
And sometimes all the nights can be so long
And it’s good when I finally make it home, all alone
While she lays dreaming, I try to get undressed without the light
And quietly she says "Where the bloody hell do you think you've been then, out 'till this time of bloody night, and don't go giving me that "playing my songs" shite, you're a lying bugger you are, my mother said she never trusted you and I bloody know why now you fuckin gigalo bastard you"
And I come to her and say "It was alright" and I hold her tight - and she takes a swing at me with the bedside lamp and catches me on the top of the head with the hot light bulb which shatters into the bed and opens an angry gash on the top of my head which bleeds like a butchered pig all over the eiderdown.
And she believes in me, sort of, I'll never know just what she sees in me
I told her someday if she was my girl I could change her world with my little song
I was wrong, in fact I can't sing a note in tune to save my life, I mime to backing tapes at all my gigs and my guitar has no strings but the audience at the working mens clubs are usually too pissed to notice
But she has no faith in me, and so I go on trying faithlessly because I've having it away with a blond I met in Cleckheaton Miners Welfare one night
And who knows maybe on some special night, if my song is right I will find a way, find a way.
While she lays waiting for a second swipe, I stumble to the kitchen for a bite
And I see my old guitar in the night just waiting for me like a secret friend, and theres no end
While she lays bitching again I fumble with a melody or two
Then I'm torn between the things that I should do but the bedside cabinet comes flying down the stairs and I take some spare blankets from the airing cupboard and go spend the night in the car again.
While she waits, while she waits, for me, so she can have another go at taking my head off with a blunt instrument
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Nearly crime-free now
I didn't really mean to do the "Iconic album" post today, I had another topic in mind but sat in front of the computer and couldn't for the life of me think what the hell it was, the "Iconic album" is a great fall-back position though, I'll use that again, and again, and again...
What I really meant to say, and I've just remembered since coming home, is that the area that I live in is almost crime free now.
Harry Potter stuffed a copy of a letter through my door yesterday - what ? Harry Potter ? He's our neighbourhood watch co-ordinator, spitting image of Harry Potter, loves to organise things, he nearly jumped out of his seat with his hand in the air when the neighbourhood watch policeman asked for a co-ordinator, it was only Harry Potter that had his hand up, so he got the job.
Anyway, our friendly policeman in charge of all the neighbourhood watches in this whole area of North Leeds has sent this letter to say that in the previous few months the burglary rate has been dropping dramatically, so that in the last month only ONE burglary has been reported in the whole of his area.
Remember a couple of months ago I got a nice letter form the same nice policeman to say that the scrote who burgled our house back in December '04 had been caught ? ("scrote is my word, the nice policeman wouldn't use a word like scrote to describe a villian, no, I think he said he was a theiving bastard - I'm not being serious again).
Anyway, I reckon its no coincidence that our scrote gets arrested and the crime rate in the whole of the north of Leeds goes down to almost nothing - this is the sort of evidence that should be presented at the scrote's trial, "Yes m'lud, the crime in our patch has dropped to nothing since we arrested the scrote, I mean theiving bastard, I mean accused, so we're pressing your worships for expulsion to an uninhabited and barren island in mid-atlantic, or if your worships please, the death penalty, thank you".
Its all they deserve, our particular scrote showed an amazing lack of brain activity during our burglary, leaving so many clues that I had almost solved the crime myself the following morning, if I'd been allowed access to the taxi driver who picked the scrote up after he'd done our house (he called the taxi using my mobile phone and paid for it using my fekking charge card, I ended up paying for the call too), and been allowed to use a big wooden stick to coax the drivers memory along a bit, then I'd have had the scrote trussed up with his ankles padlocked behind his ears within the hour.
One more thing too, Harry Potter mentioned in his letter that apparently this street has a Millenium Street Party fund, we didn't live here during 2000 but the ones who did had a big street party and raised lots of cash for the event, they still have some cash left in the account and Harry Potter wants us to let him know what to do with the cash, I'm forwarding him my account number tonight via email, I do hope its more than £100 thats in the account as the holiday fund is looking a little bare at the moment.
What I really meant to say, and I've just remembered since coming home, is that the area that I live in is almost crime free now.
Harry Potter stuffed a copy of a letter through my door yesterday - what ? Harry Potter ? He's our neighbourhood watch co-ordinator, spitting image of Harry Potter, loves to organise things, he nearly jumped out of his seat with his hand in the air when the neighbourhood watch policeman asked for a co-ordinator, it was only Harry Potter that had his hand up, so he got the job.
Anyway, our friendly policeman in charge of all the neighbourhood watches in this whole area of North Leeds has sent this letter to say that in the previous few months the burglary rate has been dropping dramatically, so that in the last month only ONE burglary has been reported in the whole of his area.
Remember a couple of months ago I got a nice letter form the same nice policeman to say that the scrote who burgled our house back in December '04 had been caught ? ("scrote is my word, the nice policeman wouldn't use a word like scrote to describe a villian, no, I think he said he was a theiving bastard - I'm not being serious again).
Anyway, I reckon its no coincidence that our scrote gets arrested and the crime rate in the whole of the north of Leeds goes down to almost nothing - this is the sort of evidence that should be presented at the scrote's trial, "Yes m'lud, the crime in our patch has dropped to nothing since we arrested the scrote, I mean theiving bastard, I mean accused, so we're pressing your worships for expulsion to an uninhabited and barren island in mid-atlantic, or if your worships please, the death penalty, thank you".
Its all they deserve, our particular scrote showed an amazing lack of brain activity during our burglary, leaving so many clues that I had almost solved the crime myself the following morning, if I'd been allowed access to the taxi driver who picked the scrote up after he'd done our house (he called the taxi using my mobile phone and paid for it using my fekking charge card, I ended up paying for the call too), and been allowed to use a big wooden stick to coax the drivers memory along a bit, then I'd have had the scrote trussed up with his ankles padlocked behind his ears within the hour.
One more thing too, Harry Potter mentioned in his letter that apparently this street has a Millenium Street Party fund, we didn't live here during 2000 but the ones who did had a big street party and raised lots of cash for the event, they still have some cash left in the account and Harry Potter wants us to let him know what to do with the cash, I'm forwarding him my account number tonight via email, I do hope its more than £100 thats in the account as the holiday fund is looking a little bare at the moment.
Iconic albums of my time #1
Every Picture Tells a Story - Rod Stewart
It started with the single Maggie May, which I bought from Kennedy's Records at the back of the markets in Leeds. As was the protocol in those early teenage years I bought the single first, for ten shillings, played it, liked it, flogged the single to Rodney Emmott for ten shillings (secondhand) and went and bought the album for (I think) £2 10s.
Its still very listenable, hasn't dated at all in my ears, in fact all of the Faces stuff is still very listenable, was listening to "Long Player" just last night on Napster, excellent stuff.
After the "Every Picture" album I bought the two previous solo albums and the two previous Faces albums, and then followed that with everything they released as a band or solo (including Ronnie Lane and Ron Woods solo stuff) for years after that - you could say I was a fan, had the hair all rough cut and spiked up, tartan scarf, mod jacket and everything - there is photographic evidence but it is safely locked in my safe at home with instructions not to be made public until 50 years after my death, I have my childrens reputation to think of.
Rod Stewart went badly wrong after "Tonight I'm Yours" in 1981, the writing had been on the wall for a couple of years after he'd moved to Los Angeles on a permenant basis and joined the rest of the bland stadium rock bands, frmo then on his writing and albums took a very predictable course with only a few exceptions every couple of years, the contributions from Tom Waits being ones that spring to mind, and his recent success at crooning the old crooners songs, whilst commercially very successful, are simply appalling to listen to, if I want Natt King Cole, Sinatra or Tony Bennett then I'm still capable of finding their original and best recordings thank you very much.
"Every Picture Tells a Story" is still a stand-out album for me though, I've had vinyl and CD versions and have also downloaded it on MP3 for my iPod, it describes a great era for me, 1971 and all that jazz, the album is a great mix of soul derived rock (The Temptations "Losing You"), beautiful Bob Dylan lyrics in "Tommorrow is a Long Time", pure Tim Hardin folk on "Reason to Believe", vintage Elvis on "Thats all right" and the superb but pure pop lyrics of Mr Stewarts own contributions "Maggie May" and "Mandolin Wind", there isn't a bad track on the whole album, I recommend it to the house.
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Don't wave at us from motorway bridges
Another thing that crossed my mind yesterday during my little jaunt over the border in Lancashire - those kids who stand on motorway bridges and wave at you as you drive past hoping to get a wave back from you ?
Well I passed a bus yesterday with the signage "British Limbless Ex-Servicemen Association" emblazoned all down the side.
My first reaction was what a strange thing to start up an association for and why do they need a 52 seater bus in Nelson, is there a proliferation of limbless ex-servicemen in this small town or are the Royal Nelson Fusiliers simply a lot more careless than the rest of the British army, and how appropriate that the bus should be based in a town called Nelson.
My second and more evil thought was that those kids who wave at vehicles off motorway bridges needn't bother waving at this one.
Thats awful isn't it, but I laughed.
Well I passed a bus yesterday with the signage "British Limbless Ex-Servicemen Association" emblazoned all down the side.
My first reaction was what a strange thing to start up an association for and why do they need a 52 seater bus in Nelson, is there a proliferation of limbless ex-servicemen in this small town or are the Royal Nelson Fusiliers simply a lot more careless than the rest of the British army, and how appropriate that the bus should be based in a town called Nelson.
My second and more evil thought was that those kids who wave at vehicles off motorway bridges needn't bother waving at this one.
Thats awful isn't it, but I laughed.
Monday, April 03, 2006
SatNav - what would I do without it ?
Had to go to a small Lancashire town called Nelson today on a callout to a Morrisons supermarket.
Got to Nelson with no electronic assistance and I thought I'd be able to find the supermarket with no electronic assistance as well, but after driving around for a bit decided to summon up the genie with the womans voice that lives in the dashboard to give me directions and save a bit of time.
Typed the address in while I was moving slowly throught the town centre, confirmed that I wanted to find the quickest route, confirmed the street number, pressed ENTER and the genie with the womans voice who lives in the dashboard proclaimed proudly "You have arrived at your destination".
Looked out of the car windscreen for the first time in five minutes and sure enough I had arrived at my destination - there was the supermarket not ten yards in front of me.
I just don't know what I'd do without SatNav.
Got to Nelson with no electronic assistance and I thought I'd be able to find the supermarket with no electronic assistance as well, but after driving around for a bit decided to summon up the genie with the womans voice that lives in the dashboard to give me directions and save a bit of time.
Typed the address in while I was moving slowly throught the town centre, confirmed that I wanted to find the quickest route, confirmed the street number, pressed ENTER and the genie with the womans voice who lives in the dashboard proclaimed proudly "You have arrived at your destination".
Looked out of the car windscreen for the first time in five minutes and sure enough I had arrived at my destination - there was the supermarket not ten yards in front of me.
I just don't know what I'd do without SatNav.
Sunday, April 02, 2006
Old friends...
As in, friends from a long time ago, although as most of us in the pub last night are hitting 50 this year then it could mean old in the literal sense.
To set the scene, back in the 1960's the suburb of Leeds where we lived (and most of us still live) had a "village" feel about it, it actually had been a village 80 years ago when my house was built so that probably helps, but in the 1960's it was suburbia in a Norman Rockwell sort of stylee and a huge group of us kids would spend evenings after school and summer holidays playing football, we all went to local schools and the football team continued on until some of them were well into their 30's, not that I ever got involved in strenuous activity mind, but a few of them are still trying to play competitive football this year and finding that muscles don't work but snap when you are 50 years old.
But over the years most of the group have gone their seperate ways, moved away from the area chasing a career, one in particular moved to the USA where he still lives 20-odd years later on the shores of Lake Michigan, he visits the UK every few years and last night had asked if we could all have a pint in The Fox together.
It was a good turnout, people made the effort and travelled some distances to be there and we ended up with 20 or so individuals and their wives, some of whom I hadn't seen for 30 years. In amongst the crowd were four individuals that I went through the same high school class with and we compared notes in our 50th year and realised that some of our class have started dying already, you get a strange feeling of your own mortality at times like that but on the other hand another strange sense of imortality in that old friends who you haven't met for 30 years don't seem to have changed at all.
This happened to me last night when I met Vaz, I sat next to Vaz on my first day at Cookridge County Primary Schoolwhen we were both 8 years old, we both went on to High School together and were in the same class there, Vaz was a genius at maths, so good that when he went to university and had earned all the honours in mathematics that they could bestow upon him, they asked him to stay and lecture and all these years later thats what he still does, lectures all over the world in maths and electronics, none of which was important last night, careers and jobs weren't discussed, weren't boasted over, you don't do that with really old friends, when you go back as far as the years before careers took over then it doesn't matter how important your job is or how much money you make or don't make.
The last time I saw Vaz would have been when I left High School at 17 years of age and yet last night, 33 years later when he walked in the pub I recognised him instantly and it was as if we'd just not seen each other for a few weeks. The same thing happened with another old school friend who I met at a rugby match in Newcastle last year, I'd arranged to meet him outside the ticket office and stood there waiting with my brother in law, he asked who it was we were waiting for and when I told him that it was someone who I hadn't seen for 33 years he told me I was crazy and how would we recognise each other - just then I saw my old friend from 50 yards away across the car park, and he recognised me at the same time.
Its an amazing thing when that happens, you talk about what you used to do as kids and you both tend to have the same memories and the friendship is so easy to pick up and walk with for a short while before you go your seperate ways again - when Vaz left the pub last night I told him I'd see him again in another 30 years time, we'll be 80 then, I hope we've both kept our marbles.
Over the past few years I've been writing what I grandly call "my memoirs", they are here on the JerryChicken web site, theres a lot more to post and maybe I'll update it again today, and then some day put it all in some sort of chronological order, it keeps me amused anyway.
To set the scene, back in the 1960's the suburb of Leeds where we lived (and most of us still live) had a "village" feel about it, it actually had been a village 80 years ago when my house was built so that probably helps, but in the 1960's it was suburbia in a Norman Rockwell sort of stylee and a huge group of us kids would spend evenings after school and summer holidays playing football, we all went to local schools and the football team continued on until some of them were well into their 30's, not that I ever got involved in strenuous activity mind, but a few of them are still trying to play competitive football this year and finding that muscles don't work but snap when you are 50 years old.
But over the years most of the group have gone their seperate ways, moved away from the area chasing a career, one in particular moved to the USA where he still lives 20-odd years later on the shores of Lake Michigan, he visits the UK every few years and last night had asked if we could all have a pint in The Fox together.
It was a good turnout, people made the effort and travelled some distances to be there and we ended up with 20 or so individuals and their wives, some of whom I hadn't seen for 30 years. In amongst the crowd were four individuals that I went through the same high school class with and we compared notes in our 50th year and realised that some of our class have started dying already, you get a strange feeling of your own mortality at times like that but on the other hand another strange sense of imortality in that old friends who you haven't met for 30 years don't seem to have changed at all.
This happened to me last night when I met Vaz, I sat next to Vaz on my first day at Cookridge County Primary Schoolwhen we were both 8 years old, we both went on to High School together and were in the same class there, Vaz was a genius at maths, so good that when he went to university and had earned all the honours in mathematics that they could bestow upon him, they asked him to stay and lecture and all these years later thats what he still does, lectures all over the world in maths and electronics, none of which was important last night, careers and jobs weren't discussed, weren't boasted over, you don't do that with really old friends, when you go back as far as the years before careers took over then it doesn't matter how important your job is or how much money you make or don't make.
The last time I saw Vaz would have been when I left High School at 17 years of age and yet last night, 33 years later when he walked in the pub I recognised him instantly and it was as if we'd just not seen each other for a few weeks. The same thing happened with another old school friend who I met at a rugby match in Newcastle last year, I'd arranged to meet him outside the ticket office and stood there waiting with my brother in law, he asked who it was we were waiting for and when I told him that it was someone who I hadn't seen for 33 years he told me I was crazy and how would we recognise each other - just then I saw my old friend from 50 yards away across the car park, and he recognised me at the same time.
Its an amazing thing when that happens, you talk about what you used to do as kids and you both tend to have the same memories and the friendship is so easy to pick up and walk with for a short while before you go your seperate ways again - when Vaz left the pub last night I told him I'd see him again in another 30 years time, we'll be 80 then, I hope we've both kept our marbles.
Over the past few years I've been writing what I grandly call "my memoirs", they are here on the JerryChicken web site, theres a lot more to post and maybe I'll update it again today, and then some day put it all in some sort of chronological order, it keeps me amused anyway.
Saturday, April 01, 2006
Fekkwittery abounds in Leeds
Spent a few hours in Leeds city centre today, had a few hours to kill, its a nice enough city centre, the fourth largest in the UK, a huge range of shops, a superb indoor market, lots of historic buildings - and mainly inhabited on a saturday afternoon by an underclass of obnoxious, ill behaved, louts who seem to have no pride in themselves or a knowledge of how to behave in public.
I don't suppose Leeds is any different to any other city or even small town in the UK, we probably have the same classification of yob in any populated area, its just that in a city centre they are more numerous and therefore more noticable.
I really despair of our society when we breed such ignoramous's, cannot understand why someone (for instance) shoudl stand quietly at a cash machine then suddenly explode in rage with a string of obscenities when the machine refuses to give him any money, is that really satisfactory behaviour in a public place ?
Why would a group of three women sprawl themselves across the entrance to a hotel lounge and not allow anyone to pass by, all the time shouting at each other and shrieking with laughter ?
These are not young people that I speak of, they are adults who certainly should know better, but probably due to their upbringing do not know any better and probably assume that their behaviour, acceptable at home, is the norm when out in regular society - I really despair of these people, they just get in the way, vex the spirit and contribute nothing to our communities.
We also visited the filthiest Starbucks that I have ever had the displeasure to be in, Starbucks in The Light, the carpet is sticky with spilt beverages, the fabric easy chairs are all stained from what must be deliberate spillages, the walls even have coffee stains on them - a chimps tea party wouldn't manage to make such mess, and yet when you view the sub-species that inhabited that coffee house this afternoon its hardly suprising that it ends up in such a state, its not the total fault of the teenagers that work behind the counter, its the fekkin morons who use the place.
As I sat there surrounded by filthy furniture, plastic cups and dozens of newspapers scattered all over the floor I couldn't help but contrast with the numerous bars and restaurants that I visited in France a few weeks ago, and I tried to remember if any of the establishments in France were treated quite so badly by their clientele, I couldn't recall any litter or rubbish being left behind at a table for more than a few seconds before a waiter removed it, nor could I recall anyone reading a paper at their table then simply throwing it on the floor as they left the building, it only happens in the UK.
A few years ago Leeds City Council established what it jokingly called a "cafe culture" in the city centre, it was well meaning and meant that bar owners were encouraged to open up their bar frontages and let people sit outside to drink, it was an attempt to emulate the French way of life where going out for a drink means one or two glasses of wine and a long conversation with friends in a relaxed atmosphere, its a very pleasant way to spend an evening and I fully partook of the environment in Perpignan a few weeks ago.
In the UK we are apparently bred differently, going out for a drink means getting drunk as quickly as possible and if they allow you to sit outside the bar and do it outside then so what, and if a coffee house encourages you to relax in comfy armchairs and read a paper while you enjoy their coffee then that means its OK to spill what you don't want, fling the cup and newspaper on the floor and walk out, leaving your filth behind for someone else to enjoy, and add to.
I didn't enjoy my afternoon in Leeds at all.
I did however enjoy a visit that we made to Leeds City Art Gallery, even though half of it was closed in preperation for an exhibition. Its not a big art gallery, most of the city paintings are spread amongst several other public buildings and so for instance we didn't see the Sisley painting today, but the Renoir was there on the staircase and John Atkinson Grimshaw's work was in abundance, indeed in the Arnold Ziff victorian room there are several fine paintings including "Scotland Forever", "The death of General Gordon" and a version of the impressionist "The Bathers" all three of which will be instantly recognised by anyone who has been given a tin of biscuits at christmas by their auntie, a small collection of French paintings and sketches from the 1890-1915 period also decorate the main staircase, but the Turner and Cotman paintings are for private appointment viewing only.
Suprisingly the main gallery was quite full this afternoon, the annexe which houses some Henry Moore and Barbera Hepworth sculptures was not, it never is as it also contains a lot of contemporary crap, I love painting and I love painting in an abstract style occasionally but cannot help but feel that some of the contemporary stuff in the exhibitions is there by virtue of "the kings new clothes" type decision, some of it is simply trash.
I don't suppose Leeds is any different to any other city or even small town in the UK, we probably have the same classification of yob in any populated area, its just that in a city centre they are more numerous and therefore more noticable.
I really despair of our society when we breed such ignoramous's, cannot understand why someone (for instance) shoudl stand quietly at a cash machine then suddenly explode in rage with a string of obscenities when the machine refuses to give him any money, is that really satisfactory behaviour in a public place ?
Why would a group of three women sprawl themselves across the entrance to a hotel lounge and not allow anyone to pass by, all the time shouting at each other and shrieking with laughter ?
These are not young people that I speak of, they are adults who certainly should know better, but probably due to their upbringing do not know any better and probably assume that their behaviour, acceptable at home, is the norm when out in regular society - I really despair of these people, they just get in the way, vex the spirit and contribute nothing to our communities.
We also visited the filthiest Starbucks that I have ever had the displeasure to be in, Starbucks in The Light, the carpet is sticky with spilt beverages, the fabric easy chairs are all stained from what must be deliberate spillages, the walls even have coffee stains on them - a chimps tea party wouldn't manage to make such mess, and yet when you view the sub-species that inhabited that coffee house this afternoon its hardly suprising that it ends up in such a state, its not the total fault of the teenagers that work behind the counter, its the fekkin morons who use the place.
As I sat there surrounded by filthy furniture, plastic cups and dozens of newspapers scattered all over the floor I couldn't help but contrast with the numerous bars and restaurants that I visited in France a few weeks ago, and I tried to remember if any of the establishments in France were treated quite so badly by their clientele, I couldn't recall any litter or rubbish being left behind at a table for more than a few seconds before a waiter removed it, nor could I recall anyone reading a paper at their table then simply throwing it on the floor as they left the building, it only happens in the UK.
A few years ago Leeds City Council established what it jokingly called a "cafe culture" in the city centre, it was well meaning and meant that bar owners were encouraged to open up their bar frontages and let people sit outside to drink, it was an attempt to emulate the French way of life where going out for a drink means one or two glasses of wine and a long conversation with friends in a relaxed atmosphere, its a very pleasant way to spend an evening and I fully partook of the environment in Perpignan a few weeks ago.
In the UK we are apparently bred differently, going out for a drink means getting drunk as quickly as possible and if they allow you to sit outside the bar and do it outside then so what, and if a coffee house encourages you to relax in comfy armchairs and read a paper while you enjoy their coffee then that means its OK to spill what you don't want, fling the cup and newspaper on the floor and walk out, leaving your filth behind for someone else to enjoy, and add to.
I didn't enjoy my afternoon in Leeds at all.
I did however enjoy a visit that we made to Leeds City Art Gallery, even though half of it was closed in preperation for an exhibition. Its not a big art gallery, most of the city paintings are spread amongst several other public buildings and so for instance we didn't see the Sisley painting today, but the Renoir was there on the staircase and John Atkinson Grimshaw's work was in abundance, indeed in the Arnold Ziff victorian room there are several fine paintings including "Scotland Forever", "The death of General Gordon" and a version of the impressionist "The Bathers" all three of which will be instantly recognised by anyone who has been given a tin of biscuits at christmas by their auntie, a small collection of French paintings and sketches from the 1890-1915 period also decorate the main staircase, but the Turner and Cotman paintings are for private appointment viewing only.
Suprisingly the main gallery was quite full this afternoon, the annexe which houses some Henry Moore and Barbera Hepworth sculptures was not, it never is as it also contains a lot of contemporary crap, I love painting and I love painting in an abstract style occasionally but cannot help but feel that some of the contemporary stuff in the exhibitions is there by virtue of "the kings new clothes" type decision, some of it is simply trash.
April Fools Day
...what a load of bollocks.
Its bad enough that sad tosspot individuals think it hilarious to pull practical jokes on their friends, but the media frenzy to construct april fool jokes on what they concieve to be a gullible public (well they have been gullible enough to buy their newspapers) is just poor, poor unimaginative humour, ill concieved and indicative of a complete lack of imagination.
I haven't checked the online newspapers yet, but they will be there, april fool headlines, a weak storyline that you see through straight away and then there at the bottom a footnote from the editor to say "ha! ha! check the date".
Thats even worse, it wouldn't be so bad if a newspaper would construct a believable april fools story, something like "Queen dies peacefully in her sleep" followed by thirty pages of black bordered obituary, but on the thirty first page some sub editor would have to put "ha! ha!, check the date" in a smarmy schoolboy prank sort of fekkwit way.
The BBC will do an april fool news story today and at the end the news reader will lean towards the camera, wink knowingley and whisper "ha! ha!, check the date", its pathetic, if you want to do a spoof story then run with the "Queen dies peacefully in her sleep" obituaries and no winking at the cameras at the end.
Its bad enough that sad tosspot individuals think it hilarious to pull practical jokes on their friends, but the media frenzy to construct april fool jokes on what they concieve to be a gullible public (well they have been gullible enough to buy their newspapers) is just poor, poor unimaginative humour, ill concieved and indicative of a complete lack of imagination.
I haven't checked the online newspapers yet, but they will be there, april fool headlines, a weak storyline that you see through straight away and then there at the bottom a footnote from the editor to say "ha! ha! check the date".
Thats even worse, it wouldn't be so bad if a newspaper would construct a believable april fools story, something like "Queen dies peacefully in her sleep" followed by thirty pages of black bordered obituary, but on the thirty first page some sub editor would have to put "ha! ha!, check the date" in a smarmy schoolboy prank sort of fekkwit way.
The BBC will do an april fool news story today and at the end the news reader will lean towards the camera, wink knowingley and whisper "ha! ha!, check the date", its pathetic, if you want to do a spoof story then run with the "Queen dies peacefully in her sleep" obituaries and no winking at the cameras at the end.
Friday, March 31, 2006
Breaking News - the frogs have cum
Spring is sprung, right on time with the arival of british summer time last weekend, the frogs have germinated all over my pond, a tad earlier than last year too, this is indeed evidence of global warming and I'll be on the phone this weekend to the BBC's Bill Oddie to complain and see if he wants to buy any of my frogspawn.
The pond is quite big, it was here when we bought the house and i've since relined it and made it bigger, and added a UV and bio-something filter to it so that the fish don't have to learn how to breathe air instead of water - it works and for the last two years I've kept the same herd of Orfe and fancy tailed goldfish, they are hiding in the bottom of the pond right now and will hopefully appear in about a month or so but the pond also contains a crop of frogs who do thar funky stuff all over the surface every spring, thousands of tadpoles will hatch out in about two weeks time and most of them get eaten by birds and their parent frogs until one or two every year grow into proper big frogs, its a hard life being a frog and I'll be reporting on here over the next few weeks on their progress - I'm a regular Richard Attenborough me.
The pond is quite big, it was here when we bought the house and i've since relined it and made it bigger, and added a UV and bio-something filter to it so that the fish don't have to learn how to breathe air instead of water - it works and for the last two years I've kept the same herd of Orfe and fancy tailed goldfish, they are hiding in the bottom of the pond right now and will hopefully appear in about a month or so but the pond also contains a crop of frogs who do thar funky stuff all over the surface every spring, thousands of tadpoles will hatch out in about two weeks time and most of them get eaten by birds and their parent frogs until one or two every year grow into proper big frogs, its a hard life being a frog and I'll be reporting on here over the next few weeks on their progress - I'm a regular Richard Attenborough me.
Dentists, and Wembley, fekkwittery at its best
My dentist has written to us to inform us that he will not be signing the new NHS dentists contract tomorrow and that we will therefore have to pay for the portion of the treatment that we receive from him that was previously covered by the NHS.
Which simply means that our two children will no longer receive free treatment, for many years now he has charged "private" rates for adults (hence my recent £720 bill for a new crown) but he has treated the under 16's and students on the NHS contract - we now have to pay for our daughters treatment too although as a goodwill gesture he is doing their six monthly check-ups free of charge instead of charging £25 each.
Listening to Radio Leeds this morning this seems to be due to local administrators insisting that dentists have to treat all patients on the NHS or non at all, Leeds are insisting on this while Bradford allow "mixed use" of private and NHS patients in the same way that our dentist has been doing up until now.
Its not a huge problem to us, we are not fabulously wealthy but can at least afford the more simple dental treatments for our daughters, although god knows what the proposed dental brace for Jodie is going to cost later this year, but many people simply cannot afford to pay for dental treatment and are struggling to find a dentist at all within the city who will treat them.
The UK is apparently the fourth wealthiest country in the world, we are supposed to receive free medical and dental treatment on the NHS funded by taxation - it doesn't seem to be working.
*******************************************************************************
and then there is Wembley.
The (supposedly) national stadium of the England football team, the old Wembley was iconic but a shitheap, difficult to get to, difficult to get away from, anyone who never went does not understand that the terracing and stairwells could be rivers of piss by full time at any match due to the lack of and access to any sort of reasonable toilet facilities, the seats that had been hurridly installed sometime in the 1980's were narrow and uncomfortable and the cheapest of the seats were nothing more than parrot perches that you squatted on while obtaining deep vein thrombosis - the old Wembley needed replacing.
And then the politicians got involved. The English Football association asked for public money to help finance a new stadium, the government agreed in principal but insisted that the stadium should be used for other sports as well as football, including athletics, which sort of ballsed-up the plans that had already been approved as there wasn't room for an athletics track and there was a legitimate debate that football fans didn't want to sit in a stadium where you were 40 yards away from the pitch because of a running track.
The debate raged, not for months but for years and while it raged the costs spiralled - its what happens when you involve politicians in any sort of project. If the FA had appointed a design and build contractor right at the start then we would have had our national stadium built on time and within budget several years ago, as it stands now the opening date gets more and more flexible as each week progresses and the progress on site seems to get slower and slower as each week progresses - the main contractor is blaming the massive disruption at the start of the contract for the majority of the delay, mainly because the plans for the build changed on a daily basis as one politician after another put his oar into the works on behalf of his own political agenda.
The completion date of May this year has now been revised to "2007", just sometime in 2007, its OK lads, just hand it over when you think its ready, we'll wait for it. Oh and by the way, it would have been better in Birmingham, the new Wembley is just as inaccessable as the old Wembley, what with it being built ont he same site and all, but thats another story.
Which simply means that our two children will no longer receive free treatment, for many years now he has charged "private" rates for adults (hence my recent £720 bill for a new crown) but he has treated the under 16's and students on the NHS contract - we now have to pay for our daughters treatment too although as a goodwill gesture he is doing their six monthly check-ups free of charge instead of charging £25 each.
Listening to Radio Leeds this morning this seems to be due to local administrators insisting that dentists have to treat all patients on the NHS or non at all, Leeds are insisting on this while Bradford allow "mixed use" of private and NHS patients in the same way that our dentist has been doing up until now.
Its not a huge problem to us, we are not fabulously wealthy but can at least afford the more simple dental treatments for our daughters, although god knows what the proposed dental brace for Jodie is going to cost later this year, but many people simply cannot afford to pay for dental treatment and are struggling to find a dentist at all within the city who will treat them.
The UK is apparently the fourth wealthiest country in the world, we are supposed to receive free medical and dental treatment on the NHS funded by taxation - it doesn't seem to be working.
*******************************************************************************
and then there is Wembley.
The (supposedly) national stadium of the England football team, the old Wembley was iconic but a shitheap, difficult to get to, difficult to get away from, anyone who never went does not understand that the terracing and stairwells could be rivers of piss by full time at any match due to the lack of and access to any sort of reasonable toilet facilities, the seats that had been hurridly installed sometime in the 1980's were narrow and uncomfortable and the cheapest of the seats were nothing more than parrot perches that you squatted on while obtaining deep vein thrombosis - the old Wembley needed replacing.
And then the politicians got involved. The English Football association asked for public money to help finance a new stadium, the government agreed in principal but insisted that the stadium should be used for other sports as well as football, including athletics, which sort of ballsed-up the plans that had already been approved as there wasn't room for an athletics track and there was a legitimate debate that football fans didn't want to sit in a stadium where you were 40 yards away from the pitch because of a running track.
The debate raged, not for months but for years and while it raged the costs spiralled - its what happens when you involve politicians in any sort of project. If the FA had appointed a design and build contractor right at the start then we would have had our national stadium built on time and within budget several years ago, as it stands now the opening date gets more and more flexible as each week progresses and the progress on site seems to get slower and slower as each week progresses - the main contractor is blaming the massive disruption at the start of the contract for the majority of the delay, mainly because the plans for the build changed on a daily basis as one politician after another put his oar into the works on behalf of his own political agenda.
The completion date of May this year has now been revised to "2007", just sometime in 2007, its OK lads, just hand it over when you think its ready, we'll wait for it. Oh and by the way, it would have been better in Birmingham, the new Wembley is just as inaccessable as the old Wembley, what with it being built ont he same site and all, but thats another story.
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Royal Mail fekkwittery
Yesterday we ordered some handsfree kits via the internet, the order was processed within the hour and we received an email to say that they had been dispatched via Royal Mail and that we could check the progress of the order online with the Royal Mail, excellent service.
So this morning, just for fun, I decided to track the progress of the order with Royal Mail, went online, entered the consignment number, hit the "track this order" button.
The answer came back within milliseconds, "Consignments that require proof of delivery cannot be tracked online until after they have been delivered". I didnt read it properly the first time so entered all the details again and got the same response, this time I read it properly.
I can't use the tracking system to track a parcel until after the parcel has been delivered and signed for, when its been delivered to me, and signed for by me, then I can use the online tracking system to see when it will be delivered, presumably it will then tell me that I've recieved it and signed for it, it sounds like a wonderful service for those with dementia but a fucking waste of internet space for anyone else.
While staring at the screen there was a knock at the door and there stood our local postman with the parcel in his hand, I showed him the online answer to my tracking query, he just shook his head and walked away, I think he could probably tell me many more stories of complete fekkwittery at the Royal Mail.
So this morning, just for fun, I decided to track the progress of the order with Royal Mail, went online, entered the consignment number, hit the "track this order" button.
The answer came back within milliseconds, "Consignments that require proof of delivery cannot be tracked online until after they have been delivered". I didnt read it properly the first time so entered all the details again and got the same response, this time I read it properly.
I can't use the tracking system to track a parcel until after the parcel has been delivered and signed for, when its been delivered to me, and signed for by me, then I can use the online tracking system to see when it will be delivered, presumably it will then tell me that I've recieved it and signed for it, it sounds like a wonderful service for those with dementia but a fucking waste of internet space for anyone else.
While staring at the screen there was a knock at the door and there stood our local postman with the parcel in his hand, I showed him the online answer to my tracking query, he just shook his head and walked away, I think he could probably tell me many more stories of complete fekkwittery at the Royal Mail.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
What does god sound like ?
OK, following on from the Norman Kember post, and after various stories in the press, and after reading the Christian Peacemaker Teams web site in order to try and get inside Norman Kember's head, I still have questions ...
I still think that the CPT are a bunch of nutters, thats a statement of opinion of course, not a question, but I needed to say that somewhere.
They are however, nutters who are guided by their faith, undisputed fact.
But just where does their faith come from ?
How does someone like Norman Kember reach the conclusion that it would be a good idea to go into a war zone, a war zone that does not comply to any Geneva Convention rules, with the sole intention of "getting in the way" for a bit ?
George Bush admits freely and without shame that his god told him to invade Iraq.
Tony Blair admits that he has used prayer as guidance in making his decision to accompany George in his quest.
So, my questions are,
1. What does god sound like ?
2. How does he appear to you with all these good ideas ?
3. Why does he tell George and Tony to go to war and then tell Norman to go "get in the way"
Personally I prefer Eddie Izzard's version of what god sounds like, in one of his stand-up routines he describes a conversation between god and jesus where jesus is complaining to his dad about the last time he sent him down to earth, "the bastards nailed me to a fukkin tree for three days, what were you thinking of ?", and for gods voice he uses a James Mason type voice, with.......a...........very........methodical..............and .................precise................syntax.
It fits, James Mason makes a very good god voice, try it next time you watch a James Mason film, preferably not "lolita" because it doesn't really present god in a very good light, lusting after young girls and all that, but something like Salems Lot for example, where he plays the bloke who brings the vampires to....well ok perhaps not that film either, but you get the gist, James Mason has got gods voice sussed.
So did James Masons voice appear inside the heads of George Bush, Tony Blair and Norman Kember ?
Is that how it works ?
Do god-botherers actually hear another voice speaking to them, telling them to do completely crazy things ?
{James Mason voice}
"Hello George, I've got a little job for you, nothing too complicated, are you listening George, yes, good, well its like this George, I need you to invade Iraq, what George, yes I know I told your dad to stop in Kuwait, but I was wrong see, I want you to invade the bastards, and I want you to do it tomorrow George, thank you George, I knew I could rely on you"
and then a short while later...
{James Mason voice}
"Norman, Norman Kember ? Yes you, its you isn't it, Norman. Norman listen to me will you, its god speaking, yes really, no really it is me, what, no jesus is busy, listen to me Norman, Norman are you listening, get up off your knees man, this is important, write this down Norman, I want you to go to Iraq and get in the way for a bit. What Norman, yes Norman I know theres a fucking war on, don't use language like that Norman its not nice, I want you to go there because I can't go back to George and Tony and tell them to stop now, I'd look foolish, I want you to look foolish for me Norman, I want you to go and get yourself kidnapped, yes I know they'll probably kill you Norman, I know that, its a futile gesture is it, yes I know that too Norman, but hey, someone has to go and jesus is a bit pissed off that I used him last time, so its down to you Norman, go on, get yourself off there now, theres a good lad."
Is that it ?
Is that how it happens ?
I still think that the CPT are a bunch of nutters, thats a statement of opinion of course, not a question, but I needed to say that somewhere.
They are however, nutters who are guided by their faith, undisputed fact.
But just where does their faith come from ?
How does someone like Norman Kember reach the conclusion that it would be a good idea to go into a war zone, a war zone that does not comply to any Geneva Convention rules, with the sole intention of "getting in the way" for a bit ?
George Bush admits freely and without shame that his god told him to invade Iraq.
Tony Blair admits that he has used prayer as guidance in making his decision to accompany George in his quest.
So, my questions are,
1. What does god sound like ?
2. How does he appear to you with all these good ideas ?
3. Why does he tell George and Tony to go to war and then tell Norman to go "get in the way"
Personally I prefer Eddie Izzard's version of what god sounds like, in one of his stand-up routines he describes a conversation between god and jesus where jesus is complaining to his dad about the last time he sent him down to earth, "the bastards nailed me to a fukkin tree for three days, what were you thinking of ?", and for gods voice he uses a James Mason type voice, with.......a...........very........methodical..............and .................precise................syntax.
It fits, James Mason makes a very good god voice, try it next time you watch a James Mason film, preferably not "lolita" because it doesn't really present god in a very good light, lusting after young girls and all that, but something like Salems Lot for example, where he plays the bloke who brings the vampires to....well ok perhaps not that film either, but you get the gist, James Mason has got gods voice sussed.
So did James Masons voice appear inside the heads of George Bush, Tony Blair and Norman Kember ?
Is that how it works ?
Do god-botherers actually hear another voice speaking to them, telling them to do completely crazy things ?
{James Mason voice}
"Hello George, I've got a little job for you, nothing too complicated, are you listening George, yes, good, well its like this George, I need you to invade Iraq, what George, yes I know I told your dad to stop in Kuwait, but I was wrong see, I want you to invade the bastards, and I want you to do it tomorrow George, thank you George, I knew I could rely on you"
and then a short while later...
{James Mason voice}
"Norman, Norman Kember ? Yes you, its you isn't it, Norman. Norman listen to me will you, its god speaking, yes really, no really it is me, what, no jesus is busy, listen to me Norman, Norman are you listening, get up off your knees man, this is important, write this down Norman, I want you to go to Iraq and get in the way for a bit. What Norman, yes Norman I know theres a fucking war on, don't use language like that Norman its not nice, I want you to go there because I can't go back to George and Tony and tell them to stop now, I'd look foolish, I want you to look foolish for me Norman, I want you to go and get yourself kidnapped, yes I know they'll probably kill you Norman, I know that, its a futile gesture is it, yes I know that too Norman, but hey, someone has to go and jesus is a bit pissed off that I used him last time, so its down to you Norman, go on, get yourself off there now, theres a good lad."
Is that it ?
Is that how it happens ?
Sunday, March 26, 2006
Jake had a bath today
He's an unwilling volunteer at bathtime but three or four times a year he agrees to be brave and stands in the downstairs shower without trying to escape for just long enough to soap him up and shower him down.
Drying him is impossible though, his top coat and undercoat is so thick and adapted for outdoor life that it has to be left to dry naturally, which will take the rest of the day now, so you have to avoid brushing against him unless you want a wet leg.
At least he smells nice now though.
Saturday, March 25, 2006
Solo - No Sir
What a very nice day we've had today, even though it ended in fiasco.
NatWest will have some difficult questions to answer on monday as well.
This morning we set off for the short 30 minutes drive to Skipton, a nice leisurely browse around the saturday market on the High Street and then dinner (or lunch to you southern nancies) in a pub in the Yorkshire Dales somewhere.
Thats the good thing about living to the north of Leeds, you are in the Dales within ten minutes of leaving home and the scenery soon changes to the trademark high-sided flat-bottomed glacially formed valleys, stone walls and small market towns scattered randomly along the valley floors.
Thanks to Yorkshire Water who have set road works every 500 yards or so along the road to Ilkley, we arrived in Skipton after one hours worth of queueing all the way, but nevertheless we spent a pleasant couple of hours browsing the old High Street and buying a few things from the market stall holders.
Time for dinner, and so we left Skipton and headed for Harrogate, passing a few acres of the United States of America at their Menwith Hill base and on to the Nelson pub, a place that we'd used before. Its OK as Brewers Fayre type pubs go, nothing spectacular with the choice of food, or beer, but its big enough to cope and its open all afternoon.
Bought the beer in cash and then sat down to pick from the predictable "steak or chicken" menu - chose our three dishes and I went to the food counter to order. The young lad behind the counter took the order then took my debit card to pay for it, he swiped the card and looked at the till with a puzzled face, fortunately his manager was passing and he asked him to look at the till as, in the young lads words "we don't take NatWest do we ?"
I kept quiet rather than embarrass the kid, his manager swiped the card, the till refused again, the manager looked at the card, "ah, its a Solo card" he declared, "we don't take Solo"
I just stared back at him then very quietly repeated "You don't take Solo ?"
"Well sometimes we do, but this till won't" and he handed my card back to me.
They both stared at me, presumably waiting for me to give them a card that their fekkin till would be happy with, and I could have, I had Mastercards in my wallet, but to be honest I was a bit pissed off with their till not accepting Solo cards, it was lazy on their part, I noticed that they didn't have any PIN equipment fitted yet and as one of the principles of Solo is that all transactions have to be authorised then that was probably the reason why their till was getting a refusal from their online transaction handler - they couldn't provide a PIN number, they couldn't provide it, their equipment couldn't handle it, after two years notice and after most transaction providers have nagged retailers for all of that time (they have with my business), they still haven't got around to updating their tills to handle the new secure technology.
At times like this I don't get mad, I never get mad, not for me is it acceptable to bang table tops and raise voices, no, at times like this I just get stubborn.
"Well you'd better cancel the order then" I told them quietly, and took my Solo card back.
They both stared at me as though I was crazy, they'd seen the mastercards in my wallet and assumed I'd use them instead and for 30 seconds we all stared at each other until the manager muttered "sorry" and went back to the kitchen.
Of course I had to explain to Suzanne and Jodie why, starving as we were, we weren't going to be eating here, and of course they asked why I didn't use a mastercard to pay for the dinner, to which I just shrugged my shoulders and gave them my pissed off look, they understood immediately, its the same look that has made me walk out of hundreds of shops that make me queue for too long.
So we drove a couple of miles to another pub that I know, the Red Lion near Ripley, this pub is famous for its meals, the car park is packed on most dinnertimes and evenings and people drive from miles around to go to this pub.
But when we got there, there was only three cars in the car park and then one of them left. I walked to the pub entrance, it all seemed very quiet inside but it had lights on, and then as I got to the front door I saw the sign "Cash only, no debit or credit cards", turning round with a quiet "fuck you then" I got back in the car and explained to Suzanne and Jodie that we wouldn't be eating here either, it was starting to get farcical and we all had a laugh when Suzanne asked "how do they make a living then" and while looking around the car park realised her answer was right there in front of us, they don't appear to be making a living at all at the moment.
And so it was a drive over Killinghall moor towards Otley and some more pub/restaurants, until we came to a "road closed" sign that had us diverted back into Harrogate with an involuntary "for fucks sake" from me, this was getting funnier and funnier.
We ended up in Harry Ramsdens in Guiseley, the original Harry Ramsdens, the one and only Harry Ramsdens, and we went and sat in the posh restaurant to eat thirty quids worth of fish and chips and very nice they were too but more importantly Harry Ramsdens accept Solo cards, glory fukkin halleluiah, a trader who isn't afraid to embrace technology, one of the oldest fish and chip shops in the world and they've got PIN machines and everything, thank you Harry Ramsden.
Still, on Monday I will be walking around the corner to my NatWest bank and asking them why they have replaced my former Switch card with a Solo card. From what I have read on this here t'interweb about Solo cards, they were introduced to enable people who were previously thought unsuitable to be handling Switch and credit cards to join in the plastic card revolution, basically a Solo transaction has to be authorised every time it is swiped whereas the transaction handler can authorise Switch transactions without such authorisation from the issuing bank - in other words a Solo card is for poor people and those who cannot be trusted to manage their own accounts properly, I've only held my account at NatWest for thirty years now, I only have four personal and business accounts in my name with them, I only have a mortgage on my house with NatWest, I wonder how much more fekking security they need from me before they'll fekkin trust me with a fekkin Switch card again, the bastards.
NatWest will have some difficult questions to answer on monday as well.
This morning we set off for the short 30 minutes drive to Skipton, a nice leisurely browse around the saturday market on the High Street and then dinner (or lunch to you southern nancies) in a pub in the Yorkshire Dales somewhere.
Thats the good thing about living to the north of Leeds, you are in the Dales within ten minutes of leaving home and the scenery soon changes to the trademark high-sided flat-bottomed glacially formed valleys, stone walls and small market towns scattered randomly along the valley floors.
Thanks to Yorkshire Water who have set road works every 500 yards or so along the road to Ilkley, we arrived in Skipton after one hours worth of queueing all the way, but nevertheless we spent a pleasant couple of hours browsing the old High Street and buying a few things from the market stall holders.
Time for dinner, and so we left Skipton and headed for Harrogate, passing a few acres of the United States of America at their Menwith Hill base and on to the Nelson pub, a place that we'd used before. Its OK as Brewers Fayre type pubs go, nothing spectacular with the choice of food, or beer, but its big enough to cope and its open all afternoon.
Bought the beer in cash and then sat down to pick from the predictable "steak or chicken" menu - chose our three dishes and I went to the food counter to order. The young lad behind the counter took the order then took my debit card to pay for it, he swiped the card and looked at the till with a puzzled face, fortunately his manager was passing and he asked him to look at the till as, in the young lads words "we don't take NatWest do we ?"
I kept quiet rather than embarrass the kid, his manager swiped the card, the till refused again, the manager looked at the card, "ah, its a Solo card" he declared, "we don't take Solo"
I just stared back at him then very quietly repeated "You don't take Solo ?"
"Well sometimes we do, but this till won't" and he handed my card back to me.
They both stared at me, presumably waiting for me to give them a card that their fekkin till would be happy with, and I could have, I had Mastercards in my wallet, but to be honest I was a bit pissed off with their till not accepting Solo cards, it was lazy on their part, I noticed that they didn't have any PIN equipment fitted yet and as one of the principles of Solo is that all transactions have to be authorised then that was probably the reason why their till was getting a refusal from their online transaction handler - they couldn't provide a PIN number, they couldn't provide it, their equipment couldn't handle it, after two years notice and after most transaction providers have nagged retailers for all of that time (they have with my business), they still haven't got around to updating their tills to handle the new secure technology.
At times like this I don't get mad, I never get mad, not for me is it acceptable to bang table tops and raise voices, no, at times like this I just get stubborn.
"Well you'd better cancel the order then" I told them quietly, and took my Solo card back.
They both stared at me as though I was crazy, they'd seen the mastercards in my wallet and assumed I'd use them instead and for 30 seconds we all stared at each other until the manager muttered "sorry" and went back to the kitchen.
Of course I had to explain to Suzanne and Jodie why, starving as we were, we weren't going to be eating here, and of course they asked why I didn't use a mastercard to pay for the dinner, to which I just shrugged my shoulders and gave them my pissed off look, they understood immediately, its the same look that has made me walk out of hundreds of shops that make me queue for too long.
So we drove a couple of miles to another pub that I know, the Red Lion near Ripley, this pub is famous for its meals, the car park is packed on most dinnertimes and evenings and people drive from miles around to go to this pub.
But when we got there, there was only three cars in the car park and then one of them left. I walked to the pub entrance, it all seemed very quiet inside but it had lights on, and then as I got to the front door I saw the sign "Cash only, no debit or credit cards", turning round with a quiet "fuck you then" I got back in the car and explained to Suzanne and Jodie that we wouldn't be eating here either, it was starting to get farcical and we all had a laugh when Suzanne asked "how do they make a living then" and while looking around the car park realised her answer was right there in front of us, they don't appear to be making a living at all at the moment.
And so it was a drive over Killinghall moor towards Otley and some more pub/restaurants, until we came to a "road closed" sign that had us diverted back into Harrogate with an involuntary "for fucks sake" from me, this was getting funnier and funnier.
We ended up in Harry Ramsdens in Guiseley, the original Harry Ramsdens, the one and only Harry Ramsdens, and we went and sat in the posh restaurant to eat thirty quids worth of fish and chips and very nice they were too but more importantly Harry Ramsdens accept Solo cards, glory fukkin halleluiah, a trader who isn't afraid to embrace technology, one of the oldest fish and chip shops in the world and they've got PIN machines and everything, thank you Harry Ramsden.
Still, on Monday I will be walking around the corner to my NatWest bank and asking them why they have replaced my former Switch card with a Solo card. From what I have read on this here t'interweb about Solo cards, they were introduced to enable people who were previously thought unsuitable to be handling Switch and credit cards to join in the plastic card revolution, basically a Solo transaction has to be authorised every time it is swiped whereas the transaction handler can authorise Switch transactions without such authorisation from the issuing bank - in other words a Solo card is for poor people and those who cannot be trusted to manage their own accounts properly, I've only held my account at NatWest for thirty years now, I only have four personal and business accounts in my name with them, I only have a mortgage on my house with NatWest, I wonder how much more fekking security they need from me before they'll fekkin trust me with a fekkin Switch card again, the bastards.
Friday, March 24, 2006
Rescuing the peace campaigners...
Hes all over the news today, Norman Kember that is, the 74 year old British peace campaigner who felt a strong compulsion to go to Iraq last year in order, presumably, to either assist in whatever way he could (a devout Christian he felt it was his duty to do so), or for publicity purposes to further publicise his anti-war beliefs.
He doesn't seem to have been there on behalf of anyone else, no overall organisation, no outward campaigning, and yet he seems to have linked up with a group of people inside Iraq who have similar beliefs, when he was kidnapped it was from a house in which three other peace activists were taken.
Who are these people ?
Why do they feel an overwhelming need to travel to one of the most lethal countries int he world, a place where as a westerner without your own governments armed forces stood either side of you, you are very likely to be targeted for kidnap, most fools would surely understand that - so why do they do it ?
We shouldn't overlook the fact either that one of his housemates, American Tom Fox, was murdered by the same captors two weeks ago, this was not a cheap publicity stunt, these peace campaigners were captured by genuine terrorists who genuinely cared not one fig about their lives and would have willingly killed all of them without a second thought.
So what on earth would make you put yourself in the same situation ?
Surely Norman Kember didn't think that as "a Christian" he would be immune from terrorist kidnappers, surely he didn't think he'd be able to explain to his kidnappers when they knocked on the door of his house on that day in November that they'd got the wrong person and he was only here to help ?
And yet I think that that is exactly what these people think, I believe that they are misguided, nay brain-washed, by their religion into believing that if they are "good" enough and if they follow their "gods teachings" and use words like "compassion" and "reach out" and "support", then their god will enclose them in some sort of protective bubble in a alien war machine from "War of the Worlds" sort of stylee, and that even if that doesn't work then their faith will protect them through their trials.
The same thing used to happen in the Middle Ages when complete royal families from all across Europe would band together and ride off to what we now know of as "The Middle East" in order to quell the barbarian hordes of Muslims from Turkey and eastwards - King Richard I of England managed to get himself kidnapped and held to ransom in exactly the same way as Norman Kember has and amazingly he was released unharmed too.
And so Norman Kember has to be rescued by Allied Forces from his kidnappers, placing them at considerable risk over a protracted period of time, and even while he is sitting sipping tea in the British Embassy for the press corps to photograph he is quoted as saying that he wants to go back onto the streets of Baghdad and continue his work, and despite the outcry from the British media in a "what sort of a nutter is he" stylee, he finds support from Dr Bruce Kent, the well known peace campaigner and former mouthpiece of the Anglican religion, who thinks that Norman Kember has a right to place himself in such situations, and he goes so far as to say that every Christian has an obligation to place themselves into such situations because Governments and private contractors have done the same.
So there you have it, if you call yourself a Christian then Bruce Kent thinks you should be lying down in front of tanks on an Iraqi road somewhere while also dodging the pickup trucks that seem to be the vehicle of favour for most terrorist kidnappers, watch out allied troops, you're going to be busy in the next few weeks avoiding running them over while at the same time looking out for the ones that have gone for a ride in the back of a Nissan Navarro.
He doesn't seem to have been there on behalf of anyone else, no overall organisation, no outward campaigning, and yet he seems to have linked up with a group of people inside Iraq who have similar beliefs, when he was kidnapped it was from a house in which three other peace activists were taken.
Who are these people ?
Why do they feel an overwhelming need to travel to one of the most lethal countries int he world, a place where as a westerner without your own governments armed forces stood either side of you, you are very likely to be targeted for kidnap, most fools would surely understand that - so why do they do it ?
We shouldn't overlook the fact either that one of his housemates, American Tom Fox, was murdered by the same captors two weeks ago, this was not a cheap publicity stunt, these peace campaigners were captured by genuine terrorists who genuinely cared not one fig about their lives and would have willingly killed all of them without a second thought.
So what on earth would make you put yourself in the same situation ?
Surely Norman Kember didn't think that as "a Christian" he would be immune from terrorist kidnappers, surely he didn't think he'd be able to explain to his kidnappers when they knocked on the door of his house on that day in November that they'd got the wrong person and he was only here to help ?
And yet I think that that is exactly what these people think, I believe that they are misguided, nay brain-washed, by their religion into believing that if they are "good" enough and if they follow their "gods teachings" and use words like "compassion" and "reach out" and "support", then their god will enclose them in some sort of protective bubble in a alien war machine from "War of the Worlds" sort of stylee, and that even if that doesn't work then their faith will protect them through their trials.
The same thing used to happen in the Middle Ages when complete royal families from all across Europe would band together and ride off to what we now know of as "The Middle East" in order to quell the barbarian hordes of Muslims from Turkey and eastwards - King Richard I of England managed to get himself kidnapped and held to ransom in exactly the same way as Norman Kember has and amazingly he was released unharmed too.
And so Norman Kember has to be rescued by Allied Forces from his kidnappers, placing them at considerable risk over a protracted period of time, and even while he is sitting sipping tea in the British Embassy for the press corps to photograph he is quoted as saying that he wants to go back onto the streets of Baghdad and continue his work, and despite the outcry from the British media in a "what sort of a nutter is he" stylee, he finds support from Dr Bruce Kent, the well known peace campaigner and former mouthpiece of the Anglican religion, who thinks that Norman Kember has a right to place himself in such situations, and he goes so far as to say that every Christian has an obligation to place themselves into such situations because Governments and private contractors have done the same.
So there you have it, if you call yourself a Christian then Bruce Kent thinks you should be lying down in front of tanks on an Iraqi road somewhere while also dodging the pickup trucks that seem to be the vehicle of favour for most terrorist kidnappers, watch out allied troops, you're going to be busy in the next few weeks avoiding running them over while at the same time looking out for the ones that have gone for a ride in the back of a Nissan Navarro.
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Saving money, me...
Fed up of spiralling living costs and with the latest piss take being from British Gas who merrily informed me that my energy bill would be increased by 50% next year, I finally got around to doing what this bloke has been telling me to do for the last twelve months and shop around for better deals.
So I tried a price comparison service for home insurance first as NatWest had just tried to get me to renew my annual policy, £540 for House and contents insurance. Stuck all the details through the online comparison service and it came up with Budget Insurance at £183, bugger me, that's what I call a saving.
I rang Budget because I deal with them for the car insurances too and we sorted it all out on the phone, even got some free hospital insurance thrown in as well, although why I want to insure a hospital is unclear.
So time to do the gas and electric. I have a dual fuel account with British Gas, never changed it because quite frankly I've never been arsed to do so in the past. Just after christmas though I changed a bank account and when I rang BGas to change the monthly direct debit they tried to set it up for £91 a month instead of £46, and that was just for the gas supply.
I questioned their sanity as to how and why I should ever use that much gas in my lifetime and just before I got to the point where I tell them to piss off and do one, they agreed to set the direct debit to £61 a month for the gas "and see how it goes", after all, they pointed out, we have a price increase imminent.
Stuffed the gas and electric consumption figures into the online price comparison service and the first suprise that it came back with was that my current costs were going to rise by 46% this year with BGas but that if I signed a five year fixed price deal with BGas then this years price would "only" increase by 53%, yes thats right, it would cost me more this year to fix the price for five years, now what sort of idiots do they have as customers ? Idiots like me obviously.
The software informed me in an almost smug-like manner that if I switched to London Energy then I would end up paying £80 less than I currently do, thats a saving of almost £800 a year on what I will be paying if I stick with BGas, are you keeping up with me here ?
I've never heard of London Energy but they are owned by the French national energy company EDF, it all means nothing to me but as long as they send enough electricity and gas down the wires and pipes, and don't get the wires and pipes mixed up, and charge me a third less than BGas were going to do, then they'll do for me, I signed up with them.
I was on a roll now, I have an Egg credit card, theres a zero balance on it and I never use it. I also have a NatWest credit card, theres a balance on it left over from last years holiday at 15%apr, deary me. Egg called me one evening last week and I let them waffle on a bit then hung up the phone, but I remembered somethign about an "anniversary deal" where they would offer 0% on balance transfers, logged onto the Egg account and sure enough, theres a 0% deal until august on balance transfers - so the NatWest card now has the zero balance and Egg are making nothing out of me until august.
There must be more stuff I can save on, I'd already swapped the mortgage in January to a better deal and I've cashed in all the endowment policies that were making naff-all on the stock exchange and invested them in my own company and am paying myself 8%pa, its probably illegal but they'll have to spot it first.
*****************************************************************************************
Which reminds me,
About once a month I get a phone call from a stockbroker in Manhattan, or at least thats where he says he's from, and he tries to sell me stock in various american companies despite the fact that every month I tell him that I'm not interested and every month he asks if I'll be adding to my portfolio in the next few months to which I tell him that I haven't got a fekking portfolio and have no intention of investing any money, if I had any money, in any company that I can't touch, feel and see, especially if the person selling me that stock is a complete stranger who freely admits to being at least one ocean width away from my wallet.
And this week I got another call from another broker, this time in London. For no apparent reason I let him waffle on instead of just putting the phone down and it appears that he works for a large and highly regarded investment company who specialise in metal investments using something called "leverage". I hadn't a fekkin clue what "leverage" was so gave him my email address for him to send me a brochure.
His brochure arrived and very impressive it looks, still haven't a clue what "leverage" is apart from the process by which they manage to "lever" huge sums of money out of my bank account for what seems like incredible risk, basically they buy large globs of tin, copper, aluminium, or whatever other metal takes their fancy this month, using your money, and then sometime later they sell it again - and you have to hope that they buy it cheap and sell it expensive and not the other way around.
Call me simple but I think that that just about sums up the whole of the worlds trading exchanges, you give your money to someone else and hope that he is not a crook or an idiot or worse still and idiot crook, and if he isn't then he might make you some profit, after he's taken his own much larger profit of course, and after he's told you that its fekk-all to do with him if he fails to give you any part of your original investment back.
And don't forget of course that the "stuff" that they are apparently buying with your money is never actually seen or handled by them, it may even not exist for all they care, as long as they can convince someone else that it exists somewhere in the world, and convince them to pay more for it than they did, then the jobs done.
I think I'd rather give my money to Tarzans chimpanzee, Cheetah, and ask him to visit various bookmakers in town and place random bets on random horses throughout the course of the day - I bet Cheetah would come home with more money than I sent him out with and better still, his cut would be three bananas.
So I tried a price comparison service for home insurance first as NatWest had just tried to get me to renew my annual policy, £540 for House and contents insurance. Stuck all the details through the online comparison service and it came up with Budget Insurance at £183, bugger me, that's what I call a saving.
I rang Budget because I deal with them for the car insurances too and we sorted it all out on the phone, even got some free hospital insurance thrown in as well, although why I want to insure a hospital is unclear.
So time to do the gas and electric. I have a dual fuel account with British Gas, never changed it because quite frankly I've never been arsed to do so in the past. Just after christmas though I changed a bank account and when I rang BGas to change the monthly direct debit they tried to set it up for £91 a month instead of £46, and that was just for the gas supply.
I questioned their sanity as to how and why I should ever use that much gas in my lifetime and just before I got to the point where I tell them to piss off and do one, they agreed to set the direct debit to £61 a month for the gas "and see how it goes", after all, they pointed out, we have a price increase imminent.
Stuffed the gas and electric consumption figures into the online price comparison service and the first suprise that it came back with was that my current costs were going to rise by 46% this year with BGas but that if I signed a five year fixed price deal with BGas then this years price would "only" increase by 53%, yes thats right, it would cost me more this year to fix the price for five years, now what sort of idiots do they have as customers ? Idiots like me obviously.
The software informed me in an almost smug-like manner that if I switched to London Energy then I would end up paying £80 less than I currently do, thats a saving of almost £800 a year on what I will be paying if I stick with BGas, are you keeping up with me here ?
I've never heard of London Energy but they are owned by the French national energy company EDF, it all means nothing to me but as long as they send enough electricity and gas down the wires and pipes, and don't get the wires and pipes mixed up, and charge me a third less than BGas were going to do, then they'll do for me, I signed up with them.
I was on a roll now, I have an Egg credit card, theres a zero balance on it and I never use it. I also have a NatWest credit card, theres a balance on it left over from last years holiday at 15%apr, deary me. Egg called me one evening last week and I let them waffle on a bit then hung up the phone, but I remembered somethign about an "anniversary deal" where they would offer 0% on balance transfers, logged onto the Egg account and sure enough, theres a 0% deal until august on balance transfers - so the NatWest card now has the zero balance and Egg are making nothing out of me until august.
There must be more stuff I can save on, I'd already swapped the mortgage in January to a better deal and I've cashed in all the endowment policies that were making naff-all on the stock exchange and invested them in my own company and am paying myself 8%pa, its probably illegal but they'll have to spot it first.
*****************************************************************************************
Which reminds me,
About once a month I get a phone call from a stockbroker in Manhattan, or at least thats where he says he's from, and he tries to sell me stock in various american companies despite the fact that every month I tell him that I'm not interested and every month he asks if I'll be adding to my portfolio in the next few months to which I tell him that I haven't got a fekking portfolio and have no intention of investing any money, if I had any money, in any company that I can't touch, feel and see, especially if the person selling me that stock is a complete stranger who freely admits to being at least one ocean width away from my wallet.
And this week I got another call from another broker, this time in London. For no apparent reason I let him waffle on instead of just putting the phone down and it appears that he works for a large and highly regarded investment company who specialise in metal investments using something called "leverage". I hadn't a fekkin clue what "leverage" was so gave him my email address for him to send me a brochure.
His brochure arrived and very impressive it looks, still haven't a clue what "leverage" is apart from the process by which they manage to "lever" huge sums of money out of my bank account for what seems like incredible risk, basically they buy large globs of tin, copper, aluminium, or whatever other metal takes their fancy this month, using your money, and then sometime later they sell it again - and you have to hope that they buy it cheap and sell it expensive and not the other way around.
Call me simple but I think that that just about sums up the whole of the worlds trading exchanges, you give your money to someone else and hope that he is not a crook or an idiot or worse still and idiot crook, and if he isn't then he might make you some profit, after he's taken his own much larger profit of course, and after he's told you that its fekk-all to do with him if he fails to give you any part of your original investment back.
And don't forget of course that the "stuff" that they are apparently buying with your money is never actually seen or handled by them, it may even not exist for all they care, as long as they can convince someone else that it exists somewhere in the world, and convince them to pay more for it than they did, then the jobs done.
I think I'd rather give my money to Tarzans chimpanzee, Cheetah, and ask him to visit various bookmakers in town and place random bets on random horses throughout the course of the day - I bet Cheetah would come home with more money than I sent him out with and better still, his cut would be three bananas.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Its all just numbers to me...
Gordon Brown announced his budget for the next year at lunchtime today, I watched it on TV in the office.
I haven't a clue what he was talking about.
ITV very kindly summarised the salient points at the bottom of the screen as he waffled on, they needn't have bothered for me as I still didn't understand what on earth this man was saying.
He seems like a half decent bloke though does Gordon, for a politician, always seems like the sort of bloke you could take to the pub and have a half with, it wouldn't be long before he started waffling on about economics of course and you'd have to leave him in the best room on an excuse that you needed to visit the toilet while you sneaked into the tap room for the rest of the night, but he seems like a half decent bloke.
Politicians are such wankers though, the House of Commons was full of course as they all knew it would be live on TV and wanted to be seen, Tony (Blair) and John (Prescott) were sat either side of Gordon and occasionally seemed to be laughing and chatting to someone across the room to them, even while Gordon was on his feet talking, and his speech was constantly interrupted by loud guffaws and shouts from both sides of the house, ignorant bastards all of them, can't even wait for ten minutes while the bloke finishes his speech, if I was Gordo I'd have let the first few interruptions go then told them to shut the fuck up or I wouldn't tell them what was in the speech and they'd only find out when they went to the post office next week to tax their large cars.
Which reminds me, something I saw on screen during Gordo's speech seemed to suggest to me that both my car and Suzannes car wouldnt be quite so expensive to tax this year - I couldn't care less about my car because the contract hire company pay for the tax, but would you believe that I just taxed Suzannes car online last fekkin night, I'll not be best pleased if I find that I've paid over the odds just because she was so bloody impatient to get it done.
All this accountancy stuff is way, way beyond my powers of patience, accountants just bore the pants off me and their work nullifies any energy source I have every time I have to read a balance sheet. It will soon be time to trip down to our own accountants and sit their while he drones on about our fiscal year, our profit and loss sheet, the incredibly boring balance sheet and the tax commitments for next year, after ten minutes or so I am just an empty shell that is simply hearing the words but making no sense, my brain slowly closes down in order to avoid stupification and my head nods or shakes at random in response to various questions until he stops talking and I figure it must be time to leave.
We usually drive away from our annual meeting with the accountant in silence while our three brains reboot in the fresh air, then someone will say "so did we make a profit then" or "did he say how much the tax bill is this year" or "what day is it", no doubt accountnats all over the country will be orgasmic in excitement today and positively leaping from the rooftops with glee in Canary Wharf, but here in the rest of the real world it all boils down to "how much on cigs, how much on beer, did you see Alistair Darlings smug fukkin face on the front row ?"
I haven't a clue what he was talking about.
ITV very kindly summarised the salient points at the bottom of the screen as he waffled on, they needn't have bothered for me as I still didn't understand what on earth this man was saying.
He seems like a half decent bloke though does Gordon, for a politician, always seems like the sort of bloke you could take to the pub and have a half with, it wouldn't be long before he started waffling on about economics of course and you'd have to leave him in the best room on an excuse that you needed to visit the toilet while you sneaked into the tap room for the rest of the night, but he seems like a half decent bloke.
Politicians are such wankers though, the House of Commons was full of course as they all knew it would be live on TV and wanted to be seen, Tony (Blair) and John (Prescott) were sat either side of Gordon and occasionally seemed to be laughing and chatting to someone across the room to them, even while Gordon was on his feet talking, and his speech was constantly interrupted by loud guffaws and shouts from both sides of the house, ignorant bastards all of them, can't even wait for ten minutes while the bloke finishes his speech, if I was Gordo I'd have let the first few interruptions go then told them to shut the fuck up or I wouldn't tell them what was in the speech and they'd only find out when they went to the post office next week to tax their large cars.
Which reminds me, something I saw on screen during Gordo's speech seemed to suggest to me that both my car and Suzannes car wouldnt be quite so expensive to tax this year - I couldn't care less about my car because the contract hire company pay for the tax, but would you believe that I just taxed Suzannes car online last fekkin night, I'll not be best pleased if I find that I've paid over the odds just because she was so bloody impatient to get it done.
All this accountancy stuff is way, way beyond my powers of patience, accountants just bore the pants off me and their work nullifies any energy source I have every time I have to read a balance sheet. It will soon be time to trip down to our own accountants and sit their while he drones on about our fiscal year, our profit and loss sheet, the incredibly boring balance sheet and the tax commitments for next year, after ten minutes or so I am just an empty shell that is simply hearing the words but making no sense, my brain slowly closes down in order to avoid stupification and my head nods or shakes at random in response to various questions until he stops talking and I figure it must be time to leave.
We usually drive away from our annual meeting with the accountant in silence while our three brains reboot in the fresh air, then someone will say "so did we make a profit then" or "did he say how much the tax bill is this year" or "what day is it", no doubt accountnats all over the country will be orgasmic in excitement today and positively leaping from the rooftops with glee in Canary Wharf, but here in the rest of the real world it all boils down to "how much on cigs, how much on beer, did you see Alistair Darlings smug fukkin face on the front row ?"
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
A strange visitor called today...
Wow, he was scary.
The man who has just been to repair our credit card machine-thingy, I didn't even know it was broken but Suzanne reported it yesterday because the PIN input pad was recording an error message, big deal, we only take telephone transactions so we don't use the PIN number thingy.
Anyway, I'm sat in the office ten minutes ago and theres a knock at the door, I open it and there is the strangest looking man I've ever seen standing there, he introduces himself and I just continue to stare at him.
I've only just realised since he left who he reminded me of - remember Pink Floyds video for their chart single "Another brick in the wall", remember the teacher who danced around on puppet strings ? This bloke was just like the teacher.
He was so flippin (I'm not using swear words today, got told off after my blog yesterday, got told I was "foul mouthed"), so flippin tall that I could hardly see his face and he had to bend almost double to get through the door. despite being at least 8 foot tall he could only have weighed about 6 stone, he was the tallest yet skinniest person I have ever seen.
And he was white, when I say he was white I don't mean he had pink skin, I mean he had white skin, bleached white skin, and he had white hair to match, no wonder I could hardly see his face as it was all sort of blended in somewhere up there.
His arms were incredibly long and hung forward, but never relaxed, which is why he reminded me of the puppet teacher from the Pink Floyd video, he looked as if he had strings attached to holes in his hands and someone was pulling them slightly. His fingers were at least ten inches long - each although he only ever used one of them to tap out on the credit card terminal keyboard.
He crouched in the corner of the room, head bowed beneath the ceiling, playing about with the terminal and I just sat down and stared, he was speaking but it was flowing way over the top of my head and it took several rebounds off the walls before the sound came down to ear level.
What a weird experience, he said something and I signed his sheet and he's gone now and I'm left with a headache and wondering if there were drugs of some description in that biscuit I had with my coffee an hour ago.
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Oh yes, one more thing - Amanda failed her driving test today - awwwwww
And she is so pissed off.
She is so competitive and was convinced that she would pass today but cutting in front of a truck on a roundabout is not the sort of thing to go unnoticed on a driving test and she is soooooo upset because we practiced and practiced her multi-lane roundabout technique on Lawnswood roundabout last night in the rush hour, five times we approached it and five times the night before until i was sure she understood what the different lanes were for.
I've been called home now to take her out driving again tonight, more roundabout drills and another £45 for a test rebook - I remember (just) what it was like to be 17 and desperate to get out on your own in a car.
The man who has just been to repair our credit card machine-thingy, I didn't even know it was broken but Suzanne reported it yesterday because the PIN input pad was recording an error message, big deal, we only take telephone transactions so we don't use the PIN number thingy.
Anyway, I'm sat in the office ten minutes ago and theres a knock at the door, I open it and there is the strangest looking man I've ever seen standing there, he introduces himself and I just continue to stare at him.
I've only just realised since he left who he reminded me of - remember Pink Floyds video for their chart single "Another brick in the wall", remember the teacher who danced around on puppet strings ? This bloke was just like the teacher.
He was so flippin (I'm not using swear words today, got told off after my blog yesterday, got told I was "foul mouthed"), so flippin tall that I could hardly see his face and he had to bend almost double to get through the door. despite being at least 8 foot tall he could only have weighed about 6 stone, he was the tallest yet skinniest person I have ever seen.
And he was white, when I say he was white I don't mean he had pink skin, I mean he had white skin, bleached white skin, and he had white hair to match, no wonder I could hardly see his face as it was all sort of blended in somewhere up there.
His arms were incredibly long and hung forward, but never relaxed, which is why he reminded me of the puppet teacher from the Pink Floyd video, he looked as if he had strings attached to holes in his hands and someone was pulling them slightly. His fingers were at least ten inches long - each although he only ever used one of them to tap out on the credit card terminal keyboard.
He crouched in the corner of the room, head bowed beneath the ceiling, playing about with the terminal and I just sat down and stared, he was speaking but it was flowing way over the top of my head and it took several rebounds off the walls before the sound came down to ear level.
What a weird experience, he said something and I signed his sheet and he's gone now and I'm left with a headache and wondering if there were drugs of some description in that biscuit I had with my coffee an hour ago.
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Oh yes, one more thing - Amanda failed her driving test today - awwwwww
And she is so pissed off.
She is so competitive and was convinced that she would pass today but cutting in front of a truck on a roundabout is not the sort of thing to go unnoticed on a driving test and she is soooooo upset because we practiced and practiced her multi-lane roundabout technique on Lawnswood roundabout last night in the rush hour, five times we approached it and five times the night before until i was sure she understood what the different lanes were for.
I've been called home now to take her out driving again tonight, more roundabout drills and another £45 for a test rebook - I remember (just) what it was like to be 17 and desperate to get out on your own in a car.
Monday, March 20, 2006
Politicians and the strange world they live in...
OK, a disclaimer to start with...
This is not a personal attack on Alistair Darling ok ?
Well, it is really, but its only because he's come onto the radar today, like some sort of brainless twat he's popped up in Leeds to try and pacify the city for the most outrageous decision making process that strung along our local council for half a lifetime with no intention of ......
Oh what the hell, you need the whole story.
Heres the Readers Digest Condensed Version...
Leeds is a large city (by UK standards), lets say about 750,000 citizens and is formed almost into a series of concentric circles around a central area, its unusual in that respect as most old UK towns and cities developed along rivers, but Leeds spread outwards from the central point in an almost uniform manner - imagine a cartwheel with a hub and the spokes are the roads leading in and out of the city.
This inherited design of course makes it ideal for fast links into the city centre, there aren't many places to live within the Leeds boundary where you are not more than 20 minutes out of the centre in any direction - it also makes it an ideal candidate for a rapid public transit system of the light rail type.
But we haven't got one, we've got old fekkin deisel buses instead.
We used to have electric trams but they went in the 1950's and we got filthy deisel buses instead.
But not to worry, when the Labour government were elected to power in 1997 they asked for local authorities to step forward with schemes for rapid transit systems as this brave new Labour government were very keen to get the public out of their cars and into the new "supertrams", high speed electric, clean, green tramways that would whisk its citizens up from their homes and whoosh them into the city centre to work - assuming that they worked in the city centre of course, which many didn't, but thats only a slight distraction.
The brave new Labour government promised all local authorities who produced such plans that funds would be made available from public and private funding initiatives, and even better, authorities with rapid transit systems in place would then be able to levy charges for dirty old motorists who insisted on taking their cars into the city centres instead of using the smashing new rapid transit systems, look why don't I just call them trams from now on OK, or better still, supertrams, that sounds good doesn't it, John Prescott thought it sounded good back in 1997 anyway, it was all his idea originally as he was Minister for Transport, one of several Minister jobs that he seems to have done/still does/possibly.
So Leeds stepped forward, no they didn't step forward, they fekkin ran forward with open arms, we already had such a scheme on the planning boards you see, been planning it for fekkin years by now, just couldn't get the Conservatives to fund it, but now, wow, Labour were going to pay for it with new finance, it was like the bank manager had just become your best friend again, yippee, Leeds was getting a supertram !
It was impressive - 21km of tracks linked NorthWest, NorthEast and South of the city into the city centre...
What ?
Why no East or West links ?
Because thats where the poor people live and they'd have expected subsidies to use the supertram but don't shout that from the rooftops, we're talking serious politics here.
£350million it would cost, but hey, the governments new public/private funding initiative was in place and the work had actually started in the south of the city, traffic junctions were being altered and everything.
Fast forward to last summer and its been nearly ten years since some of the original planning and compulsory purchase options were issued and if they weren't acted on by last september then the whole project was in danger of having its pants pulled down, and the council had already spent £40million of its own cash, sorry, our own cash, thats us local rate payers cash that is, my fekkin money to be precise.
And so on that fateful day last september and after dithering for the last two years and placing as many obstacles in his own path as he could so as not to have to announce a decision at all, the current Transport Minister Alistair Darling finally admitted that although the private funding part of the public/private funding initiative had been found, the government couldnt actually stump up the public funding part of its own public/private funding initiative - in other words for the last ten years we thought we were going for a massive and most enjoyable big shit in the woods, and we'd only managed to fart, not even fart, we'd had a little parp and nothing else.
What a twat.
So today Alistair Darling came to Leeds to announce that the M606/M62 motorway junction is to benefit from a £2.5million junction improvement scheme, and he gets his face on all the local TV stations and local newspapers describing what a great boost to the regions economy this will be.
Fuck off Alistair, two and a half million pounds is fuck all in the grand scheme of motorway maintenance and nothing at all, not even a drop in the ocean in the scheme of motorway improvement schemes, two and a half million will not even repaint the white lines on the Leeds urban motorway, and yet his smarmy face pops up on my fekking TV while I'm eating my fekkin pizza and I'm supposed to think that this great car-share lane scheme that hes proposing for this extremely congested motorway junction is a huge investment for the region and that we should all be so-fekkin grateful to him and his government for them thinking of us when they were spending our tax money.
Well thanks for nothing Alistair, £300million on a supertram scheme would have been a huge investment for the region, taking 19 million bodies out of their personal cars each and every year - £2.5million on repainting a motorway junction instead is taking the piss, big style, you smarmy jerk.
I don't know whether to applause his absolute cheek at actually appearing in the region or gasp at his absolute stupidity that we would swallow his drop of piss in the ocean that is transport initiatives, on the other hand he is one of the common breed of career politicians in parliament now who study politics and business at universities, then go straight into parliament believing that they have all the answers from the books they've read - a little real life experience wouldn't go amiss first - Mr Darling spent a maximum of nine years in a proper job as a lawyer before being elected to parliament and for five of those years was a local politician - I probably got more real life experience at my inner city school before I was ten years of age.
And they actually wonder why we don't trust or respect any of them...
(I feel better for that now, I can do funny posts tomorrow again)
This is not a personal attack on Alistair Darling ok ?
Well, it is really, but its only because he's come onto the radar today, like some sort of brainless twat he's popped up in Leeds to try and pacify the city for the most outrageous decision making process that strung along our local council for half a lifetime with no intention of ......
Oh what the hell, you need the whole story.
Heres the Readers Digest Condensed Version...
Leeds is a large city (by UK standards), lets say about 750,000 citizens and is formed almost into a series of concentric circles around a central area, its unusual in that respect as most old UK towns and cities developed along rivers, but Leeds spread outwards from the central point in an almost uniform manner - imagine a cartwheel with a hub and the spokes are the roads leading in and out of the city.
This inherited design of course makes it ideal for fast links into the city centre, there aren't many places to live within the Leeds boundary where you are not more than 20 minutes out of the centre in any direction - it also makes it an ideal candidate for a rapid public transit system of the light rail type.
But we haven't got one, we've got old fekkin deisel buses instead.
We used to have electric trams but they went in the 1950's and we got filthy deisel buses instead.
But not to worry, when the Labour government were elected to power in 1997 they asked for local authorities to step forward with schemes for rapid transit systems as this brave new Labour government were very keen to get the public out of their cars and into the new "supertrams", high speed electric, clean, green tramways that would whisk its citizens up from their homes and whoosh them into the city centre to work - assuming that they worked in the city centre of course, which many didn't, but thats only a slight distraction.
The brave new Labour government promised all local authorities who produced such plans that funds would be made available from public and private funding initiatives, and even better, authorities with rapid transit systems in place would then be able to levy charges for dirty old motorists who insisted on taking their cars into the city centres instead of using the smashing new rapid transit systems, look why don't I just call them trams from now on OK, or better still, supertrams, that sounds good doesn't it, John Prescott thought it sounded good back in 1997 anyway, it was all his idea originally as he was Minister for Transport, one of several Minister jobs that he seems to have done/still does/possibly.
So Leeds stepped forward, no they didn't step forward, they fekkin ran forward with open arms, we already had such a scheme on the planning boards you see, been planning it for fekkin years by now, just couldn't get the Conservatives to fund it, but now, wow, Labour were going to pay for it with new finance, it was like the bank manager had just become your best friend again, yippee, Leeds was getting a supertram !
It was impressive - 21km of tracks linked NorthWest, NorthEast and South of the city into the city centre...
What ?
Why no East or West links ?
Because thats where the poor people live and they'd have expected subsidies to use the supertram but don't shout that from the rooftops, we're talking serious politics here.
£350million it would cost, but hey, the governments new public/private funding initiative was in place and the work had actually started in the south of the city, traffic junctions were being altered and everything.
Fast forward to last summer and its been nearly ten years since some of the original planning and compulsory purchase options were issued and if they weren't acted on by last september then the whole project was in danger of having its pants pulled down, and the council had already spent £40million of its own cash, sorry, our own cash, thats us local rate payers cash that is, my fekkin money to be precise.
And so on that fateful day last september and after dithering for the last two years and placing as many obstacles in his own path as he could so as not to have to announce a decision at all, the current Transport Minister Alistair Darling finally admitted that although the private funding part of the public/private funding initiative had been found, the government couldnt actually stump up the public funding part of its own public/private funding initiative - in other words for the last ten years we thought we were going for a massive and most enjoyable big shit in the woods, and we'd only managed to fart, not even fart, we'd had a little parp and nothing else.
What a twat.
So today Alistair Darling came to Leeds to announce that the M606/M62 motorway junction is to benefit from a £2.5million junction improvement scheme, and he gets his face on all the local TV stations and local newspapers describing what a great boost to the regions economy this will be.
Fuck off Alistair, two and a half million pounds is fuck all in the grand scheme of motorway maintenance and nothing at all, not even a drop in the ocean in the scheme of motorway improvement schemes, two and a half million will not even repaint the white lines on the Leeds urban motorway, and yet his smarmy face pops up on my fekking TV while I'm eating my fekkin pizza and I'm supposed to think that this great car-share lane scheme that hes proposing for this extremely congested motorway junction is a huge investment for the region and that we should all be so-fekkin grateful to him and his government for them thinking of us when they were spending our tax money.
Well thanks for nothing Alistair, £300million on a supertram scheme would have been a huge investment for the region, taking 19 million bodies out of their personal cars each and every year - £2.5million on repainting a motorway junction instead is taking the piss, big style, you smarmy jerk.
I don't know whether to applause his absolute cheek at actually appearing in the region or gasp at his absolute stupidity that we would swallow his drop of piss in the ocean that is transport initiatives, on the other hand he is one of the common breed of career politicians in parliament now who study politics and business at universities, then go straight into parliament believing that they have all the answers from the books they've read - a little real life experience wouldn't go amiss first - Mr Darling spent a maximum of nine years in a proper job as a lawyer before being elected to parliament and for five of those years was a local politician - I probably got more real life experience at my inner city school before I was ten years of age.
And they actually wonder why we don't trust or respect any of them...
(I feel better for that now, I can do funny posts tomorrow again)
Return once more to the pink lozenge
Eight fifteen this morning and I struggle into the dentist coping manfully with my awful dosage of man-flu, nose and eyes running, chest aching with the exertion of coughing and sneezing so much, I should be in bed not making the final installation visit for my new tooth.
Its a new crown, a complete new porcelain tooth, upper left incisor, the old one fell out when the root broke last year and I've been making fortnightly visits to my dentist since christmas while he fills the old root, then finds a new root that was infected, clears the infection then fills that root too and now today, finally, after three months, I am ready for the fitting of the new tooth.
If I can stop coughing long enough.
Its a two hour appointment because he makes the carbon fibre post and porcelain tooth there on the premises as you wait, the clever bugger, and he drills around for a bit and carves some of my gum away to make a nice base for the new tooth and then send me to wait in his ultra modern waiting room to watch Fawlty Towers while he gets the Chad Valley Porcelain Tooth Makers kit out and does his funky stuff with his little kiln and all.
I'll say this about him - he's a bloody good dentist, not cheap, but bloody good, and in my book you can't have a dentist who is bloody good and cheap as well.
I've got his surgery all to myself for the whole two hours so I put my feet up and watch a whole episode of John Cleese's masterpiece which isn't as funny as I remember it being twenty years ago, and I'm invited back to the big pink lozenge of a chair while he fits the new incisor and takes photos on a very snazzy video screen, probably to show off to his dentist mates down their dentists pub tonight.
£520 is the bill and £275 in other appointments before it, £795 for my new tooth, like I said, not bloody cheap but it could have been more than that, he started quoting £3500 for an implant and other silly numbers, I'm not sure at which point we got down to £525 plus fitting for a new crown but we did and I suppose someone has to pay for the refit he had six months ago and the exclusivity of having a dentist and two assistants to yourself for two hours on a Monday morning.
But what did happen to the NHS dental scheme ?
Its a new crown, a complete new porcelain tooth, upper left incisor, the old one fell out when the root broke last year and I've been making fortnightly visits to my dentist since christmas while he fills the old root, then finds a new root that was infected, clears the infection then fills that root too and now today, finally, after three months, I am ready for the fitting of the new tooth.
If I can stop coughing long enough.
Its a two hour appointment because he makes the carbon fibre post and porcelain tooth there on the premises as you wait, the clever bugger, and he drills around for a bit and carves some of my gum away to make a nice base for the new tooth and then send me to wait in his ultra modern waiting room to watch Fawlty Towers while he gets the Chad Valley Porcelain Tooth Makers kit out and does his funky stuff with his little kiln and all.
I'll say this about him - he's a bloody good dentist, not cheap, but bloody good, and in my book you can't have a dentist who is bloody good and cheap as well.
I've got his surgery all to myself for the whole two hours so I put my feet up and watch a whole episode of John Cleese's masterpiece which isn't as funny as I remember it being twenty years ago, and I'm invited back to the big pink lozenge of a chair while he fits the new incisor and takes photos on a very snazzy video screen, probably to show off to his dentist mates down their dentists pub tonight.
£520 is the bill and £275 in other appointments before it, £795 for my new tooth, like I said, not bloody cheap but it could have been more than that, he started quoting £3500 for an implant and other silly numbers, I'm not sure at which point we got down to £525 plus fitting for a new crown but we did and I suppose someone has to pay for the refit he had six months ago and the exclusivity of having a dentist and two assistants to yourself for two hours on a Monday morning.
But what did happen to the NHS dental scheme ?
Sunday, March 19, 2006
OK, lets be contentious...
This could get dirty...
Whilst in a haze of delerium suffering from my attack of the man-flu, the worst virus known to mankind even though women brush it off as "a mere sniffle", I have found myself watching the Sunday re-run of American Idol.
Its the first bit of this series that I have watched this year as the genre is sort of wearing a bit thin now, but this week the contenders were invited to meet Stevie Wonder and had to sing one of his songs on the show.
Now I am old enough to have known about Stevie Wonder since he was "Little Stevie Wonder" and in my book he has never, ever, not once, not ever, ever, ever produced or sung a bad song - the absolute best album in my large collection of music is head and shoulders above the rest, without peer, "Songs in the Key of Life" my 1976 christmas present from my parents, I didn't stop playing that album until it was worn smooth and it was the first one that I downloaded (legally of course) on MP3.
So maybe I'm a little biased here.
The kids on American Idol, with a couple of exceptions, made a complete bears arse out of the tracks that were chosen for them.
And the interesting, and at the same time contentious issue about this is that the two "artists" who had a good crack at their tracks were both black females.
Why should that matter ?
I don't think it does, but it does beg the question, is there such a thing as "black music" and can only black people feel it enough to be able to sing it properly ?
The two girls in question sang "dont you worry 'bout a thing" and "signed sealed delivered", both of them put something of themselves into the song and added to it, they both moved comfortably with the song and most importantly made you the veiwer feel comfortable watching them singing a song that you inextricably link with the incomparable Mr Steveland Morris.
The rest ranged from ordinary to just plain bloody awful, some of the white males looked like me trying to dance at my wedding 23 years ago - and let me tell you, that was the first and last time I have ever danced in public, but I'm not stupid enough to think I can dance, let alone do justice to a Stevie Wonder song.
Its not enough to move jerkily around a stage and recite the words to a Wonder song, its not kareoke material and if you treat it like its a job you have to do, then it will come across as kareoke, Wonder songs are written with heart, the words are not there just to fill up the gaps, they are chosen carefully with meaning and you have to understand the meaning first before you can even start to read the lyrics - none of the kids (exceptions excluded) understood this, they were going through the motions and trying to present an image which they believed the producers wanted to see on national TV, and because they know no better they'll do the same next week and the week after with whatever other artist is picked as a topic.
And there is the problem with such programming.
They are not looking for unique talent, they are looking for a talent that can be easily moulded into an image which is already defined by the current popular music charts.
The producers do not want another Stevie Wonder, they do not want a stable full of individual artists each with their own individual sound that can nevertheless still present a corporate sound at the same time, like Tamla Motown once did, no that would be too difficult, they are simply looking for a kid who has the right look to record and mime in public to the dozen or so songs that are already waiting for the winner to record, so that the producer and his record company can make some more money out of the series.
Will Young - I'll give you Will Young - the only unique talent to come out of the UK series of "Idol" programmes, and only because he had the balls to immediately identify himself as gay, thus scuppering the producers attempt to market him to pre-teen girls, and at the same time tell the producers that he wanted to take a year out to write and produce his own album - I've got a lot of respect for Will Young, the rest of them are, as I type, packing their suitcases and touring the working mens clubs of this country at £40 a night, and its all they deserve.
Whilst in a haze of delerium suffering from my attack of the man-flu, the worst virus known to mankind even though women brush it off as "a mere sniffle", I have found myself watching the Sunday re-run of American Idol.
Its the first bit of this series that I have watched this year as the genre is sort of wearing a bit thin now, but this week the contenders were invited to meet Stevie Wonder and had to sing one of his songs on the show.
Now I am old enough to have known about Stevie Wonder since he was "Little Stevie Wonder" and in my book he has never, ever, not once, not ever, ever, ever produced or sung a bad song - the absolute best album in my large collection of music is head and shoulders above the rest, without peer, "Songs in the Key of Life" my 1976 christmas present from my parents, I didn't stop playing that album until it was worn smooth and it was the first one that I downloaded (legally of course) on MP3.
So maybe I'm a little biased here.
The kids on American Idol, with a couple of exceptions, made a complete bears arse out of the tracks that were chosen for them.
And the interesting, and at the same time contentious issue about this is that the two "artists" who had a good crack at their tracks were both black females.
Why should that matter ?
I don't think it does, but it does beg the question, is there such a thing as "black music" and can only black people feel it enough to be able to sing it properly ?
The two girls in question sang "dont you worry 'bout a thing" and "signed sealed delivered", both of them put something of themselves into the song and added to it, they both moved comfortably with the song and most importantly made you the veiwer feel comfortable watching them singing a song that you inextricably link with the incomparable Mr Steveland Morris.
The rest ranged from ordinary to just plain bloody awful, some of the white males looked like me trying to dance at my wedding 23 years ago - and let me tell you, that was the first and last time I have ever danced in public, but I'm not stupid enough to think I can dance, let alone do justice to a Stevie Wonder song.
Its not enough to move jerkily around a stage and recite the words to a Wonder song, its not kareoke material and if you treat it like its a job you have to do, then it will come across as kareoke, Wonder songs are written with heart, the words are not there just to fill up the gaps, they are chosen carefully with meaning and you have to understand the meaning first before you can even start to read the lyrics - none of the kids (exceptions excluded) understood this, they were going through the motions and trying to present an image which they believed the producers wanted to see on national TV, and because they know no better they'll do the same next week and the week after with whatever other artist is picked as a topic.
And there is the problem with such programming.
They are not looking for unique talent, they are looking for a talent that can be easily moulded into an image which is already defined by the current popular music charts.
The producers do not want another Stevie Wonder, they do not want a stable full of individual artists each with their own individual sound that can nevertheless still present a corporate sound at the same time, like Tamla Motown once did, no that would be too difficult, they are simply looking for a kid who has the right look to record and mime in public to the dozen or so songs that are already waiting for the winner to record, so that the producer and his record company can make some more money out of the series.
Will Young - I'll give you Will Young - the only unique talent to come out of the UK series of "Idol" programmes, and only because he had the balls to immediately identify himself as gay, thus scuppering the producers attempt to market him to pre-teen girls, and at the same time tell the producers that he wanted to take a year out to write and produce his own album - I've got a lot of respect for Will Young, the rest of them are, as I type, packing their suitcases and touring the working mens clubs of this country at £40 a night, and its all they deserve.
Friday, March 17, 2006
Random painting...
Time for a random painting for no reason at all other than I like it and it happened completely by accident while doodling with some ink and paint one saturday morning.And could I do it again ?
Could I hell-as-like, thats the difference between professionals and us amateurs - the pros could do one of those every hour on the hour, I have to wait several months for things to come together like that.
Basketball - its not fair is it ?
I'm sitting in the office this afternoon suffering from indescribable man-flu like symptoms, I shouldnt be here I should be at home but because the wife kicked me out of the house this morning with instructions to earn some money, I'm sitting here watching TV.
The Commonwealth Games are on from Australia, and in particular, basketball.
Australia are apparently stuffing Scotland.
But it all strikes me as being slightly unfair, the commentator has just mentioned that the australians are getting their big men under the basket and scoring at will, and indeed they are.
But the only reason that they can do this is that their team is full of 8 foot 6 inch freaks who barely have to lift their arms up to gently place the ball in the basket.
This can't be fair surely ?
Whats the point of making the baskets so high off the ground if you can make you players grow tall enough to be at eye level with them ?
Surely the authorities should make the australian basket fifteen or even twenty feet off the floor whereas the scots (who are not known for being a particularly tall race, given their childhood diet of fried food that makes them grow sideways rather than upwards) should have a basket which barely leaves the floor.
Its just a thought - I actually know nothing of this basketball of which they speak.
Its bird flu.
The Commonwealth Games are on from Australia, and in particular, basketball.
Australia are apparently stuffing Scotland.
But it all strikes me as being slightly unfair, the commentator has just mentioned that the australians are getting their big men under the basket and scoring at will, and indeed they are.
But the only reason that they can do this is that their team is full of 8 foot 6 inch freaks who barely have to lift their arms up to gently place the ball in the basket.
This can't be fair surely ?
Whats the point of making the baskets so high off the ground if you can make you players grow tall enough to be at eye level with them ?
Surely the authorities should make the australian basket fifteen or even twenty feet off the floor whereas the scots (who are not known for being a particularly tall race, given their childhood diet of fried food that makes them grow sideways rather than upwards) should have a basket which barely leaves the floor.
Its just a thought - I actually know nothing of this basketball of which they speak.
Its bird flu.
Thursday, March 16, 2006
You're just getting old...
Its true, I'm 50 this year, September actually, 17th to be precise, make a note.
And I'm turning into a right miserable bugger.
Its an age thing.
Its little things like I don't do queues anymore
I'm not as tolorant towards shit music, thats not to say "I don't like modern music" whatever "modern music" is
But I don't like lazy music productions
I just heard a song today that typifies that description, a remake of a (I think) Roxette song, "Listen to your heart", its been given a dance or trance or some other shite mix and a nameless tuneless bird sings the refrain, its shit, but worse than that its lazy music, some production company has spent maybe up to 20 minutes remixing it and then bunged it out around the radio stations, wankers can't write lyrics and music of their own so they fuck up old, and not so old, originals and pretend to the under 12's that its new.
See what I've done there ?
I've gone off on one again, its what happens when you're nearly 50.
It happened yesterday too.
Went to see a customer that was a 90 minute drive away, nice casual drive over the penines, took the moorland route, twas a very nice drive.
When I got to this customers premises I walked into the reception, but it wasn't really a reception area at all, it was a sales counter where they retail to their trade clients.
Five women sat behind desks with computer monitors in front of them, five printers clattering away behind them preparing bills of sale and dispatch notes and about a dozen other people sat on my side of the desks all waiting to be called to the women behind the desks to collect their orders.
Everyone ignored me
I stood there like a friggin spare part waiting for someone to look up from their desk and ask if they could help me
No-one did.
And that fucking annoys me when that happens
I gave them three minutes to acknowledge me, they didn't, so I walked out.
Walked to the car where I'd left my phone, called the person I was supposed to be visiting, couldn't hear them on the mobile then realised I'd left the bluetooth headset switched on.
Hung up, switched the headset off, rang them back, I was not in a pleasant mood by now.
Told the person that if they wanted to see me then they'd better come down to reception now or I'd leave, fortunately they needed to see me more than I needed to see them.
But its growing old that does that, years ago I'd have waited patiently, now I don't do queues at all, not even when the customer is paying me to wait in their ignorant reception area.
I'll stick £50 on the bill for annoying me.
And I'm turning into a right miserable bugger.
Its an age thing.
Its little things like I don't do queues anymore
I'm not as tolorant towards shit music, thats not to say "I don't like modern music" whatever "modern music" is
But I don't like lazy music productions
I just heard a song today that typifies that description, a remake of a (I think) Roxette song, "Listen to your heart", its been given a dance or trance or some other shite mix and a nameless tuneless bird sings the refrain, its shit, but worse than that its lazy music, some production company has spent maybe up to 20 minutes remixing it and then bunged it out around the radio stations, wankers can't write lyrics and music of their own so they fuck up old, and not so old, originals and pretend to the under 12's that its new.
See what I've done there ?
I've gone off on one again, its what happens when you're nearly 50.
It happened yesterday too.
Went to see a customer that was a 90 minute drive away, nice casual drive over the penines, took the moorland route, twas a very nice drive.
When I got to this customers premises I walked into the reception, but it wasn't really a reception area at all, it was a sales counter where they retail to their trade clients.
Five women sat behind desks with computer monitors in front of them, five printers clattering away behind them preparing bills of sale and dispatch notes and about a dozen other people sat on my side of the desks all waiting to be called to the women behind the desks to collect their orders.
Everyone ignored me
I stood there like a friggin spare part waiting for someone to look up from their desk and ask if they could help me
No-one did.
And that fucking annoys me when that happens
I gave them three minutes to acknowledge me, they didn't, so I walked out.
Walked to the car where I'd left my phone, called the person I was supposed to be visiting, couldn't hear them on the mobile then realised I'd left the bluetooth headset switched on.
Hung up, switched the headset off, rang them back, I was not in a pleasant mood by now.
Told the person that if they wanted to see me then they'd better come down to reception now or I'd leave, fortunately they needed to see me more than I needed to see them.
But its growing old that does that, years ago I'd have waited patiently, now I don't do queues at all, not even when the customer is paying me to wait in their ignorant reception area.
I'll stick £50 on the bill for annoying me.
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