News today that Marks and Spencer, that bastion retailer of the British high street aims to find itself "carbon neutral" within five years.
No I don't know what that means either.
But that link does - it says that a home or business which does things to reverse the effect of them simply being here on the planet can be called "carbon neutral".
No, I'm still lost.
Basically it means that every time M&S send a truck out from one of its warehouses to a store, then that truck is producing carbon emissions and so M&S will have to do something to neutralise those emissions, by, erm, planting trees for instance - in fact the only "for instance" that anyone can come up with to reverse the effect that you've just made, is planting trees.
M&S make big claims about checking the source of all of their products and reducing transportation distances - which is hilarious when you consider that M&S used to source all of their garments in the UK until ten years ago when they were responsible for the closure of dozens of manufacturers and thousands of jobs in their quest to source cheaper from the far east.
But even if you buy 10,000 pairs of knickers from down the road instead of Taiwan, you still are producing carbon in getting them to your outlets, so they'll reduce their carbon footprint but never will they completely erradicate it or neutralise it without planting a tree.
We're going to be over-run with fookin trees in this country within five years.
With the house move on the horizon and all, it is decreed that we need to visit Ikea for wardrobes and stuff.
Ikea in Leeds is right across the other side of Leeds from where we live, a 40 minute drive (at least) and its located on the worlds busiest retail park where the worlds worst drivers gather to queue their cars on the worlds worst traffic system every weekend.
I hate going to Ikea, but if theres one thing worse than me hating to go to Ikea then its queueing - I do not do queues - if a shop wants my business then it had damn well better have a parking space available for me within two minutes of me arriving - or I go.
Ikea Leeds have an outside car park and a multi-storey car park, that is to say its multi by the power of two floors, or maybe its three, I honestly don't know how many floors its got but its more than one, the important thing is I've never found a fuckin space in that fuckin car park yet - and I've fuckin tried - I've given them far more than the allocated two minutes on several occasions and still they fail on the car park front.
Two weeks ago we drove all the way across Leeds to Ikea, for wardrobes and stuff, bad mistake, the New Year sale had just started, people were abandoning cars up to a mile away and walking, in the car park itself murders were being committed as each time a car left four others fought over the space, we arrived, drove around all of the floors (more than one) drove around the outside car park, drove around the fuckin staff car park, drove around and around for ten minutes - then drove all the way back home again, theres a nice waste of two fuckin hours of my life.
Today I decided that we should go to Ikea, for wardrobes and stuff.
We arrived, we queued through the worst retail park with the worst traffic management system in the world, we got to the Ikea multi (certainly more than one) storey car park and drove and queued up and down the aisles with not one glimmer of a space, except three times when Suzanne shouted out "theres one there" pointing behind us to a row that we'd just passed where the car behind us was now reversing in.
We tried all the fuckin floors (however many there are), no spaces, we tried the outside fuckin car park, no fuckin spaces, we tried the staff car park, no fuckin space, and so we drove all the way back home again, yet another fuckin waste of two hours of my life and I'm running out of hours in my life now, I should be making good use of what I've got left not queueing all the way to fuckin iIkea then queueing all the way back home again.
So in future, if I ever mention a trip to Ikea, you have my full permission to shoot me, Ikea and their wobbly wardrobes can stick their flat pack concept where the sun don't shine, we'll go to MFI, I know where theres a branch that is on a shabby run down retail park that doesn't get customers any more and you always have your pick of the 2000 car park spaces.
In an act of selfish, self promotion, ladies and gentlemen, today I present to you the new and revised jerrychicken.co.uk web site, the web site of my life, its my autobiography (in progress) and its just here.
If you've been there before it's now 50% bigger with new stuff, new stories, me history writing and a stack of new, old photos - and it easier to sift through all of the gubbins on there now, give it another go, its me, just me.
Why ?
Like the intro says, I just want to leave a flavour of me behind when I step out of the ice-filled tent telling my comrades "I'm going out, I may be some time", I want my offspring to know what it was like to be me in the latter half of the 20th century and maybe one day four or five generations down stream from me someone may point and say "that idiot is related to me you know"
It started with John Boyd, a one-time presenter on BBC Radio Leeds and the regular sunday morning spot on his show that involved a local history geek by the name of John Gilligan who each week would pick a road or a factory in Leeds and describe it history and the part it played in building this fine city of ours.
I'm a sucker for local history.
A friend of mine used to lecture part-time at Leeds University on local history at one of those night school classes that anyone can subscribe to and he is now a respected author on the subject of Leeds and a senior member of the Thoresby Society - the group of similar history geeks that has done so much to preserve our knowledge of our fore-fathers and indeed save some fine old building s from the developers hammer.
So this John Gilligan on Radio Leeds then, he once said something very profound on the sunday morning show, he said that everyone, everyone, should keep a diary, if only for the fact that it would make life much easier for people like him in future when they are looking back at our society and trying to decide what sort of people we were.
His almost exact words were that historians know so much about (for example) Queen Victoria (1819-1901) that they really don't need to know anymore, you can read her daries and other courtiers diaries any time of the day and find out what she had for dinner at Balmoral on any specified day of her life - but how much more interesting woul dit be if for example we could read the diary of the cook who had made that dinner, or the scullery maid, or the girl who turned Her Majesty's bed down every night, or the man who cleaned her toilet out after she'd gone back to London ?
We, as humans, don't want to know lists of dates or political shilly-shallying and nit-picking - what we are all interested in is other, ordinary peoples lives and how they compare to ours.
You see, I can't see the problem in burying rubbish in a big hole.
When ah wor nobbut a lad our school used to force us at gunpoint to do cross country running in the vain hope that it would somehow make us all super fit athletes and blow some of the cigarette smoke out of our young lungs.
Neither aspiration came to fruition but we actually grew to enjoy our cross country runs after we discovered, just down a small path and through some trees, only a small diversion off our supposed route, an old quarry that the council had just finished filling to the brim as a landfill site.
Part of the quarry wall was still standing at one end and the rest of the landfill had been covered with a couple of feet of roadstone hardcore to cap off all of the household rubbish and presumably pretend that all was fine in the world and at some point in the not too distant future the council would be able to sell the rubbish tip to a developer for a new housing estate.
Non of those council machinations bothered us, the filled in, capped-off quarry made a great battleground for throwing stones at each other.
As word of our intense battles grew week on week, more and more boys volunteered for the cross country runs so that eventually a passer-by, walking down the quiet country lane would hear yelps of pain, whoops of joy and the crack of roadstone upon bones as a hundred or so young twelve year old boys clad in running vests and shorts gathered for an hour in an old quarry to throw stones at each other.
Old Sinbad Simpson the PE teacher was delighted by his cross country ideals, fortunately he was too bone idle to follow us on the route that he insisted we use, if he had then he would have been puzzled to discover no-one actually running upon it, apart from Johnson and Denton the school swots who took cross country running too seriously - we dragged them into the quarry one day and gave them the stoning of their young lives.
So back to todays topic...
British rubbish is being sent to China for recycling and "green" people are getting into all sorts of a lather over it, claiming that sending rubbish halfway around the world, and then quite likely sending the recycled stuff all the way back again - is sort of defeating the object of being green in the first place.
I agree.
Landfill is a much better option in this country.
I've heard the argument that we're fast running out of landfill sites to landfill - absolute tosh - theres loads of holes to fill in this country, and if they can't find holes, why not use a genuine valley or two ?
Filled with household rubbish and capped off with two foot of roadstone, Wharfedale will serve the next generation of cross country schoolboy runners with stone throwing practice for decades to come, then we can build houses on it.
One web site that can alwasy be guaranteed to provide. oooh. minutes of entertainment, is the British Pathe archive.
Originally a Parisien photographer and fledgling filmmaker, Cahrles Pathe came to London in 1902 and set up a business of movie theatres, owning more than 200 in England, France and Belgium by 1909 whilst also manufacturing the cameras and projectors - Charles Pathe was a busy man.
The name "British Pathe" though is synominous with cinema newsreels, something which the company specialised in and produced for genrations of British families for whom a television set was either impossible (not invented yet) or a far distant luxury - most people would go to their local cinema at least once a week (often much more than that) and inbetween the two-film presentation they'd be treated to the Pathe news clips.
Some years ago with the aid of National Lottery funding the British Pathe newsreel film catalogue was made availble online and for private, non-commercial use you can, by giving the minimum of details, download and view any of their hundreds of thousands of old newsreel clips.
Some of them have obvious personal interest - the clip of the 1968 rugby legaue challenge cup final is a favourite of mine and the staff at the Pathe web site must be sick and tired of running along the library shelves to get the correct reel to download for me (thats how it works isn't it ?) , but you can have lots of fun by simply searching for completely random subjects too.
For instance last night on some anonymous teatime tv chat show they showed a clip of the first bananas to arrive in the UK after the second world war - a whole generation of children had grown up not knowing what a banana was due to the wartime import restrictions and a very self important narrator explained this on the film and then in a very condescending manner handed a banana to a young girl and aksed her to eat it - she obviously thought he was some sort of pervert or one of the "dirty men" that her mother had warned her of and it took a lot of persuasion for her to nibble just a tiny little piece off the top of the exotic fruit and then declare to the camera in a very carefully scripted way "mmm, its delicious !"
The accents on those old films are hilarious, everyone sounds just like the Queen does now (note for non-UK residents - no-one speaks like the Queen does in this country, we all have our own accents and dialects) but the subjects of the Pathe films were obviously pre-selected for their Queens English cut-glass accents and word perfect, well scripted delivery to camera, even scruffy oik, working class people speak like the Duke of Edinburgh in Pathe films and if you look closely enough you can see where dirt and grime has been smeared on the actors face just before the shot was taken for that "working class man in the street" look.
I recommend the Pathe film library to the house - do a search for "bananas" and scroll down until you get to the monochrome ones.
PS - For complete British sycophancy you simply must do a search for "Windrush" and view the "Ingrid Bergman/ new immigrants" film - your toes will curl I promise you !
Captain Robert Falcon Scott's last letter to his wife before he died of, erm, cold, is exhibited at the Scott Polar Research Institute Museum in Cambridge from the 17th January.
But first a question to the rest of the world outside of the UK - have you ever heard of Roald Amundsen ?
No ?
Ha!, didn't think so, no-one has, he's only known inside his native Norway as the hero who was the first man to arrive at the south pole, while here in the UK he's the bas'tad who beat Scott of the Antarctic to the pole - a quest which ended in trgedy for our national hero who, along with his team of fools, died on the way back.
Captain Robert Falcon Scott is a great British hero, he has all the qualities of a great British hero, he has a hero's name, all hero's have names that no parent would consider giving their child - would you call a child of your's "Falcon", no of course you wouldn't, not unless you wanted that child to be an explorer and national hero.
He also had that other great British attribute, the desire to go and do something so totally futile and so incredibly dangerous that all sane humans will stand around, shake their heads and mutter, "he's a nut, or a hero, I can't decide which".
The British nation love futile gestures, our history is littered with them - The Charge of the Light Brigade in 1854 when a Brigade of Dragoon Guards charged on horseback armed only with swords and complete buffoonary into fifty Russian field guns, not suprisingly they failed in their endeavour, were cut to smithereens by the guns, but have been held in esteem as great British heros ever since, we love heroic failure.
Like wise Scott of the Antarctic and his 1912 mission with four mates to walk to the south pole clad in canvas clothing to claim the south pole for the British Empire - as if we'd need some ice - all went well for the intrepid heros until they arrived at the pole to find that they'd been beaten there by an anonymous bas'tad Norweigian a month earlier - "oh bollacks" Robert Falcon Scott was heard to mutter, "there goes my hero status".
Turning around to head back to their iced-in ship "Terra Nova" the party of five were hit by terrible ice storms and in temperatures of 70 below freezing they managed to lose Petty Officer Edgar Evans who fell during a storm and was left in a coma.
Another, Captain Lawrence Titus Oates (see, another heros name, who would use the name "Titus" on a child), suffered from terrible frostbite but our heros would not abandon him to his fate on the ice and slowed the pace down despite the urgent need to get to a food and fuel dump just 11 miles in fron tof them - they had one days hot food ration left and two days cold food when an ice storm hit them and confined them to their one tent for four days at which point Captain Lawrence Titus Oates made his famous last statement "I am going outside, I may be some time" - what a truly heroic and futile hero he was - and he lived just a few miles away from where I'm sitting right now.
The remaining futile, foolhardy and yet true British bloodstock fookin idiots took to their sleeping bags and died of , erm, cold-ness some time later after which an adoring nation took them to their busom and celebrated their idiocy in a thousand boys book of daring-do - every British schoolboy for the next millenium will know of Scott of the Antarctic and his completely pointless ambition to reach the pole first.
All of which shows the English Cricket team in a different light -a rriving in Australia for their bi-annual thrashing and humilation at the hands of antipodeans who seem to be playing a different game to our lads, we can at least feat their arrival back on these shores at some point in the future as true British futile heros, no-one does futility quite like the British.
I don't know why this suddenly needs posting here but it does before the thought leaves my mind...
"Spot the Kydd" is a great game that is played in our household on many a sunday afternoon when all that is on TV are those crap British films from the 1940/50/60's - the only aim of the game being to spot where Sam Kydd makes an entrance.
And he always does.
If the film was made in England between 1940 and 1982 (when he died) then Sam Kydd will be in it, his IMBD entry lists 232 film and TV series appearances but do not think that it must therefore be an easy game to play, many of Sam Kydds roles were minor, very minor, so minor that its impossible to understand how he ever made a living at this acting mularky.
If you are struggling to find the Sam Kydd moment in a likely film then stop watching the main action for a moment and watch the passers-by in the background - Sam Kydd often plays milkmen, whistling as he delivers a pint to a doorstep down the road then never appearing again in that film - spotting him takes some doing but after a while you will become adept at "spotting the Kydd" and like me will find it impossible to take your eyes from the screen during a particularly crap sunday afternoon British film until you've achieved your objective, at which point you can finally turn the film off content in the knowledge that he's been and gone.
a pretense of having a virtuous character, moral or religious beliefs or principles, etc., that one does not really possess.
2.
a pretense of having some desirable or publicly approved attitude.
3.
an act or instance of hypocrisy.
Heard on the radio today an anonymous bishop of somewhere proclaiming that the pending Act of Parliament that will outlaw discrimination against people on grounds of sexual orientation will in itself be discriminatory against people of christian, jewish and muslim faiths.
In other words he wants the right to continue his discrimination against a section of society without that section of society having the ability to claim discrimination.
He went further to claim that he was speaking on behalf of an "all faith group" who were devastated that their preaching of the evils of homosexuality will soon be viewed as morally wrong in law and that christians, jews and muslims the world over were united in the belief that it was right to condemn "this minority group".
This would be the same christian, jewish and muslim groups who have been trying to wipe each other off the face of the planet for the last two thousand years then would it bishop ?
"All faith group" my arse - religious demoninations hate each other with an intensity that is only matched by their apparent hatred of gays, and now they are running scared of being exposed as hypocritic fear-mongers who enjoy nothing more than to spread lies and prejudice about a group of people who they view as "different", "wrong" and even "evil".
Bottom line is that the proposed new law, which is already inplace in Northern Ireland and therefore odds-on favourite to be law here soon, makes it illegal for anyone or any organisation to discriminate against a person on grounds of sexual orientation - so for instance a hotel could not refuse to offer a room to a gay couple, a organisation could not refuse to carry out work for a gay couple simply because they were gay and a church hall could not refuse to hire out a church hall for an event on the grounds that gay couples might be there.
Basically it is the same rights enshrined in law that black people have had in this country since the racial discrimination laws were enacted in 1968, before that time it was considered quite acceptable for hotels to refuse rooms to black people, and if not acceptable it was certainly legal, we now look back at that time and shake our heads in disbelief and wonder why it took so long to legislate.
One day we will look back at these times, shake our heads in disbelief and point at religious organisations and correctly accuse them of gross and intense prejudice and hypocrisy while they sit and wonder why no-one takes them seriously anymore.
There is lots of speculation in the press today that the UK Singles Music Chart could soon be packed full of "oldies", and in particular we could soon see a whole top ten of The Beatles singles soon.
All of this is due to a small change in the way that the UK's weekly singles sales are calculated. Last year the rules were changed to allow internet downloads to qualify as sales when the charts were calculated, but only if the download was of a song that could also be currently bought as a single in the music shops, ie invariably the only downloads that counted were of current releases.
Now, after the rule change, all download sales will count regardless of whether you can buy the track it in a shop, in a single format - a simple rule change which of course blows the whole record sales thing wide open to every single piece of music that is available on the internet - and that means any album track that is available, not just those that were commercially released as a single.
Which is good news of course.
Lazy reporting in the press though, but thats no suprise - you see none of The Beatles tracks are currently available for download, either as The Beatles or individually, I should know, I've been looking for one of George Harrisons albums on legal t'interweb sites for years now.
That may change in future of course as record companies look to embrace the medium of download sales, something that they've been keener to ban in recent years, theres nothing quite like money to encourage a complete 180 degree spin in attitudes though.
It also raises the question of how this will affect the credibility of the UK Singles Chart, a credibility that has been completely lacking in substance for many years now, well, ever since Louis Walsh and his cohorts flooded the market with pretty boys singing cover versions - Louis and friends should have been hung from lamp posts years ago for single handedly bringing the whole of the UK music scene into complete disrepute, somehow he's got away with it and is even now still pushing the "boy band" format as an credible music genre - go find another cow to milk Louis, your time is nearly up.
The main question is how will new bands get a fair hearing in the charts if, as predicted, everyone is really downloading "old stuff" - how will a chart full of hits from ten years ago help a new band who cannot break into the market ?
Publicity thats how - record companies will have to get off their fat arses and start promoting again rather than let word of mouth build up the few ten thousand sales needed to currently get into the charts - promote your best acts and they will stand shoulder to shoulder with anything thats gone before.
Let me draw your attention to my post from saturday when I reviewed some of the Napster top ten tips for 2007 - at least two of the bands on that list, Fried and The Gossip stand comparison with any (proper) R&B performers that now qualify for the newly formatted UK Singles Chart, I've gone so far as to say that the two female vocalists in those bands stand comparison with Aretha Franklin, and you can't compare higher than that - both of those bands will do well in a head-to-head on download sales - if they are sufficiently promoted and if the crap producers that write the playlists for 90% of the UK radio stations actually bother to do their job and research the fledgling market properly.
News that the old BBC childrens programme for adults, Tomorrws World is returning, if not in quite the same format as in days of yore, will be greeted with whoops of joy from technophobes and "huh ?" from the rest of the population.
The golden days of Tomorrows World were in the late 60's when chief presenter Raymond Baxter ruled the roost, a headmaster type figure, Baxter had been a WWII war hero, a spitfire pilot - and it showed. Tall, ramrod straight, coiffed hair in a permenant wave, Baxter had the classic BBC accent and had perfected the method of speking down to people in a way that made you pretend that you understood what he was talking about even if you didn't just so that he wouldn't get annoyed at you and give you detention.
He was joined on the programme by a man who did voiceovers to the film clips, a mysterious man who's face we never saw but who's voice would be instantly recognisable in a lift - that mans voice was the voice of the 60's, hip, trendy, I bet he wore a polo neck pullover and drove an E Type Jag and pretended to be a photographer when he chatted up the dolly birds in trendy London night clubs - I bet he once shagged Princes Margaret too.
Sorry, I got carried away in that last para.
Baxter finally got an on-screen co-presenter in the guise of James Burke. If Baxter was the headmaster then Burke was the fashionable, easily excitable, fresh faced from college, new English teacher, the one who wants to be friends with the sixth form boys and thinks that school teachers can carry off flares with a cardigan.
James Burke also headed up the BBC's presentations of all of the Apollo space missions and eventually had several of his own series presenting the history of science and discovery - these were classic BBC years and have always been what the BBC is best at.
Over the years Tomorrows Word presented the vision of what todays world would be like, I always imagined that in the year 2000 we'd all have a pair of boots that enabled us fly by means of small rockets located in the heels, and James Burke encouraged us to think in this manner. Little did we know that life in the year 2000 would be pretty much as it was in 1968, different shaped cars maybe, a few more TV channels here and there, but fundimentally the same, no rocket boots, no-one living on the moon, no-one living in floating apartment blocks way up in the stratosphere even, you still can't drive your car across the Thames without the use of a bridge, and you can't buy those inflatable boots in the shops that enabled you to walk across the Thames.
Since Tomorrows World left our screens some years ago the closest that we have come is those John Stalker adverts for motorised garage doors, "On days like these who wants to struggle with a garage door ?" in which he resurects the Raymond Baxter condescending tone for commercial gain, so it will be with some enthusiasm and a small dash of voyerism that I try and catch the new Tomorrows World insert into the News24 channel, presented by Maggie Philbin who had a spell in the original format after leaving The Multi Coloured Swap Shop when Keith Chegwin started showing more than a passing interest in her (and who can blame her, I wouldn't like Keith Chegwin to even glance at me).
I'll never take her seriously though, when was the last time she flew a spitfire in combat ?
Last night I decided to have a look and a listen at the Napster top ten tips for 2007 and to listen to a couple of bands that had been suggested to me by others (results below), but one band stood head and shoulders above the others - Fried.
Unfortunately Napster only has two tracks by the band but you only need two tracks to recognise extreme quality when you hear it.
See that bloke walking behind the girl ?
Thats David Steel that is, former bandylegged, weird dancemonger, songwriter member of the Fine Young Cannibals and the story goes that he spent five years auditioning and searching for a female singer to do justice to his songs - and he's hit upon a real talent with New Orleans gospel singer Jonte Short (also in picture).
Reviewers have spoken of similarities to Lauryn Hill and Macy Gray, she's better than both of them put together Listening to those two short tracks on Napster restored my faith in the modern day use of the music phrase "R&B" - most usage of that word is superflous, the users not actually comprehending what the phrase means - Jonte Short has both rythmn and blues and soul, lots of soul, soul ouzes its way through every word - a comparison to Aretha Franklin would be in order if and when I finally manage to hear more from them.
I recommend this band to the house without hesitation.
The rest of my reviews ...
Napster Top Ten Tips for 2007.
The Rumble Strips - my notes say that the lead singer sounds like Kevin Rowland from Dexy's Midnight Runners, this should tell you everything you need to know - they are not bad and are worth another listen but not stand-out at the moment.
Scott Mathews - very good, listened to eight tracks of his last night and not one let me down, very laid back style, very easy to listen to, well worth looking out for.
Rishi Rich - a bangra influence, its crap.
Fields - interesting, my notes say 80's tech meets 60's "telstar" synthesizers - won't be looking them up again though.
30 Seconds to Mars - again worth a listen to but nothing special, bland is a word I use often where a band does not have a stand-out singer at the front - bland fits this band.
MSTRKRFT - absolute shite, this is the sort of all encompasing techno crap that you hear being played far too loudly in bars that you have to pay to get into, where everyone thinks the music is great but no-one has a clue who it is and they certainly don't buy the stuff deliberately except for those compilation albums called "Ibiza Banging" or similar where you get four cd's for eight quid and all forty tarcks are identical - avoid this steaming pile of crap.
Director - they were interesting, their dads obviously wore sta-prest trousers and loafers and payed a non-stop diet of ska in the house when they were kids because the influence is definitely there, as is some 60's psychodelia, worth another listen definitely.
other bands that were recommended to me last night...
The Gossip - excellent, very comparable to the band "Fried" that I mentioned right at the start, in fact I stacked up a Gossip track right above Fried last night and they drifted from one straight into the other, its suprising just how alike the two female singers are - and both have R&B and Soul in quantity - I strongly recommend this band.
Just Jack - interesting, you wouldn't object if you heard them in a bar, but bland, nothing particularly stands out about this band.
Arcade Fire - very good, at last a band with a singer with a distinctive voice, listened to several tracks of theirs last night and was not disappointed - recommended.
Cold War Kids - another distinctive vocal, another fine band, well crafted, well produced, I like these.
Two Gallants - likewise, another good find, they are on my "listen" list for sure.
One more artist that I've had recommended ...
Eric Bogle - a Scottish/Australian folk singer, completely different to all of the above, but writes some beautiful evocative songs, "scraps of paper" and "the band played waltzing matilda" are two of the most soul searching story songs that I've heard in many years.
So there you have it, my take on Napsters (and others) recomendations for 2007, enjoy...
PS - ONE BIG WORD OF WARNING !!!
If you're looking for an album by the band "Fried" then check the sleeve notes, you are looking for the soul band Fried with the lead singer Jonte Short - there is a heavy thrash band called "Fried" as well - they are complete unadulterated shite and you do not want to assault your earbuds with anything of that sort.
There will be a phone call this morning, made from the ECB (English Cricket Board) to a bus company somewhere advising them that they won't be needing the open topped bus for the victory parade through London, but do they have a plain white one with blacked out windows instead ?
Yes, once again a sporting team have left these shores and travelled to Australia for a damn good thrashing in the sport of their choice - pick a sport, any sport, and the chances are that the Australian nation will beat an English team at it - style and fashion sense is probably the only thing that we are better at but claiming to have more style than a nation who still prefer to wear long socks and shoes with shorts is not exactly the pinnacle of styledom.
Truth is, we don't really give a toss about sport in this country.
Sure, the press do, but thats only because newspapers have one or two back pages to fill every day.
We give a toss when one of our team wins, when the England RU team returned from Australia after winning the 2003 Rugby Union World Cup they had an open top bus tour through London that attracted between 1 and 10,000,000 spectators, depending on which newspaper your read (newspapers are notorious at picking crowd figures out of thin air, especially at rugby union events), and most of those spectators stood on a London pavement as the bus passed, cheered, hurray'ed, waved a flag, then asked "who are they then ?"
Likewise when the England cricket team beat Australia in this country 16 months ago, an open topped bus drove them through the streets of London where the same 1 to 10,000,000 people (newspapers are notorious at picking crowd figures out of thin air, especially at cricket events), cheered, hurray'ed, waved the same flag that they'd saved from the RU event two years previously, then asked "is this the rugby team then ?"
So the post mortem begins and on the BBC Sports web site we have a long list of perfect excuses ...
Englands captain Michael Vaughan was absent through injury England bowler Simon Jones was absent through injury Englands Marcus Trescothick was absent through stress, poor love England didn't prepare properly for the test series, they only had two years notice of the games England bowling coach Troy Cooley left the squad England video analyst Time Boon left the squad England medical officer Dr Peter Gregory left the squad England bowler and captain Freddie Flintoff hasn't played much cricket recently Englands Ashley Giles hasn't played all year, but did in the test series Englands two wicket keepers were, erm, crap England were too complacent
...and thats just from one small web page.
I would also like to add my own excuses...
It was the wrong type of grass It was too sunny You can't expect our cricketers to play right through the day in perfect weather conditions None of the test matches were interrupted by stoppages for rain or bad light Its bad sportsmanship to beat your opponents every time you play them Australians are very boisterous We don't care anymore
Today the newspapers are full of "How crap are the England cricket team" reports, tomorrow it will all be forgotten and football will take over the back pages again, and in two years time when Australia play England again the newspapers will pretend to be interested and mention the 2005 test series win by England and ignore this defeat and a bus company somewhere will receive a call from the ECB to ask if they have an open topped bus available "just in case - and how much notice of cancellation do you need ?".
In press parlance "a row has broken out today" between retailers (ie supermarkets) and the Governments own Food Standards Agency over the issue of labelling foodstuffs in order to inform us uninterested consumers of how likely said food is to kill us.
The picture (above) shows the retailers (ie supermarkets) idea of a food label - this is the Guideline Daily Amount (GDA) label and if it appeared (for instance) on a packet of cornflakes you'd see that said cornflakes would contain only 2% of the amount of salt you could eat in a day, according to the Food Standards Agency's own calculations - so you could eat 50 packets of cornflakes in that day, and indeed 50 more the next day if you wish, and in doing so would get all of the salt you need.
Mind, if you did that then you'd also have eaten 125% of your fat intake each day and 700% of your sugar intake, so maybe its not such a good idea to literally eat 50 packets of cornflakes each and every day, have some variance in your diet, maybe try sugar puffs one day instead.
HM Government (ie the Food Standards Agency) is annoyed at the retailers (ie supermarkets) for not taking up their own recommended labelling system, the so-called "Traffic Light" indicator (left) where the levels of bad stuff are graded into green (ok), amber (not so ok) and red (really bad for you) indicators in order that us completely stupid consumers can glance at each packet for a few milliseconds and just buy the stuff with lots of green indicators.
So we're back to eating 50 packets of cornflakes a day then.
The whole point of both systems is of course to provide us all with information, personally I prefer the GDA method, only because it took me just two seconds to work out that I can eat 50 packets of cornflakes in a day (if indeed that label is from a cornflake packet, which I never said it was, for all I know cornflakes could be made entirely out of salt) - but regardless of what I think its plainly obvious that both retailers and government consider us to be fat, lazy and dying by the day from congested artery's, diabetes and congealed brains, to the extent where we have to be warned every day and every time we pick up a packet of food, what to eat and how much.
But are we really that unhealthy ?
Our grandparents lived completely different lifestyles to us, they had no supermarkets, they had very little pre-prepared, pre-packaged food, they had few ingredients that had been created in a lab and not naturally, few preservatives that were not sugar or vinegar, they ate vegetables to fill them up, they grew a lot of their vegetables and the vegetables that they bought in shops didn't come from factory farms that were fed on artificial fertilizers but instead came from local growers who fed their veggetables on shit.
Sounds like a Government Foods Agency plan for a healthy lifestyle ?
Not quite, our grandparents died at least 20 years before we do, our grandparents generation thought that 65 was a great age, if your lived to 65 you got a pension and then died through inactivity within a year or so, and that was your lot, you'd done well if you reached 65 and if you reached 70 you were being unfair to the rest of the country in drawing that pension and using your ration book.
So the truth is that we're eating badly compared to our grandparents, but we're living much longer - I'd be devastated if I died at 65, my grand-dad died at 64 and his gravestone states that "he had a good innings" (he was a keen cricketer) - why ?
Because I eat crap thats why, I'm overweight and sedentary but I'm thriving on it, my grand-dad fought in two wars, played cricket every weekend until he died, dug his garden over every couple of months, walked to work every day, and the poor bugger wore himself out before he drew his pension - its not right, humans aren't designed to be active all the time, we need our armchairs and TV if we are to live to 96 years of age and this retail and government campaign to get us to eat healthily is wrong, its all bollacks, we need those preservatives to preserve our internal organs - eat more crap, dine at fast food outlets three times a week, check the food labels for "e" numbers, you need them.
Yesterdays return to work by many city dwelling office workers saw their first new shock of 2007 - train fares increased across the board.
Our train operators in the UK are all private companies delivering a public service on behalf of HM Government who abdicated their responsibility to provide a public transport service many years ago - but still like to keep at least one finger in the pie.
The train operators have two levels of price increases - those lines which are deemed by HM Government to be "regulated" services, ie the routes that commuters use most regularly, and the "unregulated" lines, ie everything else.
Regulated routes are allowed by Government decree to have a 1% above inflation increase every year in order to encourage investment in the rolling stock and service to customers whilst showing some sort of restraint on price increases. Unregulated routes are a free for all with every operator applying whatever increases they think they can get away with.
The 4.3% rises on regulated routes and up to 7.3% increases on some other lines don't really affect me at all, I have a car and use it always in preference to public transport, HM Government has not yet invented a reliable, safe, clean method of transporting me where I need to be at any time of the day that will surpass my car and the last time I used a train was around 15 years ago - the last time I used a bus was...I can't remember when the last time I used a bus was.
Now you may remember that back in April last year I tried to book a journey by train from Newcastle to Leeds and failed dismally to even find out how much it would cost me, let alone when the bloody train would run, eventually with the online help of someone who knows about trains and things I managed to get quotes from two operators who gave me eight different, completely different prices for a single ticket on exactly the same train, eight people sitting in the same carriage could have paid a fare ranging from £11 to £80 depending on whether they had a friend like mine who knows about trains, or not.
Confusion on tickets and their pricing is just one issue though - the real big one is that HM Government desires that we desist from using our cars for journeys and instead use public transport, trains being one of the favoured forms of public transport - unfortunately the train operators would prefer it if not so many of us would use their services.
Its a well known and well publicised fact that many train routes at certain times of the day are now specially targetted for special extortion by the operator simply because too many people want to use them - most obviously these are commuter routes at the start and end of the day when most people are travelling to and from work - the demand for services at these times of day are well documented to cause serious overcrowding on trains with most commuters having to stand in carriages for most, if not all of their route - and still pay the same price as those lucky enough to get a seat, an inflated price at that - I've said it before many times, if you invented a train carriage now you'd never get the idea past the Health and Safety Executive :-
"So you have 300 seats on your train, how many have seat belts ?" "None of them sir, I don't think they'll need seat belts" "Oh dear, erm, well we do actually" "Well if we promise not to stop quickly will it be ok ?" "We'll take it into consideration, erm, what is this scheme here for allowing another 500 people to stand on your train ?" "Well theres loads of room in the aisles when all the seats are taken and I thought, well maybe we could squash a lot more in if they stood up" "Do we really think that this is safe, hmmm ?" "It will be if they're really crammed in properly, they'll cushion each other when we crash" "I think you need to think this through again Mr Stephenson"
The obvious answer to anyone who gives the topic just two seconds of thought is "if the route is so popular that is causes massive overcrowding, then why not put more carriages on the train ?", too simple a solution ? Put it in a supermarket context - a demand is created for Birds Custard that means that it sells out as soon as the tins are put on the shelves, what do the supermarkets do - do they put the price up to £20 a tin so that no-one buys it any more, or do they just make room on their shelves to stock more of the product - I'll leave you to come to the obvious conclusion.
So there we have it - a Government who would love us to all save the planet and transfer our allegences to public transport versus transport operators who can't figure out a solution on how to handle the current level of demand let alone the Government desired increases and who are allowed (with the sanction of Government) to increase fares year on year to discourage public transport usage.
Sat and watched Monty Pythons "Life of Brian" until just after 11pm and then decided to retire to my bed, leaving just Amanda downstairs working on one of her "A" Level projects.
11.30pm I heard a knock at the door, a sort of loud and frantic knock, so of course I left it. The knock came again, louder and more frantic this time, I got up to answer the door.
Met Amanda in the hallway, she'd checked the cctv monitor, she didn't recognise the two people that were banging on the door outside.
I opened the door as wide as I could, with a hallway full of junk ready to go to the tip after we'd spent all day emptying the loft ready for the house move it wasn't easy, and there stood our two next door neighbours looking extremely worried, soaking wet in the lashing rain and gale force wind - I thought they were going to tell me that their house had blown down or something of an equal gravity.
"Our rabbits missing" our neighbour informed me, "can we look in your garden"
I stared at him for a long time and pondered on how to phrase "are you fucking nuts ?" in a more polite way, it came out as "I'll open the garden gate for you, wait there".
So there I was onthe other side of our securely locked garden gate, 11.30 at night, in wind and lashing rain, in shorts and a t-shirt, trying to find the key to unlock the garden gate - I'd made it so secure a couple of years ago after a burglary that I couldn't find the right key in the dark so eventually I let them in to the garden by letting them tramp through the house, me with my "I don't quite belive this is happening" look on my face and Amanda falling about laughing while trying to hang onto Jake so that he didn't get out into the garden on a rabbit hunt of his own.
I need to explain that our neighbours have had this rabbit (that looks remarkably like the on in the picture) for about five years and let it roam their garden freely in the belief that it won't roam away if they feed it regularly, its always finding its way into our garden and Jake often chases it back through the hedge.
This time though it appears as though its gone for a much longer stroll and they failed to find any trace of it last night, hardly suprising of course, the only real question is "why wait until midnight to start looking you fekking idiots".
As I let them out of the house, still trying to think of polite chit-chat to save me questioning their sanity, I almost found myself telling them about the fox that I'm convinced that we have living underneath one of our sheds - Jake seems convinced that theres something under there anyway - but I didn't think it would be quite appropriate last night.
So what with rabbit lovers living on one side and the fekking idiot pigeon man and his menagery of everything feathered living on the other side, we're living in a proper nuthouse at the moment, I hope the people who are buying the house from us like rabbits and birds because we'll be well out of it by then.
In an attempt to behave like a normal family and "do things" together, at least three of us, and the dog, today took a long walk in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. The half the excuse that we needed was the fact that Jodie is now well and truly signed up for a four week trek in South Africa in 18 months time and we realised last night that the furthest that she has ever treked in her 14 years on earth is...not very far at all. So we went on a trek to the Bolton Abbey Strid Walk today.
Just as an aside I've also joined this web site which lists loads of walks in National Parks, didn't need their services today but we might do another one tomorrow over Embsay Crag which looks like it might need map reading and compass skills - that should be a laugh as my first question is "whats a compass ?" - I really should check all this stuff out first with our Ned who has walked around the world twice to date with the aid of a big map and a compass.
I've attached a Flickr slide show to the toolbar on the right with a group of piccies that I took today, it really was quite pleasant, a nice four and a half mile walk up one side of the River Wharfe, across an old victorian aquaduct and back down the other side, starting and finishing in the Cavendish Pavillion cafe which was full when we got back so I never got to stuff down the Mars Bar that I'd been craving for after the first mile - lesson number one learned on hike number one - take Mars Bars.
This next bit will probably bore those who prefer not to be reminded that they have sedentary lifestyles - listen to me, I sound like a proper greybeard with a knapsack on my back and a compass round my neck, striding off over someone's private moorland - the pictures ...
Heading up river, nice colours eh ? Yes the river is a little full at the moment, its the rain you know. Its also a really reddy brown at the moment with all the peat that is washed off the fells at this time of year, what ? No it doesn't look at all brown in the photo does it, it is though.
This is the start of The Strid, a 200 foot narrow gorge where the normally wide and docile river is sucked through at impressive speed, only 6 feet wide at its narrowest it presents an irresistable challenge to fools who want to die in an attempt to jump across the always wet and always slippery rocks - fall in The Strid and you don't come out because what you can't see from the surface is that its approx 20 feet deep at this point and those rocks that you see are undercut into huge caverns where the water simply swirls around and around without exiting, go under at this point and you genuinely don't appear at the other end for several weeks.
I've seen The Strid during a drought year when the water was only a few feet deep and the sight is truly awesome when you see just how far undercut those rocks are, its not hard to see why people disappear here and why its a favourite spot for suicides including a honeymoon couple some 15 or so years ago who disappeared at this spot the day after their wedding and were not found for several weeks, there is no safe way of searching those underground caverns, you simply wait for The Strid to spit the bodies back out when its finished with them.
So that made a nice way to pass an afternoon then, I really enjoyed our little hike, even though true backpackers will scoff in our feeble attempt to gain some kudos in their world of compass bearings and waypoints, bollocks to you all, we'll just follow the arrows on the paths until I learn which way up the map goes.
Jodie has 18 months to learn all of this stuff or get eaten by a lion, so that should be motivation enough.
PS - Poor Jake had a bleeding paw when we got back to the car, just checked it and he's scuffed the skin off two pads, bloody soft dog, thats him signed off for tomorrow then.
My nomination for the most pointless piece of legislation...ever, is the news today that the minimum age at which to buy cigarettes in Britain is to be raised from 16 to 18. Full story
Like it will make a difference.
According to government statistics 450 British children start smoking every day, thats 164000 new childhood smokers every year, and those children have no problem whatsoever in purchasing, borrowing, scrounging or stealing cigarettes from parents, friends or shopkeepers.
The only control on the supply of cigarettes to children is on the few occasions during the year when the local Trading Standards Agency have nothing else to do with their time and can borrow a child from a nearby school to make test purchases at random shops - in other words there is virtually no control at all and you may as well make the minimum age 5 years or 80 years old if you can't police it effectively.
I've never been a smoker and so can't and won't comment on what it means to a smoker to take a long drag on a cigarette, its obviously something that is immensley enjoyable or they wouldn't do it or waste so much money on the habit/addiction, I have friends who have smoked and a few who still smoke, and they all enjoy it / have enjoyed it, to the point where the health warnings are known but irrelevant.
The puzzle is of course why children should take up smoking in the first place, I know from my childrens schoolwork that they have the anti-smoking message hammered into them in science lessons, but still they start in alarming numbers - maybe some of them are already addicted, have been addicted to nicotine since they were in the womb and have been brought up in smoking houses, its easy to see why those children should simply continue the habit as soon as their thumbs are strong enough to flick the trigger on a bic lighter.
But others join them, others like my eldest daughter who has been known to drag on a cigarette whilst out with her friends, despite my threats of disinheriting her and casting her out homeless into the street if I catch her - my threats of disinheritance are getting to be meaningless recently, there won't be much left to inherit soon.
I don't know why they do it, I can't understand the need, I don't pretend to have an answer, but I know that the answer is not more meaningless legislation.
Surely the Queen can't be so remiss as to keep ignoring me all of these years ?
To those who are not subjects of Her Majesty, we have this little ritual twice a year where the Queen announces a list of her subjects who are to receive a medal from her, the New Years Eve list is one, and her birthday list (one of her birthdays anyway, she has two each year, its why she is so old) is the other.
There are various levels of awards that you can get and no-one is really sure what the hierachy is, its fairly certain though that an OBE (pictured) is the starter point of Her Maj's appreciation and a Knighthood (you get to call yourself "Sir") is the pinnacle, or maybe becoming a Lord is better, who knows ?
So twice a year we get the list announced and the press crawl all over it to pick out the best bits and the best bits are always show business celebrities and a handful of "ordinary people".
The whole idea of public honouring is of course that the person nominated has made some significant contribution to public service, preferably at some cost to themselves and no cost to the public, so for instance a person who has dedicated all of their spare time to running a local youth club for the last 30 years would be a suitable candidate for a medal, a token of appreciation from their community.
School crossing ladies are alwasy a favourite inthe press and without fail there is always one of them on there, a "lollipop lady gets a gong" is a headline that is dusted down every six months without fail.
But of course like all things royal the Queen has fekkall to do with the system, the nominees come from local and central government committees, which is fine for the lollipop ladies and scoutmasters who can be nominated by their local community, but like all things involving prestige and reward the process gets hijacked by those who wish to fawn and be seen being "cool" or scoring kudos amongst voters by nominating popular culture figures, and in no genre is this more visible than show business.
If you appear on TV at any point in yor life then you stand a good chance of getting a medal for "services to TV" despite the fact that you may be crap at your job, your TV series may have been dropped by the broadcasters with the last six episodes still unshown, it doesn't matter, you were on TV, you get an OBE, its the law.
So this year, like all other years we get the celebrity medals.
Rod Stewart for one.
Now I used to be a big Rod Stewart fan, but as stated previously, only until 1977 when he sold out and moved to Los Angeles to avoid the punk revolution in this country and immerse himself in LA Disco crap, he's lived there ever since, paid his income tax to the US Government ever since and produced shite music ever since, especially int he last five years.
So he gets a CBE for "services to music" - I'm a former fan, I listen to his music, don't make me fuckin laugh with "services to music", the only thing he's serviced for the last thirty years is his several wives.
The Queens grand daughter Zara Phillips also gets a medal, an MBE, for her sporting achievments, and Ian Woosnam, golfer, does too - both have been successful this year in their chosen sports but every year I ponder on the fact that they are substantially financially rewarded for doing something that they would do for free and the whole point of "doing sports" professionally is to win - its a sad indictment on British sports that our competitors always get an honour from the Queen on their first competition win, then we never hear from them again.
Another genre of prime candidates for the governments honours list (we won't call it the Queens honours list any more, she hasn't a fookin clue who these people are), are those who's jobs involve public service - civil servants have long been a staple of all honours lists, again, people who are adequately rewarded for just doing their job, then more than adequately rewarded with a final salary pension, then take the piss with an honour too - awarded to them by other civil servants who in turn expect theirs when they retire, its a self perpetuating system.
So John Scarlett gets a Knighthood, he is now Sir John Scarlett.
Who is he ?
Good question, he is the head of MI6, the British secret service, personally I think its fantastic that we have a Captain Scarlett as head of MI6, its just like those Gerry Anderson puppet programmes all over again - prsumably now that everyone knows who he is and what he looks like he'll have to give up the secret service job, I bet he's kicking himself now for accepting the honour.
An 80 year old shoeshine boy for Virgin Atlantic gets an honour (what the fook) which seems strange until you understand that he works in the VIP lounge at Heathrow cleaning the shoes of some of those civil service VIP's who decide who get the honours on the hounors list - you're starting to see how it works now aren't you - "sorry old chap I haven't got any change to tip you with this morning, will an OBE do ?"
And finally Bernard Mathews, the portly Norfolk turkey farmer, who is already a CBE, becomes a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, which sounds like a made up award to me, for services to the Duke of Edinburgh's Award scheme for young people (who is the Duke of Edinburgh ? Its the Queen's husband of course, see how it works now ?) - all of which sounds fine until you remember that his work with the DofE award scheme is probably offset somewhat by his work in bringing the concept of the "turkey twistler" to childrens school meals. The idea that after you've slaughtered a turkey and sliced off all of the useable meat, you should then mince all the bad stuff thats left, including the brains, intestines, skin, everything, mince it all up into a mush and then mould it into shapes that will appeal to children, their parents probably won't buy the crap so sell it to local authorities for school meal use - services to young people my arse.
Yes, I'm bitter again, I've been overlooked again, bas'tads.
So there you are ladies, stop complaining and just get on with it will you, we've got your best interest at heart when we leave our underpants lying around the bedroom floor.
My only suprise is that they found enough women who didn't do the housework to use as a test - what were their husbands thinking of ?
Alcohol blues again
Last night I had one pint can of John Smiths Smooth, just the one. I awoke at 4am with a cracking headache and couldn't get back to sleep, every time I turned over I felt dizzy, and I've got indigestion this morning - bloody alcohol intolorance has come back again and it looks like I'm back on the wagon for the foreseeable future, absolute bastard, just as I was starting to enjoy proper real ales at the pub again I've become an orange juice drinker.
No, not me, although I will be (hopefully) in a few weeks time - but the United Kingdom is due to pay the last two installments today on the money we borrowed to kick the shit out of Adolf Hitler sixty years ago.
Its good to know that WWII only cost us just under £5billion but rather alarming to learn that we haven't paid back any of the WWI loan yet, presumably because we hope that the lender has forgotten about it, or we've moved address and not told them, I fear that this will catch up with us soon and we'll find the interest and penalty charges will be horrendous for seventy years of avoidance.
I wonder which bank we've borrowed from to pay for Iraq ?
We've got another thing to be proud of in Leeds this week - we had the most muggings on our public transport system than anywhere else in the country, so thats nice then.
One of Jodies friends was mugged whilst on a bus with two of his friends in November, the three youths who stole their phones and cash were armed with a knife and seemed keen to use it, the bus driver did fuck all about it and drove off and left the lads with no way of contacting home and no way of paying to get home, so thats fairly normal then.
Fortunately Jodies friends father is a police officer and whilst they didn't catch anyone on the night these sort of incidents usually have a list of usual suspects attached to them, i wouldn't like to be in their shoes when they do eventually get taken in for questioning at his police station, he's a dog handler and I have a sneaky feeling that the three scrotes just may have to be restrained by some of the dogs in a secluded place after they make "an escape bid"
Its rumoured, nay its reknown to be written about Gram Parsons, the influencial ex-Byrds, ex-Flying Burritto Bros, legendary songwriter who inspired many artists and bands in the famous early 1970's "west coast" style of country rock, including The Eagles and The Rolling Stones with whom he had both written and performed albeit unacknowledged.
Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons were introduced to each other in 1971 and performed, wrote and toured together in his band "Gram Parsons and the Fallen Angels" for the next two years during which time they were alleged to be "an item" despite Parsons being already married.
A former heroine addict, Parsons died on Sept 19th 1973 from an apparent overdose of morphine and alchohol. at the time he and his road manager Phil Kaufman were travelling in the Joshua Tree National Park in California, a place that they visited often for spiritual enlightenment and days of enlightenment by other things in the desert and Kaufman insists that for years Parsons had spoke of his wish to be cremated in Joshua Tree.
Parsons body was taken to Los Angeles airport for onward shipment to his parents home in Louisiana but on the evening of the flight Kaufman and a friend arrived at the airport in a rented hearse and convinced an airport worker that they had come to collect the body - they signed for it and took the coffin back to Joshua Tree where after a night of hard drinking Kaufman set fire to Parsons body out in the desert, for which he was eventually fined $700 for "burning a body" as it wasn't illegal to "steal a body".
It was a strange end to a founder member of the country rock genre and one which has passed into legend and Emmylou Harris was said to be distraught for a long time afterwards, eventually putting her feelings into song in 1975 with "Boulder to Birmingham", I recommend this to the house, particularly the recording of the late 1970's which exists on YouTube at this location. (still can't embed bloody videos in this blog)
Boulder to Birmingham Music and lyrics by Emmylou Harris
I don't want to hear a love song I got on this airplane just to fly And I know there's life below But all that it can show me Is the prairie and the sky
And I don't want to hear a sad story Full of heartbreak and desire The last time I felt like this It was in the wilderness and the canyon was on fire And I stood on the mountain in the night and I watched it burn I watched it burn, I watched it burn.
I would rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham I would hold my life in his saving grace. I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham If I thought I could see, I could see your face.
Well you really got me this time And the hardest part is knowing I'll survive. I have come to listen for the sound Of the trucks as they move down Out on ninety five And pretend that it's the ocean coming down to wash me clean, to wash me clean Baby do you know what I mean
I would rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham I would hold my life in his saving grace. I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham If I thought I could see, I could see your face.
Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott apparently spent Christmas Day in hospital - news link here.
So thats one thing I have in common with him, kidney stones.
That news link by the way is a load of bollacks, written (probably) by a prospective Conservative parliamentary candidate - talk of him recieving exceptionally fast emergency NHS treatment and being treated to christmas dinner while he was in hospital as if they made an exception for him is rubbish - they did exactly the same thing for me.
When I awoke with a pain to eclipse all other pains back in September we spoke to an NHS Direct operator immediately who correctly diagnosed that my condition was not life threatening but who dispatched an ambulance none the less - within an hour I was in said ambulance receiveing pain-killing treatment, if it had been life threatening then I would have seen them within seven minutes - thats standard treatment in the NHS and its no different if you're name is John Prescott MP.
I was treated in the same way as John Prescott seems to have been treated in that I was given enough pain killing drugs to kill the pain completely and ease the muscle spasms which are actually the cause of most of the pain - and afterwards, like Prescott, I was treated to a complimentary meal, and very nice it was too.
Like John Prescott I have nothing but praise for the NHS employees who attended to me, fortunately apart from a bit of soreness I have not had a repeat dose of the ailment and as no stone appeared on my x-ray I suspect that it was a condition that has a long complicated medical name but basically involves a build up of silt around the uretha causing a temporary blockage, muscle spasms and plenty of pain, pain like you've never felt before, but not life threatening, although when the NHS Direct operator explains that to you, you don't believe her as death would be an acceptable release from the pain if offered - pain killers and muscle relaxants ease the blockage and the silt is passed away with lots of water - end of problem (I hope).
And while Prescot was writhing in agony in NHS facilities, his mate Tony Blair was travelling to Miami on the second leg of his blagged christmas holiday, when his British Airways 747 ran off the runway in Miami - full story.
British TV news reports made the most of the "drama" but in fact all that happened was that the pilot drove off the edge of the runway while taxi-ing to its parking position and had to be hoisted back onto the tarmac so that it could park under its own power, embarrassing for the pilot but its likely that no-one else noticed.
What is more interesting is the fact that the Blairs have made an art out of blagging free holidays in the years that they have been in power. Barbados is their regular christmas destination where they stay at a villa owned by Cliff Richards who presumably doesn't need it during December, but this year the Blairs not only blagged Barbados but managed to tag on a few days in Miami staying at Bee Gee Robin Gibbs apartment - nice perks if you can get them Tony.
I used to manage a few days at my mother in law's house in Whitley Bay from time to time at christmas.
Day of relaxation, day of doing nothing after Christmas Day, day of sport, day of hunting foxes, day of sales in the stores...
What do you mean, Boxing Day ?
Boxing Day in the British Isles is the day after Christmas Day and is taken as a public holiday, it has it roots in serfdom and the middle ages when all of us peasants would take boxes to our lords and masters place of residence for the placing of favors therein - our lord and master would give us his cast-offs and a few coins as a "christmas box", yes that really is the origin of the name.
Nowadays its traditionally the day when sporting fixtures take place and in my sport of choice, rugby league, it was always a competitive game against one of our local rivals, and Headingley was always packed to the rafters.
Rugby League is played in the summer now though and so the Boxing Day fixture is a "friendly" game, or its as friendly as rugby can be played, unfortunately the non-competitive nature of todays fixture means that with only seven more weeks to go to the start of the season few of the first team players will be risked and the crowd who pay full price for the fixture will be treated to a second string teamsheet playing without effort or cause - that crowd won't include me.
I actually did go last year with the intention of paying to go into the ground, met up with some friends in a bar outside but when kickoff time came around we'd just got another round in, seemed like a shame to waste the beer so we decided to go in at half time, half time came and we'd just got another round in, so we missed the game but had a good time in a bar outside - I can't be arsed doing that again today - I want to paint today.
The two paintings that I did for christmas presents for friends were received well and today I am inspired to do another, a coastal scene, need to build up some stock to put on the gallery web site where my page needs desperately updating before they chuck me off for not using it regularly enough.
For the first time in 50 years I voluntarily went to a church service that didn't involve someone getting christened, married or dying.
I can't say that there has been any particularly enlightened episode, blinding lights, voices speaking from the clouds that sort of stuff, its just that, well, there was nothing else to do and a friend (who apparently goes regularly although I never knew) promised me he'd take a hip flask of whisky to ease the boredom, I was hooked.
Suzanne and Jodie had been to the afternoon christmas eve crib service and were going back for the midnight mass so I stayed awake long enough to join them
It was wierd, religion is a wierd thing.
If you started your own religion today and invited people to your house to sing songs out of tune using unintelligible lyrics and chant strange soothsaying things to something that no-one else can see or hear then you'd be labelled as a buffoon and referred to a psychiatrist.
And yet that is what happens to millions of people all around the world every day, and last night a hundred or so mainly, it has to be said, old people stood in a darkened church holding a candle each and sang six christmas carols while the vicar at the front instructed them to stand up, sit down, chant some things, wave some smelly stuff around and then have a sup of wine and a bit of bread - I didn't join in that bit as I'd already eaten thank you.
It was strange, neither positive or negative, and I'm as sat on the fence this morning about religion as I was yesterday morning.
Santa's coming, santa's coming, he's on his way, he's got your presents loaded on board and he's on his way tonight, what do you hope he brings for you ?
When they were younger my two daughters would grow sick and tired of me reminding them all through the day on christmas eve that Santa was on his way tonight, I was the one in the house that was excited while they'd sit there with a bored expression on their faces and sigh "We know dad" every time I mentioned it.
But then one year I discoveredthis web site, the Norad Santa Tracker.
I explained to them how official it was, how NORAD were the North American Air Defence Command, proper official people, Army and Air Force people who normally watched the skies for nasty missiles and alien attacks, but once a year tuned their radar's into Santa's sleigh and published a live radar image for children all over the world to follow.
They swallowed it, hook, line and sinker - and so did I.
One year in particular when they were very young we spent all evening running up and down the stairs to the one computer in the house to check on Santa every ten minutes and the excitement as he travelled across europe towards us grew and grew until we realised that it was way, way past their bedtimes as we'd ignored the clock all night waiting for the tracker to move - it was only when he was in France shortly before midnight and just a hop, skip and a jump across La Manche that we finally convinced them that they needed to quickly get in bed and go to sleep or he wouldn't come to our house.
I don't need to explain to parents what christmas morning is like with small children in the house, but to those who still have small children in the house at the moment I do need to say - savour every moment, relish every second, for it all fades away year on year until you end up with teenagers for whom christmas day is just another day of MTV and sitting amongst presents that they bought for themselves with your money, and have been wearing for several weeks now.
Gone are the days when they would both have a bath and dress in new jimmy-jams and dressing gowns then come downstairs to get a platefull of mince pies and carrots ready to leave out on the fireplace for Santa and Rudolph, gone are the tiptoe'd trips upstairs to see if they are asleep yet two hours after you put them to bed, then the ever so quiet getting out of the ladder and silently sneaking up into the loft to gather down the bags and bags of christmas presents that you'd hidden from prying eyes, and gone are those precious few seconds on christmas morning where they walk into the living room and stand and simply stare at the huge pile of presents awaiting them under the tree, not knowing where to start, absolutely captivated by the magic of Santa.
But we still have the videos.
And we sit and watch them now and they tell us that they can't believe how gullible they were to have believed everything we told them, and I tell them it was all true, Santa's magic is still real, they've just lost sight of it, and they look at me and call me a stupid old fool - I've raised them to be as cynical as me.
The only remnant of those christmas's past are the two handmade bears that they still get from me every year, they open them and give me a look that says "not another bear dad" but they will get one every year until I'm not here any more whether they like it or not, so bugger to them.
Merry Christmas everyone, and remember, early to bed tonight and keep an eye on the Santa tracker, its all true you know.
With most companies closed down now for the christmas break we go into standby mode in the office where we sit and wait for callouts - we rarely get any during this ten day period.
The slowdown started on Thursday, the phones hardly rang at all and Ned and Jon had caught up on the outstanding jobs before Wednesday so Thursday was a morning of sitting around watching TV - I told Jon not to come in on Friday unless we rang him, so yesterday morning Ned and I waited in the office until noon and took one call for an order that could be posted after xmas.
Just before noon and with me in the middle of checking my credit rating with Experian Ned waved goodbye and left for the holidays, just seconds after he'd left the office our most important customer, the one who provides us with 40% of our turnover rang with a breakdown in their Bishop Auckland store that they had actually rung in on Thursday - it was then that I realised that we'd sat there all morning and not checked the answerphone messages - there were eight of them.
The hiearchy of the office dictates that Jon gets all the bum jobs, then Ned, and I am there only as a last resort being as I'm supposed to do sales and not service - couldn't get Jon on his mobile, tried Ned within two minutes of him leaving the office and his mobile was switched off too - bas'tads the pair of them.
I had to go.
Its 50 miles each way to Bishop Auckland and the A1 on a holiday getaway day is not the friendliest of motorways, especially in the fog like yesterday - some of the driving that I saw yesterday defies belief and as usual the cliche of it being compulsory to be an arsehole if you drive a BMW lived up to its reality.
But it wasn't just the motorway that was busy, I drove around the store's car park for nearly 30 minutes before nabbed a parking space, did the job quickly, shopped for some cheap wine and beer and eventualy got home at 4.30pm, four hours after I had intended to knock off - I rang Ned to bollack him but he thought it was hilarious, however I will be taking Wednesday off now in compensation - and I haven't told him. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Took a call on the mobile while I was doing the callout, it was my contact at NatWest Mortgages telling me that he had lodged an apeal with the underwriters to see why they had rejected my application to move my existing debt from the house to the new one that we intend to buy.
Bottom line is that I switched to this current mortgage just twelve months ago when NatWest had a very good fixed rate on offer (4.5%) and I still have 12 months to go on that fixed rate, which is now an even better offer with their NatWest standard rate at 7.1%.
We are moving down to cut costs and so do not need to borrow as much money and at the same time will be paying off a couple of personal and business loans and a credit card, in other words we will start int he new house completely debt free and with a much smaller mortgage -a financial planners dream situation.
When I spoke to the NatWest mortgage advisor he pointed out that if I took out a smaller loan with them then I would have a redemption penalty of approx £1300 to pay, but if I simply switched the whole of the mortgage to the new house then there would be no fees to pay and no redemption - and I'd complete the deal with a shitload of spare cash (about £30,000) which could be used to pay off a lot of the mortgage when the fixed rate deal finished in twelve months time.
Sounds like a great idea, so we went for it.
The NatWest underwriters have declined the application stating "poor credit score".
Experian are the people who handle credit scoring in the UK so I paid my £5 fee and got a 23 page report on my credit status, it lists every credit entry that I have made or obtained for at least fifteen years and summarises with a score out of a possible maximum 1000 - I score 979 and am rated as "Excellent" with the comment that 80% of the population of the Uk score less than me and that someone with such a credit score "should have no problem in obtaining extra credit or in repaying additional loans" - which is nice.
So basically my credit score seems to state that I am an idela candidate to borrow even more money than I already owe - I am asking NatWest to lend me less and the fuckwits will not do that, they seem to be suggesting that they want me to stay at the level of debt that I am at.
It gasp at their fuckwittery.
My NatWest advisor, who I genuinely believe is trying his best for me will ring me on Wednesday, if they still refuse then I have a mortgage deal standing by with the Nationwide - and a "fuck you" letter standing by for NatWest Mortgages together with a "fuck all of your services" series of letters for NatWest Bank, NatWest Insurance and NatWest Pensions - and a letter waiting for the banking ombudsman.
Stupifyingly handsome, well turned out, pleasant, conversationalist, compulsively listenable, a must-have at all dinner parties, life saving hero, millionaire philanthropist, these and many other phrases have not yet been written to my epitaph, more is the shame.
News today that Marks and Spencer, that bastion retailer of the British high street aims to find itself "carbon neutral" within five years.
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