What is a Yorkshireman ?

Believe it or not, there are those who read this blog who do not know what defines a Yorkshireman.

Yes its true, some readers, mainly American it has to be said, do not know of this Yorkshire place.

Suffice to say that Yorkshire is known as "Gods County" and its not because we are all religious around here.

But rather than explain in text what unique characteristics make a Yorkshireman a Yorkshireman...

...I think this video will help explain...

Investments, commodities, pensions, and all that jazz

Like many people I sat watching Sky News last night and their coverage of the light aircraft crash into a Manhattan apartment, it makes for good live TV, tragedy and all that, but its better than watching soaps.

And then while I was watching the live coverage some prat in red braces appeared and informed the viewing public that the Dow Jones Index had just plumeted because of the accident, presumably because selling imaginary corn and coffee is directly affected by how careless some pilots can be.

Just how crazy is the world market in stocks and commodities ?

Young people who are legally allowed to take other peoples (usually older peoples investments) money and pretend to buy things that may or may not exist, at a price which they think is cheap, in the hope that they can resell them sometime later at a price that they hope is expensive, and whilst they are using real money to do this, the thing that they have just bought and sold may not even exist away from a computer screen.

And the business is growing.

I know its growing because they've run out of other young brokers to sell their imaginary goods to and they've started cold calling ordinary people on the phone to ask if they want a share of the imaginary stuff that they are buying and then selling - I know this because at least once a week I take a call from some very excitable young person, sometimes American, sometimes British, and the call goes something like this ...

"Hi !!! "
"Hello"
"How are you today !!!"
"OK"
"Good, hey listen" (I hate it when people tell me to listen, just hate it), "Hey listen, I'm Elmer Fekkwittstein from United Corporate Buying Imaginary Stuff Corporation and Associates, and I want to tell you about..."
"No thank you"
"Pardon !!!"
"No thank you"
"I've got a great deal going down today on moonunit commodities, you may want to buy in with me !!!"
"No thank you"
"Why not !!! Its great !!! Its a great investment my friend!!!"
"I don't invest"
"You don't invest !!!"
"No"
"Oh !!!"

Phone line goes dead as either he or I put the phone down.

One day I will be in an evil enough mood to go along with the conversation, in the same way that one day I will be evil enough to go along with one of those letters from Nigeria that promise me zillions of dollars from a dead government officers slush fund if only I will hand over control of my bank account to a person who's identity I have no idea of - its the same thing.

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

Which brings me back to my pensions.

Last month I mentioned just how well my pension plans seem to be going.

HM Government were promising me the excellent sum of £109.56 per week as a reward for having handed over some inconsiderable pittance of money to them over the 50 years that I would have been working by the time I earn the right to that kings ransom of a free income.

I also had a defunct pension plan with Friends provident who, and I am still staggered by the riches that await me, have promised me the grossly obscene sum of £55.12 per year as a pension.

But,

If that weren't enough I also have two other little beauties up my sleeve.

The female to whom I am betrothed and I have both been squirreling away the princely sum of £200 each, per month, into two seperate pension schemes which are administered by Nat West, our wankers - sorry, bankers.

With the tax relief added back in thats the equivalent of £240 per month - each - for about fifteen years now, with another fifteen years until I get to retire.

So I asked them for a statement.

And they've sent one statement - haven't sent mine yet, they've sent her's.

When she retires, they will take the sum of money that we've been handing over and in terms of today values they will pay her the staggering sum of £140 per month as a pension.

Wait,

Yes thats right, £140 per month.











No, I don't understand this investment lark either.








Lets look at that again.

You give me £240 a month for nigh on 30 years.

And when you reach 65 years of age, I give you back, £140 a month until you die.

So I get to keep all of your £240's for 30 years and I get to do with them whatever I want to do because you've signed a document giving me permission to "invest" the money, and I can "invest" the money in whatever I want for thirty years.

And then when you are 65 I have to give you £140 a month back.

And until you die, I am £100 a month up on the deal, for the next 30 years.







I think thats about the sum of it - have I missed anything ?











Would anyone like to invest in a pension scheme that I'm thinking of starting up ?

How to spend public money...

Leeds City Council yesterday announced a £100million project to replace all of the city's street lights.

So thats where the supertram money went then.

Why do we need completely new street lights in Leeds ?

So that astronomers can see the night sky apparently.

Its the only reason given anyway

So thats alright then.

£100million.

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

HM Government run some very succesful prisons, so succesful are they that they only have 200 spaces left in the whole country at the moment.

So they are having a clearout to make more room.

And one of the ideas is to spend £20million on grants to foreign prisoners so that they will leave both prison, and the UK.

So lets look at that again.

You send a police van to a prison, you load into it a selection of foreign prsioners and tell them that they are free to leave the country.

You take them all to the nearest UK airport to the prison and you put them on the first flight to anywhere else on one of the multitude of budget airlines that exist at every airport - £29 to Budapest for example.

According to my calculator my excellent plan would completely empty all of the UK prisons for just a tad over £2million, a tenth of the cost of HM Governments plans which only involve a handfull of prisoners for their £20million.

Not sure what Budapest would think of the idea mind.

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

Our global village

I was reading one of the female magazines in our house this morning, I sneak a look at them every now and again just to see how Jennifer Aniston is getting on (who is she anyway), and near the back of one of them I found an article called "Eating Out", so thinking it would be a useful guide to fancy eateries I started to read on...

The numbknut who had written said guide was seriously suggesting that I get on a flight to visit restaurants as far afield as Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan and that such trips could now be undertaken for minimal cost and would be well worth a quick two day visit just to eat at Wongs Noodle Shop in Taipen.

Bloody idiot.

And of course it got me thinking...

It got me thinking of the first time that my parents ever went abroad for their holidays, it was 1974 and they went without me and my brother as we were considered "sensible enough" to leave at home with just our posh auntie around the corner to keep an eye on us - I was 16 and my brother was 14 - Ha! Ha! Ha!- How little they knew of us.

They flew from Manchester Air-o-drome as it was known in those far distant days on a Boeing 727 (perhaps the noisiest aircraft in the world, ever) operated by Dan-Air. Those of a vintage old enough to remember Dan-Air will also recall that they were better known as Dan-Dare due to the fact that they had only just got rid of their fleet of Comet aircraft in favour of Boeing - again readers who are not of the correct vintage will wonder what a Comet was - it was a British passenger jet liner, the first in general use in the UK, and it was a wonderful innovation for the well-heeld booted and suited jet set.

OK so its square windows meant that cracks soon appeared in the fuselage and they fell our of the sky like homing pigeons in a thunderstorm, but still, we British have always been pioneers and over in Seattle the Boeing designers regarded our live market research with interest and thunk a while on the subject before inventing round windows.

But back to our mum and dad, standing in the departure lounge at Manchester Air-o-drome, our dad in his best work suit and tie, our mum in her best summer frock and a good white leather handbag, both trying to look as though they were of the jet set age and well used to this sort of thing, on their suitcases were false stickers which could be bought in Woolworths declaring that they had journeyed to such exotic places as Paris, Milan and Torquay they pretended that jetting between continents for a long weekend was "de riguer" for their lifestyle, my mother may have even used the phrase "de riguer" at the check-in desk when asked if she had anything to declare.

Seven days in Lloret-de-Mar on the newly built Spanish Coast del Sol was their destination, how exotic does that sound, purchased from the Co-op travel agent, it was a "package deal" which meant that you were owned by the tour operator from the minute you stepped across the boundary of Manchester Air-o-drome, everything that you did, saw or ate for the next seven days would be decided by your "rep" and your "rep" was there to meet you at the check-in desk to make sure that you didn't chicken out and run all the way home as some people did when they first set eyes on the Dan-Air 727's line up outside.

Our mother extolled the virtues of "our rep" when she got home, she was "a lovely girl" apparently, who "knew ever so much about Spain", and "we don't know what we would have done without her". It was "our rep" who helped you off the 727, wobbly kneed and vowing never to fly again even though you had to fly back home in the same aircraft in seven days time, it was "our rep" ("lovely girl, knew ever so much about Spain") who helped you with your baggage when those lazy Spaniards had bothered to empty the hold of the plane ("they go to sleep in the middle of the afternoon you know, oh yes, they call it a sierra") and it was "our rep" who lined you all up in the arrivals hall and called out your names one by one and directed you to the correct bus that was waiting outside to take you to you lovely new hotel.

And your hotel was lovely, ever so lovely ("we had our own bathroom you know, didn't have to share one down the hallway, oh no") and the next morning you were instructed to meet "our rep" in the lounge downstairs where she was to instruct you on which tours (at additional cost) you should undertake during your seven day sojourn.

And you bought the tours off her, and she took you to far flung places like a huge dining hall just outside of Lloret de Mar where you all sat with your coats on ("because it gets a bit nippy at night you know, even in Spain it does") at huge long dining benches and watched a circus act juggle flaming torches before some flamenco dancers came and, well, danced, and afterwards you were served with a chicken leg in a raffia basket with some salad and rice ("I've never had rice with a main course before, don't like it though, it looks too much like maggots"), and if you were lucky a waiter came around with a strange looking wine bottle with a long pouring spout and instead of tipping the wine into your glass he made you tilt your head back and he poured it straight into your mouth while another man took a photo of the whole incident and sold it to you for a weeks wage.

And the next day while you walked "along the front" near your hotel another man with a camera strolled up to you and in perfect Spanglais asked you to hold his monkey for him, and before you could shoo him away he'd thrust a small monkey in a knitted pullover into your arms and had taken your photograph and charged you a weeks wage for it.

When they returned back to England and the busom of their home - which me and Ned had almost managed to tidy up after a weeks worth of partying, shame about the bin full of beer cans that we never dreamed would be a dead give-away - our mum had brought us a present each.

I got one of those wine pourer things with the long spout that you don't use to fill glasses with but use to fill your mouth straight from the bottle - and Ned got the strangest thing that I have ever seen passed off as a holiday present.

It was a small white leather dog, about six inches high it sat on its haunches looking for all the world like the HMV dog, a badly made white leather version fot he HMV dog granted, but still. Apparently our mum had been suckered into buying it by a youth who sat outside on their hotel steps making them all day long, she'd paid him a weeks wage for this unidentifyable stuffed leather toy.

But the wierdest thing about the leather dog was that it had gold chains stiched to it in random places and was then covered in sequins of assorted colours - it was by far the thing-of-worst-taste that I have ever seen and I did enquire of my mother whether or not the youth who made them was in fact blind for which I received a cuff around the back of the head.

Ned was stunned by his holiday present, he still is to this day.

Our mum could tell he was stunned and not too impressed whilst I, in contrast, was already trying out my wine pouring skills with a bottle of Long Life lager inside the pourer thing, managing to pour said Long Life lager all over the kitchen floor and my face - she took the leather dog off him and put it on the mantlepiece declaring "I like it anyway".

And there it stayed, we tried to put it in the wastebin on many an occasion but ours was a very chauvanistic house and as us males never emptied things like bins, or in fact never did any housework whatsoever, our mum would always uncover our subterfuge and replace the leather dog back to its rightful place on the mantelpiece.

It stayed on our mantelpiece, impressing all our visitors, for many, many years until eventually it came time for our mum to depart this world and go and live with Jesus in the bingo hall in the sky, whereupon, on the day after her funeral, our dad took the white leather still sequined dog outside and drop-kicked it down the driveway where it landed perfectly in the bin and with no female in the house to remove it, it went off with the binmen the following Monday.

And I've never seen it since.


More rubbish from the JerryChicken biography can be found here.

Can you feel the Buffalove tonight ?

A wonderful day out yesterday, and the culmination of many years hard work by the directors, shareholders and supporters of Bramley Buffaloes, National League 3 Champions 2006.

Bramley Buffaloes web site here

A very hard first half in which Hemel Hempstead had looked to be a very strong side determined to lift the title, saw them take the lead at half time by 8 points to 6, but the second half onslaught from the Buffaloes was simply overwhelming, after five minutes of the restart it was noticable that the Hemel forwards were weakening and meakly accepting the tackles when going forward and the final scoreline of 30-8 reflects the total dominance that Bramley had int he last 40 minutes.

So the job is done, the target is achieved.

When the team joined the NL3 three seasons ago the directors had a five year business plan to be the best in NL3, on and off the field.

Having been victim to the sponsorship department for the past three years I can categorically state that that part of the business works exceptionally well, and the achievments on the field speak for themselves.

Ultimately the progression of the club lies outside our hands, the Rugby Football League have yet to announce what the line-up for the NL3 will be next year (or more disturbingly whether there will be an NL3) and Leeds City Council need to do a little more than simply talk of a new West Leeds Stadium that can take the club up the huge step to NL2.

For now we bask in the glory and look forward to next season and the opportunity to defend our title and maintain our position as the flagship club of the NL3, and the way forward for other such clubs, both on and off the field.


You'll Buffalove it !!!

A feast of rugby today

I depart soon for Warrington for a day spent gorgeing on one of my passions in life - the game of rugby league.

Today is the day of the National League Grand Finals and today I will be watching three culminations of the three National Leagues starting with my own team Bramley in the NL3 final at 1.30pm.

First a note of explanation.
Rugby League is a game played from February through to October with a league format existing all the way from the professional Superleague through the semi-pro National Leagues one to three (and then the amatuer Conference Leagues below that).

The league season culminates in a competition loosely named "the playoffs" where the top five or six teams in each league play in a knockout format until two teams are left to contend the title of champions of that league with a prize of promotion to a higher league there for the winning (certain ground facility and financial criteria not withstanding).

The Superleague Grand Final takes place next week between St Helens and Hull at Manchester's Old Trafford in front of a crowd that will be nudging 60,000, today is the turn of the National Leagues at the 15,000 capacity Halliwell Jones stadium in Warrington.

Fifteen years or so ago my brother lived in the area of Leeds known as Bramley and we sort of fell into the habit of having sunday dinner at his house and then wandering down to their ground to watch the club battle their way in the old third division league - they weren't managed by the club owners very well and shortly after Ned moved away from Bramley the club folded.

Three years ago a new Bramley club was formed by a bunch of over-enthusiastic supporters who had refused to let the old club name die, it was an incredible declaration of their love of rugby league and their desire for the Bramley name to survive, they had battled for several years beforehand to have the format of the club, a supporters trust, accepted by the Rugby Football League as it was a new concept to the dinosaurs that run the RFL, they were more used to camel-haired coated, trilby wearing, cigar smoking local factory owners taking on the chairmanship of rugby clubs in a benfactorial sort of way - the supporters trust idea was just far too communist-like for the camel-haired coated, trilby wearing, cigar smoking guru's at the RFL.

And with a lot of hard work and a lot of money raising the supporters trust club has just completed its third season in NL3. Last year in our second year we made the grand final but were beaten by two points by Dudley Hill, this year we meet Hemel Hempstead at the end of a season when we have romped home with the league title, now there is just one more game to go for the biggest honour in the NL3.

And promotion ?

Not this year. The jump from NL3 to NL2 is a huge leap of faith, Bramleys current ground (a community owned club) has excellent facilities but no terracing around the pitchside for spectators and does not therefore meet the ground criteria for NL2. Thats the biggest of the hurdles to overcome but there are also other factors such as a large finanacial bond required in joining NL2 to guarantee that the team is financially sound, and also the small factor of NL2 being semi-pro and players expecting payments for playing.

So today is for the honour of being named NL3 champions, its a big day in the club's short history and if we manage to win it will be a magnificent achievement for those individuals who have put their own money and hard labour into the club.


NL2 final is between Sheffield and Swinton and the NL1 (for promotion to Superleague) is Widnes and Hull KR.

My next brilliant idea...

We had a delivery of water bottles yesterday at the office, which reminded me of a brilliant idea I had a couple of years ago which I still have to introduce to my bank manager as a going concern (not that I have a business bank manager - I have a name in a suit who says that he is one but he is a wanker rather than a banker who trys his best to sell me insurance - however that is another story).

My brilliant idea will enliven the whole concept of the office water cooler, a place where employees gather to pass the time of day with boring, stifling conversation about the weather or that bloke on the 3rd floor who wears brown shoes with a blue suit, and most days they can't even think of anything to say about those default topics.

My new company "Fish-Coolers" would supply to your company the standard sized water cooler bottle, full of fresh spring water, specially filtered highland spring water that contains lots of minerals and vitamins and other good stuff - I'd fill them from my kitchen tap actually and dissolve a spoonful of epson salts in each bottle - and in each and every bottle, just before I sealed it, I'd pop a goldfish in.

A live goldfish of course, and when we delivered them we'd pop a weeks worth of goldfish food into each bottle to keep it going until the bottle was empty.

Can you imagine how this would liven up the 10am water cooler break time ?
Especially if I used those nice fantail goldfishes, or maybe a half dozen guppies in each bottle.

I'd leave instructions with an appointed employee at each company on what to do when the bottle needed changing - I've thought this through properly and I reckon its foolproof. You see my biggest fear was that someone would find a goldfish in their cup one morning, but in fact it will never happen if they follow my instructions.

The fish would shit in the water, obviously they will, and their poo will sink to the bottom of the bottle and you obviously don't want people draining the last dregs out of the bottle and getting either a fish, or poo, or both, so I'd draw a line something like an inch above the bottom of the bottle and instruct the clients to change the bottle once the water reached this line - this would solve both problems instantly, the fish would never die from a lack of water or by being sucked through the chiller bit, and the client would never get to drink the poo from the bottom of the bottle.

See, I've thought it all through, I know what I'm doing with this and I think I'm on a winner.

Fish-Coolers - you heard it here first.

You couldn't make it up ... could you ?

Newspapers.
A misnomer if ever one existed.
Opinion papers is more accurate.

The problem with news papers is that they cannot possibly report the news anymore - by the time their publications hit the streets their news headlines could be up to 24 hours old and their buying public will have received every snitch and morsel of the story via the multitude of 24 hour news channels that most of the UK population have easy access to now.

So what service can the newspaper editors provide ?
They give their opinion.

Which is fair enough, and we see now that most newspapers have a particular mode of reporting and a particular agenda to present, whether its anti-government or pro-government, sports weighted, gossip weighted, green issue weighted - whatever the agenda they have become daily news issue discussion magazines rather than news breaking forums.

Which has led to a problem.
What do you do on a day when there simply is no news to discuss, let alone break ?

The answer is - you make some stuff up.

Take two examples yesterday which got all of the daily newspapers into a froth and allowed some of them to present their anti-muslim, anti-integration stances yet again ...

This is the first of the stories to hit the streets.

Its a fairly straightforward story of a specially trained, armed police officer who is part of the highly specialised London based Diplomatic Protection Group, who was assigned to protect the Israeli embassy in August at a time when Isreal was undertaking its raids on civilian and other targets in Lebanon - and was being criticised by every sane country in the world for doing so, except the USA and the UK of course.

The officer in question has a Lebonese wife who has relations still living in the Lebanon and co-incidently he is of the muslim faith.

To anyone with half an ounce of sense there is a very clear conflict of interest there and even if the officer had carried out his duties as required then he would have left himself and the Metropolitan Police open for all sorts of criticism if anything had happened while he was on duty.

He quite rightly asked for advice from a senior officer, stating his conflicts, and the senior officer quite rightly withdrew him from the Isreali embassy and gave him other duties.

End of story - common sense prevails.

Not quite.

Some agenda chasing buffoon in the Met got hold of the story and leaked it to the press and so yesterday we were entreated to headlines that screamed of preferential treatment to muslim police officers and asked whether we had reached a situation where police officers could pick and choose their duties now - none of which had any relevance to the case in question.

It kicked up such a fuss that the Metropolitan Police have refered the case right to the top of the tree and the Deputy Police Commisioner is now launching his own enquiry.

Its called "Making Up News Madness"


The second example is here.

Former Home Secretary, former Foreign Secretary, elder Labour statesman Jack Straw is under fire this morning for asking muslim ladies to lift or remove their facial veils when they visit his MP surgery in his constituency of Blackburn.

Those who know Jack Straw (and those of us who just see him on the TV) know that he is probably the most reasonable, most level headed of all the MP's at Westminster, its why he was chosen to represent us and the diplomatic corps as Foreign Secretary, and I would expect that any such request that Jack Straw makes would be made in a reasonable, pleasant manner.

Indeed he makes the point himself that none of the muslim women so requested have refused his request and that he always ensures that another woman is present in the room with him when he conducts such surgeries - its a reasonable request from a reasonable man and even the British Council for Muslims have supported him in stating that the decision to remove a veil or even a burqa from a muslim womans face is the womans own choice, they do not offer an opinion in the matter.

Its simply a matter of politeness and Jack Straw says that he prefers to see a persons face when he is talking face to face to them - its actually a human trait, we read almost everything from the eyes and it adds so much to a conversation when you can actually see the persons face - its not quite the same issue but when I spent some time working in Barbados (oh yes, it was a tough contract that one), it was considered the height of rudeness, in that extremely polite society, to speak face to face to someone while still wearing sunglasses, you always removed your sunglasses when you spoke to someone, always.

End of story - common sense prevails.

Not quite.

Some agenda chasing buffoon in the press corps has read Jack Straw's throw-away comment as one of the vilest anti-muslim comments that they have ever heard and have whipped the British press and TV news up into a lather this morning over this non-issue, even though all of the muslims that they interviewed on the streets so far have failed to be enraged by the comments.

Its called "Making Up News Madness"


You couldn't make it up really.

My bin is full every week

Interesting news that Leeds City Council are one of the local authorities who are now fitting microchips to their fleet of household wheelie bins, to, erm, erm, just to identify them - so thats alright then.

Just as long as the chips are their to just identify the bin, they are just there to identify the bin aren't they ?

Yes ?

Well thats alright then.

Wait a minute though, just as a "for instance", just as a small stretch of the imagination, they wouldn't be used to identify the wheelie bin when its on the bin wagon being emptied so that the bin wagon could weight the bin and you could get charged for disposing of excess garbage in your bin - could they ?

No of course not, ha, ha,ha, how ridiculous, ha, ha.

The politician on TV this morning mocked the idea, ha, ha, of course not, we wouldn't do something like that, it would need an act of parliament for us to be able to charge you for your refuse collection, especially as we're already charging you for your refuse collection via your council tax, we couldn't charge you twice could we, ha, ha, how silly.

Well thats alright then.

Wait a minute though, the politician on TV hasn't finished yet, whats he saying now ?
We're running out of ladnfill sites ?
We'll have no landfill sites left in the UK in 2020 ?
We have to recycle more because the EU says so ?
The EU will fine local councils who exceed preset limits on landfill ?
The costs will have to be borne by the taxpayer somehow ?
The ones who don't actively recycle will have to be charged more ?
How will they do that then ?
They'll weigh your rubbish on the bin wagon and send you the bill ?
Doesn't that need an act of parliament ?
You'll get one then ?
Oh bugger.

So, my local council is volunteering to chip our bins - makes note to check his wheelie bins tonight.
This would be the same local council who's refuse treatment and recycling plant burned down two years ago, and kept burning, for five days, the firemen kept putting it out but there was so much shite in the place that it just kept flaring back up again.
And since then Leeds hasn't had sufficient recycling capacity.
So its had to ship its recyclable stuff off to another authority to be recycled.
Or bury the recyclable stuff in landfill, after we've sorted it out for recycling.

When, and its when, not if, this crazy law comes into effect it will be unworkable, for the simple fact that no-one will be able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the rubbish that was emptied into the bin wagon from your wheelie bin this morning when you weren't there to watch it really did weigh 147 kilos and that it really was your rubbish in the first place.

Our bins are emptied at 6.30am every monday morning so everyone places the bins out on the street on sunday evening - yes you don't have to be a genius to work out that our family of four fills our wheelie bin every week and the old couple over the road dont - if I think my bin is too full then I'll just wait a little bit later than they do and I'll put some - or all - of my rubbish in their bin, and if their bin then becomes to full and they get a surcharge, well, thats just tough isn't it ?

Fair ? Who said politics was fair ?

Theres also the issue of "generating" waste - politicians bitch about lazy households who "generate" too much waste.

Well, we "generate" a lot of waste in our house, we overfill our wheelie bin most weeks.

But the thing is that we don't "generate" anything.
We don't sit in the kitchen every night making the rubbish that we then put in the bin, I don;t sit there imploring the kids to make some more cardboard, "come on kids hurry up with that cardboard making machine, our bins still only half full this week", that not what happens.

What really happens is that we buy stuff at the shops, enough stuff to feed four people every week, the stuff at the shops comes in paper wrappers and card board boxes, then we we eat the stuff from the shops the wrappers and cardboard boxes go in the bin, and it gets fuller the more times you do that.

Yes we have a recycle bin and yes we put cardboard and paper and plastics in it.

But wait, what sort of plastics would they be ?
What type of polymers do they contain ?
Why can you recycle that milk carton but not the screwcap from it ?
Its a bit harder than you think isn't it ?

And what would happen if I stand at the check out at Walmart Asda next saturday (ha, ha, ha - me shopping ?) and unwrapped everything that was wrapped and unpacked everything that was packed and just took the raw food away with me saying that I don't need the packaging despite having just paid for it ?

I know someone who does that already and let me tell you - it pisses the hell out of the managers.

The bottom line is that the government solution is to blame, and financially penalise the end product - ie you and me - whereas in fact you and me will probably do a lot more to recycle if we are given the correct tools and guidance - when in fact the blame for most of the stuff that goes into landfill lies with the original manufacturer.

And why can't we just dig more holes ?

Its not supposed to hurt is it ?

I've been to the cheap council gym for the last two evenings, they gave me free passes see, if I go tomorrow it'll cost me £4 a session or £25 for the month.

I hurt like buggery.

My arms hurt like buggary, twice.

I think I've got a trapped nerve in my right shoulder, have had it for a while, its because I lay on it in bed, I think, anyway it hurts like buggary and I thought going to the gym might help - it doesn't, it just makes it hurt like buggary even more.

Its not supposed to hurt is it ?

I came in the house tonight and took an ibuprofen then sprayed my shoulder with Deep Heat so now I stink like a chemical works but the pain in the shoulder has gone away a bit - for now.

Tomorrow I will stop the weights stuff and just do the aerobic thingys, cycling, cross trainer, treadmill, rowing that sort of stuff.

Or at least I'll try to do the aerobic stuff.

I have a chest strap for a polar heart monitor as the equipment picks up and displays the signal from these, saves you having to wear the polar wristwatch thing like the poseurs do.

Anyway the cross trainer has a programme for weight loss so I made the setting on it for age,weight etc and set off - after a few minutes it told me to slow down because my heart rate was too high - the poor love was worried about me topping 150bpm but it made for a very boring workout, I couldn't even break into a sweat so I stopped and told it I was a 20 year old so that it would let me go faster, it wasn't having it though, the display called me a lying bas'tad and told me to get off.

I went from there to the rowing machine and set off rowing quite well but after 30 seconds or so felt a stabbing pain in my left thigh, right on the thigh bone / hip bone joint every time I got to the bit where you're scrunched up at the start of the stroke, it got so bad that I had to stop without completing the rower workout.

The pain went as soon as I stood up - realised much later that it was my plastic temporary membership card in my shorts pocket sticking in my thigh at the start of each stroke, what a bummer.

Don't shoot the swordsman...

This item has popped up in the local news again.
And its as weird as the original story was.

It all happened in March 2005 on the M62 - police received calls about a van that was been driven against the flow of traffic on the Westbound motorway, later reports suggested that the driver had been seen brandishing a sword inside the vehicle and this is backed up by the fact that Humberside Police sent an armed response vehicle to the scene.

By the time they arrived the van had collided head on with an oncoming car and the van driver, later identified as 26 year old Simon Murden was seen by police trying to break his way into the cab of a tanker which had stopped at the scene, he was armed with a two foot long sword and threatened the police officers with it when they approached him.

As he continued to approach the armed police officers they fired two baton (plastic bullet) rounds at him and when he still refused to stop they shot and killed him with a regular firearm.

And that was that.

The young man in question helped his father run a shop in Beverley which sold Fair Trade Goods and had worked in Africa for various christian charities, the whole family were said to be committed christians who had dedicated their lives to assisting in poverty stricken parts of the world - the tragic death of Simon Murden was incomprehensible and could only be written off in laymans terms as "he finally flipped, went crazy, lost control of his senses" and other such non-medical terms for someone who was obviously suffering from a mental illness on the day of his death.

Not that the police could do anything else, they were in an unenviable situation, confronted by a man wielding a sword who had just driven several miles the wrong way down a motorway with no regard for his or other peoples lives, who wouldn't stop when challenged, even when hit by plastic rounds, and seemed determined to approach the petrol station that the incident took place adjacent to in order to either take shelter, take hostages or hijack a vehicle - they shot him dead, they had no other choice - it was the first time in their history that Humberside Police had ever shot and killed anyone - take note anyone reading from the USA !

And so yesterday the Director of Public Prosecutions after a long and detailed review of the evidence rightly determined that no charges should be made against the two armed police officers involved - its something that we have to do in this country, only certain well trained officers are armed with guns and they can only discharge them under orders from a senior officer under very specific circumstances.

Whenever anyone is shot by one of these police officers there has to be a long and detailed independant enquiry to ensure that the officer concerned did not trangress any of the rules and regulations, if he/she did then he/she could find themselves on the end of a murder charge - I know several friends, including family members who have done firearms training in the police and then withdrawn from the armed section, not due to the risk to their person from lunatic gunmen but the risk to their own mental health from the paper trails involved every day that they are on firearms duty - and the potential career-ending under-pressure incorrect decision that they may make one day.

But of course the family cannot be pacified by this conclusion, to them their son and brother was killed by armed police officer in an act that to them was totally out of character, its not suprising that they cannot accept that he was behaving as he was, anyone else would be the same, but their press release yesterday which speaks of private high court action against the police is misguided and sensationalist ;-

"It is with unbelievable shock and astonishment that our family and friends have responded to the news that no criminal charges will be brought against the police for the terrible and untimely death of Simon...
"Our much loved, thoughtful, gentle son and brother deserves truth, accountability and justice. He did not deserve such a shocking death at the hands of the police."

Well I'm sorry Murden family, but anyone who walks towards armed police wielding a sword and receives the benefit of two warning shots of rounds designed to stop and not kill, but who then continues to threaten those officers and the general public, simply deserves to be brought to ground with conventional rounds.

And someone should really explain that to them before they spend all of their money on a futile court case.

Admit you're guilty ... or we'll sulk

You may recall that last month I mentioned that Her Majesty's Government were considering whether or not to charge up to £4000 in costs for everyone who had the audacity to challenge their evidence in a speed camera prosecution, and in that entry I mentioned how we (as in "we" as a company) had indeed challenged a "Casualty Reduction Bureau" in the past and found their systems, and more importantly their evidence, to be shaky at best, non existant at worst - previous blog story here.

Well, I was sorting through a filing tray today and at the bottom found my correspondance with the "Casualty Reduction Bureau" (CRB) concerned and so can tell the full story, as it happened, with just two riders...

1. The above photograph is genuine and is untouched by me and my photo editing skills apart from the fact that I have obviously obliterated the number plate, that act exhausted my photo editing skills and so what you see above is exactly what I was presented by the CRB. I've also cropped the photo so as not to show the CRB's own identification codes, yes maybe I'm paranoid but I don't want the bas'tads coming looking for me again !

2. Its been three years since all of this happened and they still haven't replied to my last letter, for all I know its still sitting in some civil servants "IN" tray waiting for a decision when he/she gets back from sick leave (It'll be "stress", it always is) - so this whole post may be removed without notice - I'm being paranoid again.

So,

Weds 12th Nov 2003 I'm opening the mail and out drops a Notice of Intended Prosecution for one of our company cars, simply informing us that the CRB had photographic evidence of our vehicle doing 39mph in a 30mph limit on 3rd June 2003 and could I please dob in the driver and get him/her to cough up £60 and his/her licence.

Now this wasn't the first one of these Notices that I'd received and the location of the mobile camera in question was well known to us, I was annoyed that one of us had been stupid enough to be caught again, annoyed for all sorts of reasons not least financially annoyed, so was just about to kick someones arse when I read the date again - 3rd June, today was the 12th November.

The annoyance moved from one of our drivers to the CRB themselves and the more I thought about it the more annoyed with them I got, particularly at their arrogant wording of the Notice and its threat to prosecute me personally if I didn't tell them who the driver was on that day five months previously.

Of course they depend on the honesty of the British public in simply holding their hands up and paying the fine and taking the points on their licences, its how the whole system works, they don't show you the evidence but you have to admit to the offence anyway.

I spoke to a friend who is a criminal solicitor (always a dangerous thing to do) and he told me that the CRB had only 14 days in which to issue the notice to us - its covered in Section 1c of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988, I looked on the internet at the act and sure enough there it was, they had to contact me within 14 days of the offence - ha ! I had the bastards, time for one of my famous kick arse letters.

I wrote back, nicely, you should always be nice, and act a little dumb, I wrote and told them that the vehicle was a company car and used as a pool car (which was true) and that one of three drivers could have been using the car on that day, and that I had a little difficulty in identifying the driver. Then in a second paragraph I happened to also mention the relevant road traffic act and the 14 day rule and how my job would have been much easier if they had sent me the forms within 14 days, whereas five months made it near to impossible.

They wrote back to me on the 17th November to tell me (quote) "...we are only obliged to send out the first Notice of Intended Prosecution to the last known owner/keeper of the vehicle..." (unquote) and also (quote) "...as you will appreciate that person or company may not be the current owner or driver at the time of the offence. Subsequently, as with this offence, further enquiries must be made which take longer than the initial 14 day period."(unquote).

They then went on to threaten me again with prosecution if I failed to ID the driver within 28 days.

That annoyed me again.

I wrote back to them on the 18th November (its always good to take 24 hours out before composing your replies to anything), very politely pointing out that the vehicle in question was a Peugeot, made in the UK and registered direct to Peugeot UK straight off the production line, and then leased by their own leasing management company to us, in other words it had only ever had one owner (Peugeot UK) and that that owner knew who we were as leassors, and that when the owner received these notices then they had a legal obligation to inform the authorities whom was operating the vehicle within 30 days, in other words I could account for the diversion of the Notice for a maximum of 30 days, but where had the other four months gone ?

I finished by apologising for my inability to ID the driver and suggested that if they had a photograph that they could show me then I would be able to quickly draw a conclusion.

They wrote back to me on 24th November and to my amazement they attached a copy of the photographic evidence that they were basing their Notice of Intended Prosecution on - its the one above - and they actually apologise for (quote) "...the poor quality but trust that you will be able to identify the identity of the driver..."(unquote).

After we had stopped laughing I got annoyed again.

I got annoyed that they had obviously made a balls up, probably lost a whole batch of digital images, but were still arrogantly pushing for a prosecution, even though they knew, and I now knew, that any half sane magistrate would kick their arses all the way down the courtroom steps with their image of The Shadow driving a car with only his knuckles visible - what a good job that none of us in the office had tatoos on our knuckles - and we all agreed to go to court and ask a magistrate to choose which one of us to prosecute.

I wrote back finally on the 9th December 2003, don't know why I left it so long this time, maybe I still didn't believe that anyone could be so stupid as to still try and leach £60 and three points out of someone on no evidence at all.

I informed them that due to the poor quality of the photgraph I was unable to identify the driver and I filled in their Notice of Intended Prosecution with the box ticked to state exactly that, the form leaves you in no doubt that you are then personally liable to prosecution and that a court must deal with the offence of "Failure to furnish driver details", I secretly looked forward to the day in court.

It never came.

They never replied to my last letter, which annoys me again.

They obviously knew all along that they had no evidence at all to go to court with and that they were also on dodgy ground with the time period given for the Notice to arrive, but still saw fit to try and extract a self-confession - its what happens when you rig the law to provide for a self financing trenche of civil servants with targets to make and money to raise to pay for and justify their own existence.


Suprisingly I am in favour of speed cameras and other such methods of road calming, they have restored a little sanity on the main routes into and out of Leeds now and 30mph is now the normal speed for traffic on the A660 and A65 instead of the free for all that it used to be, and the speed humps on the main road near my house serve another very useful purpose in this residential area.

The problem occurs in the whole raft of civil service jobsworths that have been created to support this and their inability or unwillingness to apply common sense decisions to the cases like mine, not to mention the fact that hundreds of millions of pounds have now been raised on the back of a law that forces you to incriminate yourself or face (as in the news story mentioned at the start) huge court costs just for questioning their evidence - I don't know what I'd have done had they threatened me with a £4000 cost for providing the information that they did.

Rugby League - a story

This little project is coming along nicely - the everyday life of a bog standard lad in a bog-standard job living in a bog-standard house who goes to work, goes to the pub, and goes to the rugby.

Its set in 1970 and contains attitudes that are rightly considered racist and sexist by todays standards but which were part and parcel of life back then and need to be included for authenticity and honesty.

Unfortunately the blogger format means that you have to read it upside down, ie start at the bottom for chapter one :) and I'll be adding to it over the next few weeks.

See what you think.

Random pub paintings

Two ways to handle my favourite painting/drawing subjects - British Pubs.

The top one is the Three Horse Shoes in Headingley, done in coloured pencil, easy to work with, easy to correct when things go wrong, fascinating to overlay several times and watch the colours interact with each other - is a very precise format and can end up looking like an architects plan if not careful.

The bottom one is The Adelphi, one of Tetleys central Leeds major public houses, done in watercolour worked mainly wet-in-wet, that is the paint is painted onto a wet sheet of watercolour paper making it very unpredictable. Some correction can be done by lifting out some of the paint while still wet with a tissue or dry brush, or by waiting for the paint and paper to dry and painting over it - neither is very succesful as watercolour is by its nature transparent and what you have underneath will always show through, you get one, maybe two chances to get things right with watercolour and can often ruin a painting right at the end after ten or twelve hours work on it.

Guess which one I prefer to work with ?
Yup - the difficult one :)

...the problem with Whickers Island is ...

Every UK male of a certain age will be able to finish off the sentence in the title. It is of course from the Monty Pythons Flying Circus tribute to one of British TV's most enduring images, Alan Whicker - "...the problem with Whickers Island is...that there are just too many Whickers" - you had to be there, it was funny I promise you.

Alan Whicker was the must-watch travel icon on British TV for most of the 60's, 70's and 80's, not that any of us could ever dream of going to most of the places he went to in the 60's and 70's - only now in the grown up world of cheap jet travel can some of us (not me, but some anyway) actually go and visit the sorts of places that Alan Whicker did, but even now we still can't get access to the stuff that Wicker saw, touched and smelled once a week on our black and white TV's.

I'm currently watching a 1978 episode of Whickers World on one of the Discovery Travel channels and even from the starting titles you can tell that this is going to be no ordinary travelogue, the first few seconds of the intro show Concorde flying high above the clouds, flashing past the aircraft that was filming it and the jazzy, fast paced intro music takes you to a world that none of us ever inhabited but the very rich and very titled - Alan Whicker was the Judith Chalmers of the jetset, his clipped nasal vowels with its classic English accent brought an air of civility to some of the very uncivil places that he visited and no matter which country he visited he was never seen outside of a smart blue blazer and tie, or in the case of the programme that I am currently watched, a well pressed beige safari suit as a small concession to the heat of central India.

The fascinating thing about Whickers World (1959-1994) is that it is still fresh and still interesting and in fifty years time it will be a valuable archive into how the British viewed those bloody foreigners but also a valuable archive into those bloody foreigners themselves who are even now losing their own identity as McDonalds and Sony take over the world.

For instance in "Whickers World in India", Alan Whicker chose the central state of Rajastan to visit and started the programme by explaining how this huge state (three times bigger than the UK) used to be owned by independant Raj's who were told to rennounce their titles (they were viewed almost as gods by their people) and give up their lands to form the new state under Indian government rule rather than each individual Raj enforcing his own version of the lawbook.

And they did, in theory. In theory the Indian Government thought that they ruled the region, but in practice life went on as it always had - and this is where Wicker went in 1978 to interview the beautiful widow of one of the last and greatest of the Raj's, she was still young when Wicker interviewed her even though her husband had committed suicide twenty years earlier, still young because she had been married to him at the age of twelve.

She told a frank tale of a crazy ruler of tens of thousands of people in a time when the ultimate act for any widow was to throw yourself onto your dead husbands funeral pyre and die with him - fortunately for her the practice had become illegal when the old Raj died although it was still being practiced with the authorities turning a blind eye to it - the old Raj had so many wives that she'd have been at the back of a long queue and the pyre would have kept burning for weeks if they'd all jumped.

The old Raj had in theory committed suicide because of the stripping of power by central government, he thought it was disgraceful and that he had brought great shame on the family name by allowing it to happen, so one day he sat in his study, took out a finely carved, gold embossed rifle, summoned one of his servants to the room and ordered him to shoot him and make it look like suicide - the Raj beleived that a Raj should not stoop so low as to actually commit suicide himself, one should always get ones servants to commit suicide on ones person.

Whicker was not afraind of asking awkward or personal questions - sitting in a swinging chair in the widows palace garden he asked her to explain what was meant by the rumours of the Raj's sexual prowess, without batting an eyelid the young widow explained that the Raj was indeed a very sexually active man although not necessarily with his wives - Whickers eyelids raised every so slightly at this revelation and then exploded into mirth as she added "he preferred the young village boys".

She also told of how he was ostracised by the English, not after tales of his cruelty to his villagers with his unique intertpretation of Indian law and punishment were heard at Westminster, but after he had become bored of the royal game of polo and had set fire to all of his polo ponies to get rid of them - the stories of him using live human babies as bait when he went tiger hunting wouldn't have impressed Her Majesty the Queen either.

All in all a fascinating glimpse into a way of life that had disappeared except from memory in 1978 and has probably disappeared permenantly now, except in the old films of Whickers World, a place where an Englishmen never shows sweat marks on his safari jacket, and always wears a blazer and cravat at your hosts evening dinner, even when your host is a naked Bornean chief who eats his rival tribesmen.

...but at least you can laugh eh ?

Love free "local" magazines and newspapers.

I'm just reading the latest edition of "Cookridge Life" which gets shoved through our door once a month to inundate me with all of our friendly plumbers, pet shops, tanfantastic studios and tarot readers and I've read this amazingly condescending free "charities" advert, which is at the same time is being "awful" in the Dick Emery "ooh you are awful" meaning of the word ...


Just a little background - Cookridge Hospital is the area's leading cancer treatment facility - just so you know.


Wanted ! Comedy DVD's
Cookridge Hospital is seeking DVD's of classic comedy series like Dad's Army, Fawlty Towers etc, to show to cancer patients, if you have any to donate please contact etc etc etc


I'm not sure how to take the advert - I mean, are they showing these DVD's to terminally ill patients in a "look what you're going to miss" stylee, or perhaps "cheer up, its terminal but it doesn't have to be sad", or maybe "well I'll put it on but I'm not sure that you'll get through all of the episodes love"

Pumping Iron...

Oh dear, this one is going to be a tough one to write without sounding snobby and eliteist, so I'll just write it as it happens and I'll be snobby and eliteist then.

Yesterday I joined a gym...........again.

Its (I think) the fifth gym that I've been a member of, but there is a difference this time - the four (at least four) other gyms have all been private affairs, hotel gyms or a big "country club" gym with its own golf course, I'll leave you to imagine how burgeois and expensive that one was.

This one belongs to the council.

Its, erm, not very posh.

Its not very big either but its got the latest range of equipment by Lifestyle and in that respect is much more up to date than the expensive "country club" option who's aerobic equiment is six or seven years old now.

There is one other difference - at the council gym you can pay-as-you-go or join for a year for a third of the price of all the other gyms - suddenly I'm interested and not so snobby any more, just think of the money I'll save I kept telling myself.

The other attraction is that two of my friends already go there and one thing that you need when embarking on a year long gym commitment is enthusiasm caused by competition - and someone to talk to when cycling nowhere for half an hour.

Two of us arrived for our "induction" yesterday, which is basically an instructor showing us around all of the equipment and how it all works, which we both knew anyway having used similar equipment for the last fifteen years. We made our first faux pas and discovered the first big drawback of using a council sports centre when we walked into the male changing room and found it full of 15 year old boys changing into a football strip, one of the ones who could speak informed us that the male changing rooms were closed to the general public until 4pm every day as the high school next door had exclusive use.

We had to use the swimming pool changing rooms downstairs which was a bit of a bummer, but still, think of the money you're saving I reminded myself.

The building is a community sports hall that was built in 1976 (I remember it well on its opening day) and its shabby. Like all community use buildings it gets abused by the community it serves and it doesn't receive good maintenance, that is it gets maintained but never improved.

A couple of years ago Leeds City Council benefited from one of those central government campaigns to get everyone into a gymnasium and in a similarly funded campaign to the 1976 "Sport for All" push for glory, our council received funding to equip all of its twenty sports and swimming complexes with a state of the art gym, giving affordable access to the poorest of our citizens.

The only problem is of course that most of these sports centres were built in the mid 1970's during Harold Wilson's last Labour Government soviet style sports funding campaign to get us all fit and healthy and the emphasis at that time was so much on gyms but on swimming pools and mutli-use sports halls - these facilities do not really have the space for a "proper" gym.

So our local facility has used what used to be a bar area, a fairly small room (in gym terms) in which to squash a number of aerobic and weight centred machines, its slightly bigger than your typical hotel gym but much much smaller than anything that would be commercial.

Still, think of the money you're saving I kept repeating.

Still it was fairly empty yesterday afternoon and the one good thing about local authority run facilities is that there are always plenty of staff, three fitness instructors in the gym yesterday for a maximum of five clients while we were there, thats far better than any private establishment I've been in.

Its just down to the clientele then - what you might call the lower end of the social scale, a mixture of young kids in nylon shell suits trying to establish the first growth of a bicep or two, right up to the middle aged tatoo embossed bruiser in a sleeveless t-shirt who looks as though he is not unfamiliar with the regular friday night scraps in the local council estate pub - we saw examples of both yesterday - but think of the money you're saving I kept repeating.

These people are the salt of the earth I kept repeating, and think of the money you're saving, and so I tried to look as tough as they did and I didn't smile at anyone like they don't and I called them all "mate" like they do - and I think I fit right in.

Just think of the money I'm saving.

Mate

Greybeards, IAM, and other observations...

Todays gripe at the world at large is about a section of society who are a vexation to the spirit in their never ending quest to tell the rest of us how we are doing things wrong and how we should be more like them.

Yes good people, today I am discussing greybeards.

I haven't a clue who the gentleman in the photo above is, but anyone who is reading this will recognise him, hell you might even be one yourself.

He is a greybeard and he knows all of lifes secrets.
And he never tires of telling you so.

What has brought on this sudden vicious attack on those for whom life has sapped the natural colouration from their very chin hair you may ask ?

Well driving the short distance (4 minutes), (I'm a lazy bas'tad) to work this morning I found myself listening to the lovely Georgie on Radio Leeds interviewing a representative from the Institute of Advanced Motorists, and without the aid of a visual reference (this is the radio remember) I just knew instictively that he had a greybeard.

You can tell immediately when greybeards are on the radio, its that air of condescend-ation (new word ?) that pervades everything they say, the clipped tones of someone who is totally confident in the fact that their facial decoration makes them far superior to any other member of the human race, unless that other person also has a greybeard in which case they are merely equals.

And theres another thing - you never see two greybeards together in the same place - I have no explanation other than, thats the way god planned it (with apologies to Billy Preston).

I've always fancied a go at the Institute of Advanced Motorists, I drive 25 to 30 thousand miles a year and have done for 33 years with only one collision (six months after I had started driving) to my name, so I think that I'm an OK sort of driver and would like to see what an IAM examiner thinks of me.

But I daren't go.

Because I know for a fact that the examiner would have a greybeard, and he'd talk smugly to me like the bloke on the radio was doing this morning, and I know, I just know, that at the first roundabout I would have had enough and would stop at the nearest bus stop, give him twenty pence for his fare back to his office and tell him to go do one.

Which would probably mean that I'd fail his examination and then my insurance company would get to know about it because the greybeard would feel obliged to tell them (he just would, they do that sort of thing), and then I'd be stuffed for car insurance, again.


Greybeard pervades all society, but there are precautions that you can take to avoid them - you will never eliminate them entirely from your life, but you can minimise your contact with them...

1. Avoid examination by the Institute of Advanced Motorists (see above)

2. Avoid any other form of self-important club or association, look regularly in your local free newspaper at the list of local society meetings such as camera clubs, gardening clubs, and especially hiking clubs, note the times and dates that they meet - then avoid all of them.

3. Do not go caravanning. Drive past a caravan being towed on a motorway on the Friday before a bank holiday and I will wager high odds with you that it is being driven by a greybeard, it follows that you should avoid Caravan Club campsites on bank holidays at all costs (see also point 2, club membership).

4. When looking for employment avoid the civil service as a career choice, it is riddled with middle management greybeards, all of whom book their flexitime leave on the Friday before a bank holiday. in fact the best time to go to a meeting at your local job centre, courthouse, tax office etc is on the Friday before a bank holiday, safe in the knowledge that you've just passed all the greybeards heading out of town on the motorway.

5. Avoid doctors surgeries, especially the ones who promise you that you'll feel nothing in a minute love, just this little injection and then you'll be fast asleep...


And with point 5 I rest my case.




And for those from outside of the UK who are now thinking "I've missed something here, that point 5 was a clue wasn't it ?", then you may wish to click here.

Sand and Water

I've decided, its time for another "Songs to improve your musical education", and this time you get a bonus - as well as being a "song you really should listen to" this one is also a "lyric that you really should read".

Beth Nielsen Chapman's "Sand and Water" was written in memory of her husband who died from cancer at an unreasonably young age and its become an anthem for those who are grieving or simply remembering - read the chorus and agree.

I haven't heard her write or record one bad song yet and they all deserve a good long listen, the sort of listen where you really listen to the words, long and hard, in a darkened room.

So here its is, "Sand and Water"...


All alone I didn't like the feeling
All alone I sat and cried
All alone I had to find some meaning
In the center of the pain I felt inside

All alone I came into this world
All alone I will someday die
Solid stone is just sand and water, baby
Sand and water, and a million years gone by

I will see you in the light of a thousand suns
I will hear you in the sound of the waves
I will know you when I come, as we all will come
Through the doors beyond the grave

All alone I heal this heart of sorrow
All alone I raise this child
Flesh and bone, he's just
Bursting towards tomorrow
And his laughter fills my world and wears your smile

I will see you in the light of a thousand suns
I will hear you in the sound of the waves
I will know you when I come, as we all will come
Through the doors beyond the grave

All alone I came into this world
All alone I will someday die
Solid stone is just sand and water, baby
Sand and water and a million years gone by

Music and Lyrics copyright Beth Nielsen Chapman

Step back in time...

One thing that we have in abundance in the UK is heritage.

But it comes at a cost.

And that is why we have organisations like English Heritage and The National Trust.

Take Brodsworth Hall near Doncaster for instance.

Brodsworth is what the victorian gentry called "a country house", its not a stately home and the Thellusson family who built it in 1860 did not have impressive titles, but they were rich victorians, having made their "brass" (as we say oop north) in banking and mining, so rich that they bought the Brodsworth estate with a stately pile already on it, but they didn't like it so knocked it down and built their own house on the same spot.

And they lived there for several generations right through to 1988, the amassed family fortune from the industrious Thellussons lasted for just over 100 years until it was all spent, but boy did the descendants have fun spending it in their own ways.

Horse racing and yachting were their vices and the house is packed full of their trophies from both sports, and they spent lots of the family money on their gardens too until finally there was only one old lady left, Mrs Sylvia Grant-Dalton for whom the upkeep of what was by then an old house proved too much. When she died in 1988 the house was in a derelict state and looking at the English heritage photographs of the time its hard to believe that someone could have lived in the ruin.

The house had suffered, in an incredibly ironic turn of fate, from subsidence, caused by the underground mine workings of the original Thessullon family's pits, ceilings were collapsing, the roof was all but gone and the magnificent country house was riddled with damp and rot.

Which is where English Heritage stepped in and started a 15 year restoration project with the admirable aim of not only restoring the building structure, but restoring all of the accumulated possesions of the Thessullon family which Mrs Grant-Dalton had hoarded like a miser in rooms packed full of the sort of junk that a rich family collects over 120 years.

We've visited Brodsworth three times in the last eight or nine years and every time I find it a fascinating place to go. Its unlike our closest stately pile (Harewood, home to the Queens cousin) in that Brodsworth is a home, rather than an array of rooms displaying the family gold and silver, and in that respect it is also matched by Lotherton Hall near Leeds, another victorian country house which has been preserved with the families possesions as if the family still lived there , to the extent where you can see, touch, and read old newspapers left lying around on side tables.

Its in complete contrast to another great Hall that I once visited back in the late eighties, Beninbrough Hall had been handed to English Heritage completely stripped of anything evidence that anyone had ever lived there and in that first year that we visited most of the rooms were completely empty save for a few dusty old portraits hanging on the wall that had been borrowed from The National Portrait Gallery and didn't even relate to Yorkshire let alone the house itself.

The likes of Brodsworth (which has just opened its last phase of work) and Lotherton, are prime examples of how we should preserve our history and present it to our children, both houses have very busy education schedules for their local schools and are so much better at teaching history than sitting in classrooms reading old books on old subjects.