Saturday, January 19, 2008
Goodbye, goodbye, we're leaving you goodbye...
Time to pack up and go, time to move on, time to head for pastures new, time to plot a course for distant shores, in short I'm fekking off to Wordpress...
I hope I've backed everything up properly here because its got to be archived into the biography yet, but we now sit out on the doorstep surrounded by boxes of memories awaiting the removal men to take us away from all of this to a new, neater, slightly more organised, slightly more editable (when I learn how) blog template.
I would deem it an honour if those of you who link to this site would divert said links to http://jerrychicken.wordpress.com/ I'll see you all there, a bright new future awaits, two and a bit years of rubbish remains behind here, possibly for all time, I may cry now, so I'm gone...
GONE TO http://jerrychicken.wordpress.com/
Video Saturday - Two Masters
You see, if I could sing then I'd want to sing as effortlessly and with such a trademark voice as Tony Bennett.
Whilst the songs of Frank Sinatra resonated around our house when I was young (for regular readers will know that Frank Sinatra was my father), the songs of Tony Bennett were never far away from the record player either, nor for that matter were the songs of Matt Munro who my father insisted would have been as big as either of those two godfathers of croon if only he'd broken the American market.
My fathers legacy is that I now own Tony Bennett cd's of my own - an unthinkable act in the 1970's when I would fight for possession of the radiogram and the opportunity to put my Faces/Stones/ELP/Procul Harem records on, maybe it happened by osmosis, the steady drip of crooning at every waking minute finally affected the concious as well as the sub-concious part of my unwilling brain.
Stevie Wonder was always there of course, an artist who transcended the generations so that my father could also appreciate what he was doing, in fact most of the Tamla Motown artists appealed to both of us.
Having said all of that and despite the above video's ability to coat every brain cell with warm soapy water in a nice remains-of-the-day relaxing Radox bath stylee...
...I still prefer this version, complete with dolly bird go-go dancers, "oooh dolly bird go-go dancers" our dad would exclaim as he dragged his chair closer to the screen, "just how synchronised are they", not very is the answer...
Friday, January 18, 2008
German Shepherd
"...you see there's this bloody great big German Shepherd comes on a walk past my house at 10 o clock every morning and stops and has a great big crap right in the middle of my front lawn...
...and sometimes he brings his dog too"
Overheard in The Fox tonight.
...and sometimes he brings his dog too"
Overheard in The Fox tonight.
Blagging a day off school...
I hope Patrick Stewart still reads this, I hope he's still on the planet to read this, its been a year Patrick, send me an email because I don't know what your address is, what with you changing it so often to keep the rozzers on their toes.
Patrick Stewart was a friend of mine at High School, or Grammar School as it was known then, blazers and ties, masters not teachers, silence and stand to attention when they walk in the room - all that sort of good stuff, just like Tom Browns Schooldays - in fact we went to the same school as Alan Bennett although alas not at the same time and we can't even claim to have had the same English masters as they were all replaced en bloc the year before we started - I often wonder what had happened to the old set of English masters, a scandal or a tragic accident involving a tall bookcase top heavy over-stacked with old encyclopedias ?
So we are all sat in class one day waiting for the Maths master to turn up and after ten minutes its obvious that he's not coming when suddenly a woman master, complete with masters gown wafts into the room and places her briefcase gently on the masters desk.
We stood in silence and stared for we had not seen a woman master before, we didn't have woman masters at Leeds Modern, not a single one, this was a first.
Within 30 seconds she had been sussed out by the class, she was weak, with a weak voice, she was completely unable to control the class and had as much chance of teaching us maths as I had at ever passing my maths O level, in short she was way, way out of her depth.
Because the noise level in the class was rising to a crescendo, a crime punishable by a period of detention not longer than the rest of your school career, she asked nicely if someone could close the high level windows that lined the corridor side of the classroom, and Patrick Stewart volunteered.
Standing on a desk to achieve this brought a protest from the weak woman to desist but he didn't hear her, or rather ignored her, and set about banging one of the window frames with his fist as it had stuck - he missed with one thump and cracked his elbow off the open frame causing a funny bone injury, that well known "it hurts like hell but I'm laughing" injury.
For anyone else it would have been a quick swear, a rub and then sit down, but for Patrick this was an opportunity to seize upon.
He sat down clutching his elbow, groaning in pain, groaning for five minutes until the weak woman came across to look, she tried to look but he wouldn't let her, insisting that he'd broken his elbow.
She didn't believe him, she grabbed his arm and he screamed out in agony, he was good, he was very good, I'd have believed him if he hadn't accidentally let out a laugh at the end of the scream but the weak woman missed that bit.
Fearing that news of her complete lack of control would reach the head anytime soon she agreed to let him go and see "Nurse", an old biddy who sat in a cupboard all day long dispensing tampons and long homely talks to the girls from the girls side of the school (we were never to mix), Patrick insisted that he felt faint and asked if someone could go with him, me for instance, he actually pointed at me with his broken elbow arm and then remembered and quickly grabbed at it again, screaming a bit more.
She let us both go, as soon as we were out in the corridor he shook his broken elbow and told me that it had "hurt like buggery" for a bit but was alright now
"So what are we going to do now then" I asked.
"I'm off home" he replied
"She'll check with Nurse" I reminded him
Patrick thought for a bit, "We'll go see Nurse then" was his answer.
So we did, and he put on such a good display in Nurses cupboard that she panicked after offering us both a tampon each and told him to get himself down to the General Infirmary for an x-ray, she even gave us some petty cash to pay for the bus fare.
When we were safely outside of school Patrick repeated the fact that he was off home now.
"She'll check with the Infirmary" I warned him
"Bugger, she will as well" he agreed, so we went into Leeds and found our way to the A&E department at the Leeds General Infirmary.
The doctors there were also taken in by his acting ability as was everyone else sat out in the waiting area with me as we listened to his screams of fake agony.
He exited the examination room with the wrong arm clad in a sling, he explained that he'd switched arms because he was getting tired of holding his right arm and if they were going to put it in plaster then he'd rather they do his left arm, its very useful when you can pick and chose which arm they plaster.
X-rays were next and as we sat outside the x-ray room I whispered to him that this was the end of the road, there was no way that he could blag the x-ray to show a broken elbow, he was confident that he could though.
He didn't of course, the x-ray showed no damage whatsoever so we didn't bother going back to the examination room as instructed, we just ran out of the hospital with their sling and spent the rest of Nurse's petty cash on a couple of under-age pints of lager at the Tam'o Shanter.
He wore the sling for three weeks and the weak maths master was most apologetic every time she saw him, even though he often swapped arms in the sling while talking to her.
Now thats what I call a master blagger.
Patrick Stewart was a friend of mine at High School, or Grammar School as it was known then, blazers and ties, masters not teachers, silence and stand to attention when they walk in the room - all that sort of good stuff, just like Tom Browns Schooldays - in fact we went to the same school as Alan Bennett although alas not at the same time and we can't even claim to have had the same English masters as they were all replaced en bloc the year before we started - I often wonder what had happened to the old set of English masters, a scandal or a tragic accident involving a tall bookcase top heavy over-stacked with old encyclopedias ?
So we are all sat in class one day waiting for the Maths master to turn up and after ten minutes its obvious that he's not coming when suddenly a woman master, complete with masters gown wafts into the room and places her briefcase gently on the masters desk.
We stood in silence and stared for we had not seen a woman master before, we didn't have woman masters at Leeds Modern, not a single one, this was a first.
Within 30 seconds she had been sussed out by the class, she was weak, with a weak voice, she was completely unable to control the class and had as much chance of teaching us maths as I had at ever passing my maths O level, in short she was way, way out of her depth.
Because the noise level in the class was rising to a crescendo, a crime punishable by a period of detention not longer than the rest of your school career, she asked nicely if someone could close the high level windows that lined the corridor side of the classroom, and Patrick Stewart volunteered.
Standing on a desk to achieve this brought a protest from the weak woman to desist but he didn't hear her, or rather ignored her, and set about banging one of the window frames with his fist as it had stuck - he missed with one thump and cracked his elbow off the open frame causing a funny bone injury, that well known "it hurts like hell but I'm laughing" injury.
For anyone else it would have been a quick swear, a rub and then sit down, but for Patrick this was an opportunity to seize upon.
He sat down clutching his elbow, groaning in pain, groaning for five minutes until the weak woman came across to look, she tried to look but he wouldn't let her, insisting that he'd broken his elbow.
She didn't believe him, she grabbed his arm and he screamed out in agony, he was good, he was very good, I'd have believed him if he hadn't accidentally let out a laugh at the end of the scream but the weak woman missed that bit.
Fearing that news of her complete lack of control would reach the head anytime soon she agreed to let him go and see "Nurse", an old biddy who sat in a cupboard all day long dispensing tampons and long homely talks to the girls from the girls side of the school (we were never to mix), Patrick insisted that he felt faint and asked if someone could go with him, me for instance, he actually pointed at me with his broken elbow arm and then remembered and quickly grabbed at it again, screaming a bit more.
She let us both go, as soon as we were out in the corridor he shook his broken elbow and told me that it had "hurt like buggery" for a bit but was alright now
"So what are we going to do now then" I asked.
"I'm off home" he replied
"She'll check with Nurse" I reminded him
Patrick thought for a bit, "We'll go see Nurse then" was his answer.
So we did, and he put on such a good display in Nurses cupboard that she panicked after offering us both a tampon each and told him to get himself down to the General Infirmary for an x-ray, she even gave us some petty cash to pay for the bus fare.
When we were safely outside of school Patrick repeated the fact that he was off home now.
"She'll check with the Infirmary" I warned him
"Bugger, she will as well" he agreed, so we went into Leeds and found our way to the A&E department at the Leeds General Infirmary.
The doctors there were also taken in by his acting ability as was everyone else sat out in the waiting area with me as we listened to his screams of fake agony.
He exited the examination room with the wrong arm clad in a sling, he explained that he'd switched arms because he was getting tired of holding his right arm and if they were going to put it in plaster then he'd rather they do his left arm, its very useful when you can pick and chose which arm they plaster.
X-rays were next and as we sat outside the x-ray room I whispered to him that this was the end of the road, there was no way that he could blag the x-ray to show a broken elbow, he was confident that he could though.
He didn't of course, the x-ray showed no damage whatsoever so we didn't bother going back to the examination room as instructed, we just ran out of the hospital with their sling and spent the rest of Nurse's petty cash on a couple of under-age pints of lager at the Tam'o Shanter.
He wore the sling for three weeks and the weak maths master was most apologetic every time she saw him, even though he often swapped arms in the sling while talking to her.
Now thats what I call a master blagger.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
The Gun...
Possession of an unlicensed firearm in the UK has been illegal for generations.
Obtaining a license for a firearm in the UK is nigh on impossible unless you are a farmer (shooting vermin, which may or may not include human vermin who are fleeing your home after a burglary), or a member of a gun shooting club (for shooting paper discs or flying dinner plates) - every other excuse for owning a firearm in the UK will be poo-poo'ed by the police including "Its my constitutional right", its not a constitutional right as we Brits don't have a constitution, we do what the Queen says or its off with our heads.
Even if the local bobbies do grant you a license for shooting vermin or flying dinner plates (for they are a real menace around here) then the conditions of that license will mean that you are hardly ever able to remove it from its locked and sealed cupboard hidden in your house, for we would not want anyone else but you to discover that firearm, not in this country, oh no.
So the presence of a firearm in someones garage, for instance, tends to raise eyebrows a little.
When I was ten I found a handgun in our garage.
Legal gun ownership in the UK is infinitesimally small, illegal gun ownership, we are told by the blathering newspapers, is on the increase with a flood of such weapons from eastern Europe, the bastards, but even with the newspapers "floods" of illegal weapons there was never such a quantity of firearms among the possession of the general public as there was in the 1940's and 1950's when men returning from WWII would as a matter of course forget to hand in their service weapons or forget to mention that "souvenir" gun that they had "found" during their state-sponsored five year vacation in and around Europe.
And so it was with our dad.
We would be talking 1966 or similar when one fine and warm august school holiday afternoon I was rooting around in the back of our garage and for the first time in a long time had managed to prise open the lid of a large tin trunk that had lain dormant in there for as long as I could remember.
The trunk was full of rubbish, nothing to play with or set fire to at all, until there, right down in the bottom corner, what was that rag ?
I tugged at the filthy cloth and pulled whatever was wrapped within it to the surface, shut the trunk lid and placed the bundle on top of the tin trunk.
Gently unwrapping the spider infested material, you can only imagine the size of my eyes when it revealed a handgun, a Luger type (presumably) semi-automatic weapon, slightly rusty, but the trigger still worked because of course as all small boys would, thats the first thing I tried, as an adult you'd probably try and find out if it was loaded first but a ten year old boy - he just pulls the trigger, it clicked so I knew it worked, it didn't go bang so I knew it probably wasn't loaded - I'd seen John Wayne films you see
In those long past halcyon days of school Summer holidays our dad would be at work all day while our mum had a part time job as a cleaner at our local university until lunch time so Ned and I would have the run of the house and garden all morning until she came home...
What ?
No, it wasn't called child neglect in those days, it was called "normal".
We had great fun that morning, or at least I did, chasing Ned my smaller, younger and much more stupid brother all over the garden with my newly acquired gun, you see he really thought it was loaded, possibly because I told him it was loaded, you just don't know how fast an eight year old can run around a garden and house when he thinks his big brother has got a loaded gun in his possession, I could hardly keep up with him all morning.
Of course the fun was spoiled when our mum came home, I can only imagine her surprise when Ned ran to her screaming that I had been chasing him with a real gun for hours, can only imagine that she patted him on the head and said something like "Yes dear", can only imagine that she must have nearly fainted when I ran round the corner and pointed a real big gun at the both of them and shouted "Bang !!! you're (nearly) dead".
It was me who was nearly dead.
She wouldn't touch the gun but made me put it back in the cloth and then back in the trunk and then she locked the garage door and gave me the hiding of my short life up until then.
But it was nothing compared to the hiding of his life that our dad got when he came home and for once he could not provide a suitable defence to her, he stood there for ten days receiving his bollocking until suitably cowed for the first time in his life he rang "a friend" who came and took the gun away "for shooting pigeons with" - poor bastard pigeons is all I could think.
Nothing more was ever said about the gun, even in his later years whenever I mentioned the day that I became a crazed college campus gunman running amok and shooting indiscriminately at our Ned, he would just shake his head and deny the very existence of the weapon.
I've never even seen a gun outside of a museum ever since.
Obtaining a license for a firearm in the UK is nigh on impossible unless you are a farmer (shooting vermin, which may or may not include human vermin who are fleeing your home after a burglary), or a member of a gun shooting club (for shooting paper discs or flying dinner plates) - every other excuse for owning a firearm in the UK will be poo-poo'ed by the police including "Its my constitutional right", its not a constitutional right as we Brits don't have a constitution, we do what the Queen says or its off with our heads.
Even if the local bobbies do grant you a license for shooting vermin or flying dinner plates (for they are a real menace around here) then the conditions of that license will mean that you are hardly ever able to remove it from its locked and sealed cupboard hidden in your house, for we would not want anyone else but you to discover that firearm, not in this country, oh no.
So the presence of a firearm in someones garage, for instance, tends to raise eyebrows a little.
When I was ten I found a handgun in our garage.
Legal gun ownership in the UK is infinitesimally small, illegal gun ownership, we are told by the blathering newspapers, is on the increase with a flood of such weapons from eastern Europe, the bastards, but even with the newspapers "floods" of illegal weapons there was never such a quantity of firearms among the possession of the general public as there was in the 1940's and 1950's when men returning from WWII would as a matter of course forget to hand in their service weapons or forget to mention that "souvenir" gun that they had "found" during their state-sponsored five year vacation in and around Europe.
And so it was with our dad.
We would be talking 1966 or similar when one fine and warm august school holiday afternoon I was rooting around in the back of our garage and for the first time in a long time had managed to prise open the lid of a large tin trunk that had lain dormant in there for as long as I could remember.
The trunk was full of rubbish, nothing to play with or set fire to at all, until there, right down in the bottom corner, what was that rag ?
I tugged at the filthy cloth and pulled whatever was wrapped within it to the surface, shut the trunk lid and placed the bundle on top of the tin trunk.
Gently unwrapping the spider infested material, you can only imagine the size of my eyes when it revealed a handgun, a Luger type (presumably) semi-automatic weapon, slightly rusty, but the trigger still worked because of course as all small boys would, thats the first thing I tried, as an adult you'd probably try and find out if it was loaded first but a ten year old boy - he just pulls the trigger, it clicked so I knew it worked, it didn't go bang so I knew it probably wasn't loaded - I'd seen John Wayne films you see
In those long past halcyon days of school Summer holidays our dad would be at work all day while our mum had a part time job as a cleaner at our local university until lunch time so Ned and I would have the run of the house and garden all morning until she came home...
What ?
No, it wasn't called child neglect in those days, it was called "normal".
We had great fun that morning, or at least I did, chasing Ned my smaller, younger and much more stupid brother all over the garden with my newly acquired gun, you see he really thought it was loaded, possibly because I told him it was loaded, you just don't know how fast an eight year old can run around a garden and house when he thinks his big brother has got a loaded gun in his possession, I could hardly keep up with him all morning.
Of course the fun was spoiled when our mum came home, I can only imagine her surprise when Ned ran to her screaming that I had been chasing him with a real gun for hours, can only imagine that she patted him on the head and said something like "Yes dear", can only imagine that she must have nearly fainted when I ran round the corner and pointed a real big gun at the both of them and shouted "Bang !!! you're (nearly) dead".
It was me who was nearly dead.
She wouldn't touch the gun but made me put it back in the cloth and then back in the trunk and then she locked the garage door and gave me the hiding of my short life up until then.
But it was nothing compared to the hiding of his life that our dad got when he came home and for once he could not provide a suitable defence to her, he stood there for ten days receiving his bollocking until suitably cowed for the first time in his life he rang "a friend" who came and took the gun away "for shooting pigeons with" - poor bastard pigeons is all I could think.
Nothing more was ever said about the gun, even in his later years whenever I mentioned the day that I became a crazed college campus gunman running amok and shooting indiscriminately at our Ned, he would just shake his head and deny the very existence of the weapon.
I've never even seen a gun outside of a museum ever since.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Joining a Golf Club
At around the same time as I was pretending that I could actually play the game of golf a new club opened up exactly opposite my house, exactly over the road it was, how fortuitous I thought, I must join immediately, and so I did, me and Ned.
The nice thing about this new golf club was that it was not an old fashioned members club where stuffy old bastards in tweed suits interview you before they stoop so low as to allow you to pay them a humongous joining fee and then bombard you with rules, regulations and "do not's" - this new golf club had none of that, it was owned by a large corporate gym club making their first venture into golf courses, and they were almost as clueless about the game as I was.
We played some rounds, Ned and me, it was a nice course during the late summer of that year, they had left a lot of the mature trees on the course, done a lot of new planting and dug out three lakes, one of which you had to drive over from the tee - most of the golf balls I have ever owned can be found in that bastard lake.
But as winter crept closer and a typical English wet season descended upon us the datelessness of the gym/golf club corporation came to the fore as the bottom half of the course flooded completely leaving only ten holes playable unless you brought a wet suit and snorkel, and around this time some of the members started to think in terms of "the old tie" sort of golf club membership - they formed themselves into a committee.
I bloody hate golf club committees, they are populated by low ranking civil servants and general no-marks who want to experience the feeling of power that they believe a title like "Green Committee Member" brings to them, and they like the idea of having a dedicated car park space laid out for them with "Green Committee Members Only" painted on the floor so that people like me can ignore said notice and park in their space especially to annoy them.
It wasn't long before we noticed the painted signs in the golf club car park indicated where several would-be-fuhrers had exclusive parking rights, we ignored them all, and notices started to appear on the golf club walls inviting all members to enter weekly competitions, we ignored all of these too.
Until one day our Ned decided that we should really have a golf handicap, and as every golfer knows the only way to get one of these is to regularly enter your own golf club competitions, unfortunately we were going to have to join the rest of the membership and play in their pathetic little Sunday morning games.
We turned up one Sunday morning at 7am, it was still dark and it was raining, and it was cold, I had never felt less like playing golf than I did that morning but the car park was already almost half full of idiots with no home life to speak of for whom playing golf in the dark, in the rain and when cold represented the highlight of their weekend, what a set of wankers.
Ned went into the golf shop to book us on the course and returned looking less than pleased.
"12.15" he said and slumped back into the car.
"Whats 12.15 ?" I asked
"Our tee time" he replied, "we can't start until 12.15"
I checked my watch, "Thats five and a quarter hours away" I observed quietly, "You've got me up at 7am on a Sunday so that I can sit in the golf club car park in the rain, in the cold and in complete darkness ?"
"Yes" he replied gloomily
"Tell me again why we are doing this" I asked of him
"To get a handicap" he muttered and he held out a handful of scorecards that he had borrowed (stolen) from the golf pro while his back was turned, "we need to complete three competition rounds and then put the scorecards in the letterbox for the club secretary"
"I didn't know we had a club secretary" I replied
"We have now"said Ned, "I just met him in there" (pointing to the club shop), "He's a right wanker"
We sat in silence for a short while.
I looked at the blank scorecards
Ned looked at the blank scorecards
"What do you have to do again ?" I asked
"You fill in three competition rounds, sign your card, get your playing partners to sign your card, then hand them in to the wanker in there and he works out what your handicap is"
"Oh" I replied, "anyone can sign them then ?"
"Yes" Ned confirmed, "I could sign yours and you could sign mine"
We sat for a short while longer, fingering the blank cards, then without speaking we each started to fill one in.
"I usually do a five on the first hole" I informed Ned, and he filled my card in accordingly
"Put me down for a four" he told me
"You never get a four on the first hole"
"Bloody do"
"Bloody don't, you've never had a four"
"I bloody got one last week, I'm better than you you know..."
And so it continued until we had each filled out and signed the other ones scorecard , we weren't so stupid as to hand that days card in before the competition had even started so we went back to my house for a cup of coffee and we sat and filled in two more sets of cards for the following two weeks - I returned to the golf club after lunch and posted that weeks cards in the secretary's letter box, and then repeated the procedure for the following two sundays, then we sat back and waited for him to issue us with a handicap for the golf rounds that had never been played.
It took ages, week after week we checked the big chart of members handicaps in the entrance lobby and each week that we checked our names were nowhere to be seen,
"He's on to us Ned" I told him, "He knows that we never played those rounds"
"No he doesn't" Ned replied, "anyway, he'll never say it to our faces, come on he's in the bar"
And without another word Ned stormed into the bar and gave the secretary a bollacking for taking so long to work out our handicaps, sure enough he was a timid low grade civil servant who's Sunday was ruined by our Ned feigning annoyance at the complete lack of bogus handicap availability and he promised to sort it out by the following Sunday.
When we looked the following Sunday there were our two handicaps, we were each rated as 21.
"So why are we 21 then" I asked Ned, for this meant that whenever I played someone with a maximum 28 handicap then in theory I was supposed to be at least 7 shots better than them whereas in fact I wouldn't be, "tell me why you made me 21 then ?"
"You can't be a 28" Ned said.
"Why ?" I asked.
"You just can't, its embarrassing being 28" he replied
"Its embarrassing being 21 when you're clearly crap at the game" I explained.
"You'll have to practice a lot then" was his answer
And so I started my club competition career, perhaps the first golfer in golfing history who got his handicap by his brother simply thinking of a nice number, I got a certificate and everything, but in all the competitions I played I never managed to beat anyone, not even the 28 handicap players, my 21 handicap bore more relation to the number of balls I would lose in a round than my playing ability.
And it would only get worse...
The nice thing about this new golf club was that it was not an old fashioned members club where stuffy old bastards in tweed suits interview you before they stoop so low as to allow you to pay them a humongous joining fee and then bombard you with rules, regulations and "do not's" - this new golf club had none of that, it was owned by a large corporate gym club making their first venture into golf courses, and they were almost as clueless about the game as I was.
We played some rounds, Ned and me, it was a nice course during the late summer of that year, they had left a lot of the mature trees on the course, done a lot of new planting and dug out three lakes, one of which you had to drive over from the tee - most of the golf balls I have ever owned can be found in that bastard lake.
But as winter crept closer and a typical English wet season descended upon us the datelessness of the gym/golf club corporation came to the fore as the bottom half of the course flooded completely leaving only ten holes playable unless you brought a wet suit and snorkel, and around this time some of the members started to think in terms of "the old tie" sort of golf club membership - they formed themselves into a committee.
I bloody hate golf club committees, they are populated by low ranking civil servants and general no-marks who want to experience the feeling of power that they believe a title like "Green Committee Member" brings to them, and they like the idea of having a dedicated car park space laid out for them with "Green Committee Members Only" painted on the floor so that people like me can ignore said notice and park in their space especially to annoy them.
It wasn't long before we noticed the painted signs in the golf club car park indicated where several would-be-fuhrers had exclusive parking rights, we ignored them all, and notices started to appear on the golf club walls inviting all members to enter weekly competitions, we ignored all of these too.
Until one day our Ned decided that we should really have a golf handicap, and as every golfer knows the only way to get one of these is to regularly enter your own golf club competitions, unfortunately we were going to have to join the rest of the membership and play in their pathetic little Sunday morning games.
We turned up one Sunday morning at 7am, it was still dark and it was raining, and it was cold, I had never felt less like playing golf than I did that morning but the car park was already almost half full of idiots with no home life to speak of for whom playing golf in the dark, in the rain and when cold represented the highlight of their weekend, what a set of wankers.
Ned went into the golf shop to book us on the course and returned looking less than pleased.
"12.15" he said and slumped back into the car.
"Whats 12.15 ?" I asked
"Our tee time" he replied, "we can't start until 12.15"
I checked my watch, "Thats five and a quarter hours away" I observed quietly, "You've got me up at 7am on a Sunday so that I can sit in the golf club car park in the rain, in the cold and in complete darkness ?"
"Yes" he replied gloomily
"Tell me again why we are doing this" I asked of him
"To get a handicap" he muttered and he held out a handful of scorecards that he had borrowed (stolen) from the golf pro while his back was turned, "we need to complete three competition rounds and then put the scorecards in the letterbox for the club secretary"
"I didn't know we had a club secretary" I replied
"We have now"said Ned, "I just met him in there" (pointing to the club shop), "He's a right wanker"
We sat in silence for a short while.
I looked at the blank scorecards
Ned looked at the blank scorecards
"What do you have to do again ?" I asked
"You fill in three competition rounds, sign your card, get your playing partners to sign your card, then hand them in to the wanker in there and he works out what your handicap is"
"Oh" I replied, "anyone can sign them then ?"
"Yes" Ned confirmed, "I could sign yours and you could sign mine"
We sat for a short while longer, fingering the blank cards, then without speaking we each started to fill one in.
"I usually do a five on the first hole" I informed Ned, and he filled my card in accordingly
"Put me down for a four" he told me
"You never get a four on the first hole"
"Bloody do"
"Bloody don't, you've never had a four"
"I bloody got one last week, I'm better than you you know..."
And so it continued until we had each filled out and signed the other ones scorecard , we weren't so stupid as to hand that days card in before the competition had even started so we went back to my house for a cup of coffee and we sat and filled in two more sets of cards for the following two weeks - I returned to the golf club after lunch and posted that weeks cards in the secretary's letter box, and then repeated the procedure for the following two sundays, then we sat back and waited for him to issue us with a handicap for the golf rounds that had never been played.
It took ages, week after week we checked the big chart of members handicaps in the entrance lobby and each week that we checked our names were nowhere to be seen,
"He's on to us Ned" I told him, "He knows that we never played those rounds"
"No he doesn't" Ned replied, "anyway, he'll never say it to our faces, come on he's in the bar"
And without another word Ned stormed into the bar and gave the secretary a bollacking for taking so long to work out our handicaps, sure enough he was a timid low grade civil servant who's Sunday was ruined by our Ned feigning annoyance at the complete lack of bogus handicap availability and he promised to sort it out by the following Sunday.
When we looked the following Sunday there were our two handicaps, we were each rated as 21.
"So why are we 21 then" I asked Ned, for this meant that whenever I played someone with a maximum 28 handicap then in theory I was supposed to be at least 7 shots better than them whereas in fact I wouldn't be, "tell me why you made me 21 then ?"
"You can't be a 28" Ned said.
"Why ?" I asked.
"You just can't, its embarrassing being 28" he replied
"Its embarrassing being 21 when you're clearly crap at the game" I explained.
"You'll have to practice a lot then" was his answer
And so I started my club competition career, perhaps the first golfer in golfing history who got his handicap by his brother simply thinking of a nice number, I got a certificate and everything, but in all the competitions I played I never managed to beat anyone, not even the 28 handicap players, my 21 handicap bore more relation to the number of balls I would lose in a round than my playing ability.
And it would only get worse...
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
A rumour...
There is a rumour going around of a trial Jerrychicken Wordpress site you know.
It might be here, then again, it might not....
It might be here, then again, it might not....
Monday, January 14, 2008
A round in one
Have I ever mentioned the fact that I once came within one solitary inch of owning a world record that could never have been beaten ?
A round of golf, in one.
No, not a hole in one.
A round in one.
Ned had a friend who was a pisshead, he was a member at a pisshead drinking club in Leeds, a club with no pretense at being a political or social club, it was simply for drinking beer in, cheaply, and once a year our Neds friend and his pisshead friends organised a golf day out at a random Yorkshire club, hired a bus, organised a presentation meal and everything.
The year that I went they had chosen Low Laithes Golf Club near Ossett, West Yorks, a club with more than a fair share of very long holes, not the sort of club to want to trudge over 27 holes on a hot day, it had some hills too, it was a bastard of a golf course, I learned to hate it that day.
The day had all started out so fine too, we arrived on the bus mid-morning, some of the members were already on the way t being pissed, and set off to play nine holes in a "lets see how good we all are before we set the handicaps" session - then we had lunch in the clubhouse restaurant, and they got more pissed.
By 1pm it was scorching hot outside and by some misfortune our foursome had been drawn to start the afternoon 18 hole session, for the uninitiated that means that you get to play your first shot off the first tee in front of the clubhouse and in front of 30 or so pissed up members of the pisshead club - its not for the nervous or self conscious or crap golf player.
The first tee at Low Laithes lay directly outside the clubhouse and twenty yards to the right was the 18th green, so you start and end the round at the clubhouse, its always like that at golf clubs, they don't just throw these things together you know.
So I stepped onto the first tee, it was an elevated tee, in short the clubhouse was built at the top of a fekkin big hill and the first tee was perched on the edge of a 20 foot high mound with the fairway dropping away below you and stretching off 400 yards into the distance, straight line, no problem, just hit the ball, don't slice it, hit it so that it flies straight, your elevated location will mean that it will look impressive, it will look as though you've hit it much higher and much further than you actually have, they will be impressed, honest, they'll love you, you're going to get applause for this shot, I promise you, go on, its your turn.
I decided to use a high tee rather than the normal preference for a short one, why, I do not know, the theory sort of went that if I swung the club too high but the ball was sitting high on the tee then I'd have a chance of hitting it, and if I swung the club normally then I'd still hit it, no-lose situation, it made sense.
I placed the ball on the high tee amid a-whooping and a-hollering, the crowd were well pissed, rowdy even, "oh fuck" was the only thought in mind.
To my right was a line of trees and behind the line of trees the 18th green but that was of no concern, I stood, No 1 wood in hand, a real "wood", a proper wooden wood, one of the set that I had inherited by default off our dad, the club was older than some of the pissheads that even now were trying to focus on it and declaring loudly to their pisshead friends "is that a fekkin real wood he's fekkin holding there ?"
I ignored the comments, I was better than this, I lined up the ball, lined up the club, lined up my feet, settled down into my stance, glanced up at the first hole which now seemed like 400 miles away, standing here alone on top of the hill, club in hand, staring at the ball, don't take your eyes off the ball, start your backswing nice and slow, don't twist your body, don't over-reach at the top of your swing, start the club on its downswing, pick up momentum, don't move you feet, keep your knees slightly bent, watch the ball, watch the ball, for fucks sake don't miss the fuckin ball completely or these pissheads will never stop the piss-taking, just hit the fuckin ball for gods sake, make me hit the ball god...
I heard the ball hit the club head with that beautiful "thunk" that only a wooden headed club can make and even before my swing had finished its follow through I was thanking the golf god for letting me hit the ball, it could go anywhere now I didn't care, at least I'd hit it.
The crowd starting their polite applause for they too had appreciated the genuine "thunk" of a genuine wood as compared to the tinny "clank" that their own clubs made and more than a few of them were wondering why they had ever bought metal "woods" as they strained to follow my ball in flight.
I too was straining to follow my ball in flight.
In fact I couldn't see the fookin thing at all.
I glanced at Ned who was now stood the the side of me, "Wheres the fookin ball ?" I whispered out of the side of my mouth.
"Can't see it" he confirmed.
I checked the floor at my feet just in case I had missed it, I hadn't, I had definitely hit it, but to where ?
Suddenly a voice from the pissheads behind us shouted, nay screamed out "LOOK !!!" and as we turned we saw that he was pointing directly up into the sky, we followed his pointing finger and sure enough there, high in the sky, like a pinprick against the azure blue sky was my little golf ball, still ascending.
It had no forward momentum at all, it had not travelled one single yard forward since leaving the club head and now it climbed like a Saturn rocket high into the stratosphere, still going up, in a dead straight line.
No-one had seen anything like it, it was still climbing 30 seconds after I'd hit it, all we could do was stand there with craning necks and screwed up eyes, the occasional "I can still see it, can you ?" interspersing the silence that had fallen over the pissheads.
Then, almost inperceptively its momentum slowed, then stopped, and at that moment it began its descent to earth again - straight back down to the very spot it had left at high speed nearly one full minute ago.
"Its coming down" someone shouted and they started to back away from the tee, some covered their heads, a few took advantage of cover under the trees that separated the first tee from the eighteenth hole, and then we noticed that it had moved ever so slightly to my right, the spin on the ball taking it ever so slightly to my right, and then a bit more right and someone shouted at the pissheads hiding underneath the trees to come out as it was heading straight for them.
But it moved even further to the right as it reached peak velocity, some of the dimpled skin of the ball flaking off in true space shuttle stylee as its re-entry burned up the outer casing until finally we all came to realise that it was heading straight for the eighteenth hole, twenty yards to our right behind the trees.
We all dashed into the trees and out the other side to follow the balls progress, I shoved my way through the now hollerin-agin crowd just in time to see it whack into the 18th green so hard that it bounced twelve or fifteen feet back up in the air before settling onto the greensward - and then the spin took over and it took on a momentum of its own, heading for the 18th hole.
It was a perfect line, the crowd were going crazy now, a-whoopin and a-hollerin like a partisan American crowd at a Rider Cup game when a European has an important putt to make, jumping up and down they were, the chant going up "IN THE HOLE !!!"...
...and it almost made it.
I kid you not when I say that it stopped just one inch short of the hole.
I was devastated.
It would have been a round in one, a record breaker, the first time ever in history, front cover of next years Guinness Book of World Records I'd have been.
...and boy did they take the piss out of me for the rest of the day.
On playing golf...
Our dad and Ned had played golf since the early 1970’s, I started to learn at the same time as Ned when we were in our teens but I wisely stopped after he hit me under the jaw with a #1 wood on his backswing when I stood too close to him.
So for all of my teenage years I was regaled with their stories of birdies and eagles and even a hole in one on the various golf courses that they played, I watched them go on trips to Scotland to play some mythical courses of golf legend and I sat through endless Sunday afternoon golf competitions on TV during which they sat agog at the likes of Jack Nicklaus and Tony Jacklin while I opened a vein and wished for it all to end.
Rawdon Golf Club became their base and I was dragged up there on a regular basis to sit in the bar and listen to boring old farts witter on endlessly about birdies, eagles and the odd hole in one whilst Ned and our dad got drunker and drunker and I stayed on the lemonade so that I could drive them home afterwards – think of Cinderella, that was me, I was Cinderella to their ugly golf sisters – I even let them beat me often at snooker, golf and snooker seemed to go hand in hand, they are both terrible games which I will never master.
And so it was with some surprise that after our dad had passed over to the great golf clubhouse in the sky where birdies, eagles and holes in one are commonplace and there is still a dress code in the clubhouse, I found myself with a strange inheritance – our dad’s golf clubs.
I won them in the inheritance raffle by default because our Ned already had our dads better set of clubs – I got the set from the 1970’s with proper wooden drivers, wood “woods” no less, proper Ping wood “woods”, I was under-impressed and they found a space at the back of my garage.
And then several years later there was a knock at my door and when I opened it there stood Howard and Andy, two old friends who were football mad but now looking for something to do during the summer close season, “fancy a game of bowls?” they asked.
For a lack of anything else to do at the time I left the house and followed them to Horsforth bowling green where we joined a dozen or so ancient pensioners in the equally ancient art of crown green bowling – Howard’s dad taught us some of the finer points and actually gave me a set of his old bowls which I still have in my garage, I regret that I have not used them since.
Bowls was fun for half an hour but it did not fill in the football close season with the sort of intensity that Howard and Andy sought and so the very next morning there was another knock at the door and when I opened it there stood Howard and Andy again, “fancy a game of golf?” they asked.
I was whisked away to a nearby driving range and had a set of borrowed clubs thrust into my hand, a basket of crappy golf balls later and I was starting to hit the things occasionally with no control over where they would go, I was playing golf to the standard normally achieved by most golf players.
We each went through three baskets that day and the next morning I ached like buggery across my shoulders but was hooked, by perchance we had a golf course with a driving range situated exactly opposite my house at the time and I spent the following months over there every night practising with basket upon basket of balls until I had spent several hundred pounds on a set of clubs, a bag, a trolley, thousands of balls, one glove and some jaunty golf apparel.
And then we booked some lessons.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Heddy-hoooo...
One of the funniest men of our generation, of that there is no doubt.
You see, this is my sort of comedy, observation comedy, storyville comedy, you could go and see his act every night for a week and while the script would be roughly the same every night it wouldn't be told in the same way twice, you can tell that his script is only very loose and that stories are incorporated as ideas spring to mind on stage - a true genius comedian.
By contrast I have seen many poor comedians, some so poor that I have seen them paid off in the middle of their act, I've even seen one be physically dragged from the stage by three members of the audience and another have to retreat to his dressing room under a hail of pennies - both of them deserved it for they were "Stand up" comedians, comedians who told jokes and the jokes never changed from night to night and the problem for these sort of comedians is that the material is very rarely theirs so an audience will invariably have heard the joke somewhere else - stand up comedians have a hard job if they haven't got the skill to simply tell stories like Billy Connelly.
There was an old pub that we used to go in when ah wor nobbut a lad, The Kings Arms on Horsforth Town Street, a typical Victorian pub that had never changed in 100 years, an old mans pub, a pub where on a saturday night they employed a blind man to play the piano, entertainment for the use of, and drunk people would get up and sing at the piano.
Without exception they could not sing, but when drunk no-one noticed, but one thing that we did notice during those times was that when drunk people sing they end every line with the word "....aaaaagh"...
As in,
"Good night Irene goodnight, Irene goodnight-aaaaagh"
"Goodnight Irene goodnight Irene-aaaaagh"
"I'l see you in my dreee-eams-aaaagh"
And the audience all join in, complete with "...aaaagh" at the end of each line.
The old blind man didn't get paid for playing the piano every Saturday night, instead the customers bought him a beer whenever his glass emptied - I've seen him drink twenty pints most Saturday night and still be playing the piano for beer at chucking out time, and the thing is a blind man walks home in a perfectly straight line because he has no blurred vision or halucinations to contend with.
Our favourite trick was to go and stand at the piano with him, get talking to him, commend him on his piano playing skills, gain his confidence...
...then move his beer off the piano top.
People always placed his beer in exactly the same place so that he always knew where it was and during the tunes he'd reach out automatically to the same spot every time for his glass, he could reach for the beer, drink a swig down and put the glass back without a break in the tune - unless we'd moved his glass.
If we'd moved his glass he'd stop playing and start feeling all the way along the piano top for it, people would notice he'd stop and strain to see what the problem was, they'd shout out to him enquiring why he'd stopped playing and he'd declare in a loud voice that some bas'tad had nicked his beer - we'd be in the pub over the road by this time though.
Creased me up every time it did, how childish.
Get Back..
Sweet Loretta Modern thought she was a woman
But she was another man
All the girls around her said she's got it comin'
But she gets it while she can
You see, in my memory this is how I remember the late 1960's, mention that period to me and this is how I remember the fashions, the hairstyles, the music, it was a wonderful era to be 14 years old and into your music.
In my humble opinion, this is the Beatles in their most productive period, the final phase, the "Let It Be" and the "Abbey Road" albums, the music for both being recorded during the first seven months of 1969 - the story of the relationship between the Beatles and the relationship between those two albums is convoluted and complicated but from those seven months of conflict and making up came (in my opinion) two of the best albums of all time.
I have a copy of the original Abbey Road album, the one with the misprint, bought in 1969 with someone else's hard earned pennies and then snaffled from them by me on the flimsiest of excuses that I wanted to "borrow it", I've "borrowed" it for nigh on 38 years now and it currently resides somewhere in my garage along with all of my other vinyl albums being as when I moved to this house last year I rather stupidly sold my record deck, for what reason I cannot imagine as I will now have to go out and buy another one but at least I now have the excuse to buy a usb record deck and transfer the vinyl direct to hard drive - in fact what a damn good idea that is, make a note of that someone, todays object of desire "a usb record deck" put it on the list along with a new laptop for Jodie.
Paul McCartney in an autobiog in my possesion states that the Abbey Road sessions were the beginning of the end for The Beatles as it was during this time that Yoko Ono's influence on John Lennon became obsessive to the point of stalking, up until that point there had been a hard rule among the band that no girlfriends were ever allowed at recording sessions but not only did John bring Yoko along to the studio she actually sat in a chair next to him for the whole of the time they were rehearsing and recording, an action that started a rift that would not be healed until many years after - its not obvious to see in this video but this one on YouTube clearly shows Yoko sitting next to John staring directly at Paul - rather off putting I would venture.
Other faces on this video are George Martin (of course) (the genius) and Billy Preston on keyboards who had more or less joined the band at this point had he not also been touting his wares around every other recording studio in London during those years, he must be one of the most prolific session musicians in history.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Working for coins
When the world and I were younger than they are now there came a time in my life when my father decided that I should work for coins, I don't know what prompted him to this momentous decision because its not like he ever gave me any pocket money or anything, but he decided one day that it was about time I was out there in the wide world and working for my weekly coins.
I was five years old at the time.
I kid you, I was six.
No actually I was about fourteen years old, had no requirement for coin, went nowhere that needed coin, my playground were the fields at the end of the road, my shopping mall was the cricket field where we played football all day long to the extreme annoyance of the cricketers, my requirement for refreshment was quenched in the beck that ran clear as crystal (most of the time) (ok we never checked), through the playing fields of our youth.
But still, he sent me out to work.
I went to work for my Uncle Ralph at the world famous Headingley Rugby and Cricket ground, selling programmes at the rugby and scorecards at the cricket initially, then working the dozens of bars in the ground when I got older, I was never paid along with all of the other workers by my Uncle Ralph for he always told me to "come back later when the rush has gone", and I did, he paid me in coins, scant few coins, I suspect that my dad took a cut from my wage, but I had no need for coins, I still don't, I'm like the Queen, I don't carry cash at all, haven't had any cash in my pocket for months, sure its embarrassing sometimes when you can't pay the parking meter but you'd be surprised how long you can abandon a car in a no parking zone for before someone tows it.
And so the time came all too soon for my own daughter to learn that out here in the real world we have to sell ourselves in a commercial world to the highest bidder, or sometimes just be grateful that there's only one bidder.
As a university student she absorbs money like a sponge, on the rare occasions that I am to be found with money on my body it does not stay attached to me for long, I empty my pockets when I walk in the door and thats the last time I see it as its usually completely by coincidence that on those days she has an important student meeting to go to that evening and she comes home in the early hours of the next day and throws up my money into the toilet before declaring "never again" and going to bed, my money is converted into cheap wine quite easily it seems.
So she's had a few different jobs but the one she has now is by far the most ridiculous - she is a call centre questionnaire-ee.
She is one of those annoying people who ring you up just before you are about to sit down with your evening meal with the question "Would you mind taking part in our ten minute survey ?" and by her own confession most of them hang up after she has kept them answering questions for twenty minutes.
Who invents these surveys ?
Fekkwits thats who.
She sits at a computer screen not knowing which question is coming up next and not knowing how many more questions are coming, they are randomly generated on behalf of an anonymous customer who presumably thinks that ringing people at home and annoying them for half an hour on the phone is a genuine and sensible way to garner public opinion on their anonymous product, because of course the call centre workers aren't allowed to submit responses such as "why don't you go fuck yourself", in fact they aren't allowed to submit any survey unless the computer says that all of the questions have been answered and she often sits there for four hours and doesn't reach the end of any questionnaire - finish four in a night and you are a gold star champion of the telephone.
So the next time that someone rings from a call centre with a request to carry out a survey then put aside forty minutes of your life and agree to answer whatever it is they require of you - just give the stupid answers thats all, just to piss off the end user client, just so that somewhere, someday, in a glass corporate tower somewhere, some marketing twat will stand up to address the board of directors with the astounding finding that 8 our of 10 customers prefer beef gravy on their corn flakes in a morning and that 9 out of 10 young mothers prefer to wipe their babies bottoms with a number 3 coarse sandpaper.
Only then will the curse of the call centre cease to be a valid tool, only then will my daughter be able to find more productive employment, like selling programmes at Headingley for instance, it was good enough for me...
I was five years old at the time.
I kid you, I was six.
No actually I was about fourteen years old, had no requirement for coin, went nowhere that needed coin, my playground were the fields at the end of the road, my shopping mall was the cricket field where we played football all day long to the extreme annoyance of the cricketers, my requirement for refreshment was quenched in the beck that ran clear as crystal (most of the time) (ok we never checked), through the playing fields of our youth.
But still, he sent me out to work.
I went to work for my Uncle Ralph at the world famous Headingley Rugby and Cricket ground, selling programmes at the rugby and scorecards at the cricket initially, then working the dozens of bars in the ground when I got older, I was never paid along with all of the other workers by my Uncle Ralph for he always told me to "come back later when the rush has gone", and I did, he paid me in coins, scant few coins, I suspect that my dad took a cut from my wage, but I had no need for coins, I still don't, I'm like the Queen, I don't carry cash at all, haven't had any cash in my pocket for months, sure its embarrassing sometimes when you can't pay the parking meter but you'd be surprised how long you can abandon a car in a no parking zone for before someone tows it.
And so the time came all too soon for my own daughter to learn that out here in the real world we have to sell ourselves in a commercial world to the highest bidder, or sometimes just be grateful that there's only one bidder.
As a university student she absorbs money like a sponge, on the rare occasions that I am to be found with money on my body it does not stay attached to me for long, I empty my pockets when I walk in the door and thats the last time I see it as its usually completely by coincidence that on those days she has an important student meeting to go to that evening and she comes home in the early hours of the next day and throws up my money into the toilet before declaring "never again" and going to bed, my money is converted into cheap wine quite easily it seems.
So she's had a few different jobs but the one she has now is by far the most ridiculous - she is a call centre questionnaire-ee.
She is one of those annoying people who ring you up just before you are about to sit down with your evening meal with the question "Would you mind taking part in our ten minute survey ?" and by her own confession most of them hang up after she has kept them answering questions for twenty minutes.
Who invents these surveys ?
Fekkwits thats who.
She sits at a computer screen not knowing which question is coming up next and not knowing how many more questions are coming, they are randomly generated on behalf of an anonymous customer who presumably thinks that ringing people at home and annoying them for half an hour on the phone is a genuine and sensible way to garner public opinion on their anonymous product, because of course the call centre workers aren't allowed to submit responses such as "why don't you go fuck yourself", in fact they aren't allowed to submit any survey unless the computer says that all of the questions have been answered and she often sits there for four hours and doesn't reach the end of any questionnaire - finish four in a night and you are a gold star champion of the telephone.
So the next time that someone rings from a call centre with a request to carry out a survey then put aside forty minutes of your life and agree to answer whatever it is they require of you - just give the stupid answers thats all, just to piss off the end user client, just so that somewhere, someday, in a glass corporate tower somewhere, some marketing twat will stand up to address the board of directors with the astounding finding that 8 our of 10 customers prefer beef gravy on their corn flakes in a morning and that 9 out of 10 young mothers prefer to wipe their babies bottoms with a number 3 coarse sandpaper.
Only then will the curse of the call centre cease to be a valid tool, only then will my daughter be able to find more productive employment, like selling programmes at Headingley for instance, it was good enough for me...
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Blagging from Norman Rockwell
Aren't libraries great ?
Was at my newly rebuilt local one on Saturday on my regular three weekly top up of reading material when, on the way out I spotted a greet big book on the life and work of one of America's finest and most under-appreciated (at least during his lifetime) artists Norman Rockwell - his official website is here.
Most well know for his front covers of The Saturday Evening Post which he produced a total of 321 paintings for from 1916 to 1963, a quite remarkable and unequaled record, during which his work ranged from cartoon style portrayals of a small town American lifestyle to vivid and beautifully painted anti-apartheid and anti-war works of art - have a look at the gallery on this page and click the picture of the small black girl being taken to school by four FBI agents (bottom row second from left)
While on that same link also click the picture on the bottom right hand corner for an LS Lowry style painting of a crowd of people passing a cathedral entrance - a beautifully detailed building contrasting with the almost cartoon like but very effective handling of the people.
Mention "Rockwell" to most people though and they will think of the small-town SEP front covers which recorded a way of life that possibly didn't even exist but which most people wish we could return to, click this link for lots of examples, realistic and cartoon-like depictions of everyday life situations - a massive volume of work and an invaluable historical collection.
So having lost (and then re-found) my old art pen at christmas I dashed off to my local art shop and bought a crappy old dip pen with a split nib and a bottle of black ink and I've been doodling and blotching ever since, and since saturday have been blagging subjects out of the Norman Rockwell book, faces with so much detail and expression painted into them that you can almost talk to the old men and women in Rockwells picture.
My interpretations of his subjects are so far away from his finesse that I'd defy you to pick out the originals in the book, but they're fun to do, sometimes only taking a few minutes, sometimes 30 mins to an hour and the crappy old pen that keeps blotting is a deliberate tool - when you use architects pens that are guaranteed not to blotch but deliver ink in a uniform way then you lose spontaneity - Ralph Steadman web site once bought the entire stock of his favourite crappy nib when he learned that the company making them was ceasing production.
So the only question remaining now is - should I migrate to Wordpress (or somewhere else) to get a bit more control over the appearance of this blog ?
In the meantime...
Was at my newly rebuilt local one on Saturday on my regular three weekly top up of reading material when, on the way out I spotted a greet big book on the life and work of one of America's finest and most under-appreciated (at least during his lifetime) artists Norman Rockwell - his official website is here.
Most well know for his front covers of The Saturday Evening Post which he produced a total of 321 paintings for from 1916 to 1963, a quite remarkable and unequaled record, during which his work ranged from cartoon style portrayals of a small town American lifestyle to vivid and beautifully painted anti-apartheid and anti-war works of art - have a look at the gallery on this page and click the picture of the small black girl being taken to school by four FBI agents (bottom row second from left)
While on that same link also click the picture on the bottom right hand corner for an LS Lowry style painting of a crowd of people passing a cathedral entrance - a beautifully detailed building contrasting with the almost cartoon like but very effective handling of the people.
Mention "Rockwell" to most people though and they will think of the small-town SEP front covers which recorded a way of life that possibly didn't even exist but which most people wish we could return to, click this link for lots of examples, realistic and cartoon-like depictions of everyday life situations - a massive volume of work and an invaluable historical collection.
So having lost (and then re-found) my old art pen at christmas I dashed off to my local art shop and bought a crappy old dip pen with a split nib and a bottle of black ink and I've been doodling and blotching ever since, and since saturday have been blagging subjects out of the Norman Rockwell book, faces with so much detail and expression painted into them that you can almost talk to the old men and women in Rockwells picture.
My interpretations of his subjects are so far away from his finesse that I'd defy you to pick out the originals in the book, but they're fun to do, sometimes only taking a few minutes, sometimes 30 mins to an hour and the crappy old pen that keeps blotting is a deliberate tool - when you use architects pens that are guaranteed not to blotch but deliver ink in a uniform way then you lose spontaneity - Ralph Steadman web site once bought the entire stock of his favourite crappy nib when he learned that the company making them was ceasing production.
So the only question remaining now is - should I migrate to Wordpress (or somewhere else) to get a bit more control over the appearance of this blog ?
In the meantime...
Gay George...
Gay George was my dads uncle, one of several siblings of Percy, my dads father, I knew none of them and only became aware of Gay George when I had reached adulthood and had taken out a mortgage, the local agents for whom turned out to be a well known estate agent and chartered surveyors - Gay George was a well respected director of said estate agent and chartered surveyor.
I met him once when he just happened to be working in our local branch one Saturday morning - remember the days when you used to go to a branch to pay your mortgage in cash - and I handed the payment book over the counter to a very pleasant old man who perused the book, noticed my name and remarked that we had the same surname and initial.
I'd heard of him and knew that he was a director of the company and so told him who my father was, his face lit up and we spent the rest of the morning in idle chatter about the nieces and nephews that he'd never kept in touch with.
I didn't mention that my dad always referred to him as "Gay George" though.
No-one really knew whether he was gay or not, its just that he was the only one out of eight siblings who never married, or who never seemed to find a space in his life for a female companion, in those far distant days such behaviour was all the evidence required to be labeled as "queer" and as the label "gay" came to replace "queer" then "gay" and "george" just seemed to fit hand in glove.
I inherited two things from him.
A couple of years after I had met him in his estate agents branch office (and I was always treated with more respect there after I had met him than before, being related to "Mr George" had its advantages), my dad took a phone call to say that Gay George had died and after his funeral would he like to go to the house where there was a grandfather clock waiting for us to collect, it being willed to our dad as Gay George knew he was still in the clock business.
I went down to the house with our dad in the van one evening after work.
Gay George had a nice detached bungalow in a quiet suburb of Leeds, not ostentatious at all, it didn't scream out "money" and I suspect that Gay George had hoarded a lot of cash in his estate agency rather than spend it on a lifestyle, but still, it was a nice bungalow.
We were shown into the now almost empty house by a woman who introduced herself as Gay Georges housekeeper and shown into the living room where the "grandfather clock" stood in the corner.
I'd been expecting to find an antique, something that could be flogged off for several hundred pounds, something worth dragging me out there in the van for.
Instead we found a homemade imitation "grandfather" clock which exhibited no trace of fine workmanship in its manufacture and upon opening it displayed the interior of an old time recorder rather than an ancient precision timepiece.
But our dad was delighted, for he recognised the clock, as he should because it was his father who had made it. In the 1920's he'd taken the carcass of an old spring wound time recorder with its short pendulum and encased it in what was an empty case to make it look like a grandfather clock - it had stood in the corner of their family wooden house when our dad was a child and then somehow found its way into Gay Georges lineage.
It smelled musty, it was ugly and worthless, cruelly if my grandad hadn't canabilised a 1920's wood cased spring wound time recorder but had instead hung said time recorder on his wall then we'd now be looking at something worth several hundred pounds, as it stood, it was firewood, nothing more.
Our dad took it and put it in his garage, from whence it eventually found its way into my garage and then eventually it found its way into our workshop at the office - Ned and me chopped it up and threw it in a skip last year.
But there was something else in Gay Georges house that attracted our dads attention and he asked the housekeeper if she had any idea what was going to happen to the old radiogram in the corner, "you can have it" she replied, "all the good stuffs already gone" she continued in a tone that left us in no doubt that there had been no "good stuff" left in the will for her.
Christ knows why he wanted the old radiogram but we took it and its huge extra speaker case as well, our dad told me it would be worth a bob or two as it was one of the first radiograms to grace these shores and that it was made of solid mahogany "its got a lovely sheen on it" he told me, I thought it was an ugly monstrosity and I knew for sure that our mum would not let it grace their front room.
I was right, the next morning he arrived at the office with it and there it lived for several years with him polishing it once a week to keep "this lovely sheen" on the mahogany case, "its solid mahogany this you know" he'd expertly tell us once a week.
One unusual thing about the radiogram was that it had the shop receipt issued to Gay George in 1961 when he had bought it and like the building society pass book the receipt was made out to someone with my initial and surname - I did suggest that perhaps I could take it back to the shop 30 years after its original purchase and see if they'd give us the thirty guineas back, but our dad wouldn't hear of it.
Eventually we moved from those offices and as part of a big clearout I eventually persuaded him to get rid of the radiogram that didn't work but "had a lovely sheen", he was heartbroken and wouldn't hear of us throwing it in a skip somewhere but after I promised to take it to a second hand furniture shop and get the best possible price for it he relented and bade it farewell.
I took one of the lads out of the workshop and we took it straight to the council rubbish tip where they had a nice big yellow crushing machine just for this sort of disposal problem, dropping the huge radiogram in the crusher took some doing and we had to enlist two of the council workmen to help us and when it was in there they pressed the button for the big ramming thingy to start closing in on the fine piece of 1960's audio/furniture - a time long past when you couldn't just have a record player, it had to look like furniture too.
When the crusher hit the radiogram there was a huge crack and all of us instinctively ducked as splinters of wood flew from the bowels of the machine, on closer inspection these were revealed to be cheap plywood with the thinest of mahogany veneers.
I laughed all the way back to the office at the thought of Gay George and our dad polishing plywood furniture for all of those years, and of course I had to tell him when I got back to the office, he wasn't amused at all, not at the plywood revelation but the fact that I hadn't taken it to a second hand furniture shop and flogged it off as solid mahogany as promised...
I met him once when he just happened to be working in our local branch one Saturday morning - remember the days when you used to go to a branch to pay your mortgage in cash - and I handed the payment book over the counter to a very pleasant old man who perused the book, noticed my name and remarked that we had the same surname and initial.
I'd heard of him and knew that he was a director of the company and so told him who my father was, his face lit up and we spent the rest of the morning in idle chatter about the nieces and nephews that he'd never kept in touch with.
I didn't mention that my dad always referred to him as "Gay George" though.
No-one really knew whether he was gay or not, its just that he was the only one out of eight siblings who never married, or who never seemed to find a space in his life for a female companion, in those far distant days such behaviour was all the evidence required to be labeled as "queer" and as the label "gay" came to replace "queer" then "gay" and "george" just seemed to fit hand in glove.
I inherited two things from him.
A couple of years after I had met him in his estate agents branch office (and I was always treated with more respect there after I had met him than before, being related to "Mr George" had its advantages), my dad took a phone call to say that Gay George had died and after his funeral would he like to go to the house where there was a grandfather clock waiting for us to collect, it being willed to our dad as Gay George knew he was still in the clock business.
I went down to the house with our dad in the van one evening after work.
Gay George had a nice detached bungalow in a quiet suburb of Leeds, not ostentatious at all, it didn't scream out "money" and I suspect that Gay George had hoarded a lot of cash in his estate agency rather than spend it on a lifestyle, but still, it was a nice bungalow.
We were shown into the now almost empty house by a woman who introduced herself as Gay Georges housekeeper and shown into the living room where the "grandfather clock" stood in the corner.
I'd been expecting to find an antique, something that could be flogged off for several hundred pounds, something worth dragging me out there in the van for.
Instead we found a homemade imitation "grandfather" clock which exhibited no trace of fine workmanship in its manufacture and upon opening it displayed the interior of an old time recorder rather than an ancient precision timepiece.
But our dad was delighted, for he recognised the clock, as he should because it was his father who had made it. In the 1920's he'd taken the carcass of an old spring wound time recorder with its short pendulum and encased it in what was an empty case to make it look like a grandfather clock - it had stood in the corner of their family wooden house when our dad was a child and then somehow found its way into Gay Georges lineage.
It smelled musty, it was ugly and worthless, cruelly if my grandad hadn't canabilised a 1920's wood cased spring wound time recorder but had instead hung said time recorder on his wall then we'd now be looking at something worth several hundred pounds, as it stood, it was firewood, nothing more.
Our dad took it and put it in his garage, from whence it eventually found its way into my garage and then eventually it found its way into our workshop at the office - Ned and me chopped it up and threw it in a skip last year.
But there was something else in Gay Georges house that attracted our dads attention and he asked the housekeeper if she had any idea what was going to happen to the old radiogram in the corner, "you can have it" she replied, "all the good stuffs already gone" she continued in a tone that left us in no doubt that there had been no "good stuff" left in the will for her.
Christ knows why he wanted the old radiogram but we took it and its huge extra speaker case as well, our dad told me it would be worth a bob or two as it was one of the first radiograms to grace these shores and that it was made of solid mahogany "its got a lovely sheen on it" he told me, I thought it was an ugly monstrosity and I knew for sure that our mum would not let it grace their front room.
I was right, the next morning he arrived at the office with it and there it lived for several years with him polishing it once a week to keep "this lovely sheen" on the mahogany case, "its solid mahogany this you know" he'd expertly tell us once a week.
One unusual thing about the radiogram was that it had the shop receipt issued to Gay George in 1961 when he had bought it and like the building society pass book the receipt was made out to someone with my initial and surname - I did suggest that perhaps I could take it back to the shop 30 years after its original purchase and see if they'd give us the thirty guineas back, but our dad wouldn't hear of it.
Eventually we moved from those offices and as part of a big clearout I eventually persuaded him to get rid of the radiogram that didn't work but "had a lovely sheen", he was heartbroken and wouldn't hear of us throwing it in a skip somewhere but after I promised to take it to a second hand furniture shop and get the best possible price for it he relented and bade it farewell.
I took one of the lads out of the workshop and we took it straight to the council rubbish tip where they had a nice big yellow crushing machine just for this sort of disposal problem, dropping the huge radiogram in the crusher took some doing and we had to enlist two of the council workmen to help us and when it was in there they pressed the button for the big ramming thingy to start closing in on the fine piece of 1960's audio/furniture - a time long past when you couldn't just have a record player, it had to look like furniture too.
When the crusher hit the radiogram there was a huge crack and all of us instinctively ducked as splinters of wood flew from the bowels of the machine, on closer inspection these were revealed to be cheap plywood with the thinest of mahogany veneers.
I laughed all the way back to the office at the thought of Gay George and our dad polishing plywood furniture for all of those years, and of course I had to tell him when I got back to the office, he wasn't amused at all, not at the plywood revelation but the fact that I hadn't taken it to a second hand furniture shop and flogged it off as solid mahogany as promised...
Monday, January 07, 2008
The Pub in my Family
Once upon a time our family had a pub in it, quite a big pub actually, its still there, The White Stag at Sheepscar in Leeds.
One of my fathers Uncles was the landlord, his Uncle Lenny, who had inherited the pub from his father George, I have the Census returns for the late 1800's which show their family as "publicans", a family of eight kids ranged over 25 years all living in the pub together at one point, as I said, its a big pub.
Family folklore has the story that my fathers father, Percy, contested the will when their father George died and that he and his brother Lenny played a game of cards for the right to own the pub, my grandfather Percy lost and our side of the family mooched off up Meanwood Road and opened a clock repair shop instead, hence the reason why we are still (sort of) in the clock business now (its only sort of, I can't repair clocks, don't ask me to).
Incidently there was another George in the equation, another brother of Percy and Lenny, I only mention him here to remind myself to tell his story sometime soon, he was known as Gay George and didn't want the rights to the pub as he was studying surveying at the time and eventually became a director of a very well known Leeds based company of Chartered Surveyors - like the pub, Gay George's fortune did not make its way down our side of the family tree when he died.
What ?
Yes, he was known as Gay George for precisely that reason.
So my Great-Grandfather George is running the pub in the first half of the last century and like a lot of publicans of that time he brews his own beer in a huge wooden vat in the cellar, a tap at the bottom of the vat allows him to fill a barrel with beer as and when needed and when the vat is empty he brews another load - as with all self-brewers there is no quality control over the ale other than Great-Grandad George's own knowledge and palete and of course the last barrel taken from the vat is always going to be stronger than the first barrel being that its fermenting all the time its in there.
A pub landlord in those days kept his clientele happy by the quality of his brew and they soon told him if he'd made a bad brew, unfortunately there was nothing else to do but drink the bloody lot as quick as you could if you had a bad brew because you'd have to empty the vat first in order to start again - on the other hand if you had a particularly good brew then word got around and you sold out pretty quickly that week.
One such good brew occured without any sort of rational explanation one week, George couldn't work out just exactly what it was that he'd done different this time but all his customers agreed that this one was a particularly delightful brew, stronger, with a much deeper flavour, very tasty indeed, mmm, give us another pint George.
The only disappointing thing for George was that he didn't know whether he could repeat the process when it came time to re-brew another batch but he did his best to ensure that his suppliers sent him the same hops, yeast and other good stuff that goes into the vat.
In no time at all they were down to the last couple of barrels and with an empty vat George prepared his ingredients for another fresh brew, placing a stepladder next to the huge wooden tub he climbed up and removed the lid ready to clean out the dregs...
...and it was then that he discovered what had happened to the family cat which had been missing these past few days.
Yes, it had drowned in his last brew.
He never knew whether it was the cat that was the vital ingredient that made the beer taste so strong.
But from then on he always threw one into the vat just before he closed the lid on a new brew.
DISCLAIMER - The last line of this story may not be strictly true
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Hot Tips for Pop Pickers in 2008
OK, this might not go very well.
I did this last year but I actually snuck all the band names from Napster's 2007 "Tips for the Hot Bands of 2007" and by the end of that year all of the bands on the Napster list were still drifting out there in obscurity somewhere.
So this time I will steal my list of hot tips from somewhere else...
1. Duffy - the PR blurb for this bint tells me that she is the next Dusty Springfield to which I ponder, "does the world really need another Dusty Springfield". She certainly looks like Dusty Springfield but I would have thought that modelling yourself on a singer who, lets be honest, wasn't really that popular in her heyday - ok so she sold out The Cats Whiskers in Meanwood but then again so did Max Jaffa and his Orchestra - is not a masterplan to instant success, especially if you have to wait to die and be adopted by the gay community to make a name for yourself.
Her Myspace site is right here and has some sample tracks and there is a feature on her on The First Post right here with a full length video of her which quite frankly I can't stand.
My ratings ...
Could I listen to a full CD of hers ? No
How quickly would I eject said CD of hers ? Track Two
Who/What does her voice remind you of ? A small child pestering their mother for sweets at a supermarket checkout
OK, I'm blagging off Napster again now...
2. Laura Marling - You see this is more like it, I've only played the 30 second preview of one of her songs on Napster Light (I accidentaly unsubscribed myself last month and haven't got round to sending my credit card details back to them) and I already want to hear more. Classified as "Female Folk" or "Easy Listening" she also has a Myspace site right here with some right folky stuff on it - stick one finger in your ear, grab a pint of Theakstons and hum along.
My ratings ...
Could I listen to a full CD of hers ? Probably, I'd give it a go anyway
How quickly would I eject said CD of hers ? Track Four
Who/What does her voice remind you of ? Suzanne Vega, maybe, sometimes.
3. Beth Rowley - In a very similar vein (sometimes) to Lily Allen but this one can actually sing and hold a note and leave you feeling like you've listened to serious music instead of Ed "Stewpot" Stewart's Junior Choice - Myspace site right here
My ratings ...
Yes
Is very easy on the eye too.
4. Jack McManus - Sounds like every other solo male performer at the moment in the same way that the above three female solo artists all sound like every other solo female artist, but thats not necessarily a bad thing if the quality is good although it makes you wonder where the music business is going at the moment - anywhere but into the hands of messrs Cowell and Walsh, please god.
My ratings...
Is he any good ? Sounds OK
Will you be gloating in Jan 2009 at having tipped him for fame ? I doubt it.
On a slightly related topic, I have used Napster's £9.99 a month unlimited streaming service for several years now and it became our households jukebox with the three (the wife doesn't count when we speak of technology) of us having a PC with access to it we didn't buy a CD at all for two years.
Then just before christmas in a fit of curiosity I downloaded Winamp to use as an alternative media player, its OK, nothing more, but it did offer me the bargain of the year in a service called eMusic where, for £8 a month I could download 30 tracks, and better still I could have 50 free tracks just for signing up.
I signed up, I let the Napster account lapse, Napster converted me to their "light" user status which means I only get previews now, not to worry I thought, I now have eMusic for my downloading delight each month.
eMusic is complete shite.
eMusic boasts of having billions of tracks just ready and waiting for your musical delight, it may have millions, but it doesn't have any of the ones you want to listen to - if you are into obscure artists or recordings of you favourite artist that you'd wish they'd never recorded, you know, the ones that get dropped off the album and are then released ten years later as "extra material never before heard" (theres a reason why they were never heard before) then eMusic is for you - it specialises in shite music that no-one wants to listen to and specialises in not having the music that you do want to listen to.
I have cancelled my subscription to eMusic after managing to snaffle 40 of my 50 free downloads (I've tried but just cannot find those last ten tracks anywhere on their site) and will get around to re-subscribing with Napster again any day soon.
I did this last year but I actually snuck all the band names from Napster's 2007 "Tips for the Hot Bands of 2007" and by the end of that year all of the bands on the Napster list were still drifting out there in obscurity somewhere.
So this time I will steal my list of hot tips from somewhere else...
1. Duffy - the PR blurb for this bint tells me that she is the next Dusty Springfield to which I ponder, "does the world really need another Dusty Springfield". She certainly looks like Dusty Springfield but I would have thought that modelling yourself on a singer who, lets be honest, wasn't really that popular in her heyday - ok so she sold out The Cats Whiskers in Meanwood but then again so did Max Jaffa and his Orchestra - is not a masterplan to instant success, especially if you have to wait to die and be adopted by the gay community to make a name for yourself.
Her Myspace site is right here and has some sample tracks and there is a feature on her on The First Post right here with a full length video of her which quite frankly I can't stand.
My ratings ...
Could I listen to a full CD of hers ? No
How quickly would I eject said CD of hers ? Track Two
Who/What does her voice remind you of ? A small child pestering their mother for sweets at a supermarket checkout
OK, I'm blagging off Napster again now...
2. Laura Marling - You see this is more like it, I've only played the 30 second preview of one of her songs on Napster Light (I accidentaly unsubscribed myself last month and haven't got round to sending my credit card details back to them) and I already want to hear more. Classified as "Female Folk" or "Easy Listening" she also has a Myspace site right here with some right folky stuff on it - stick one finger in your ear, grab a pint of Theakstons and hum along.
My ratings ...
Could I listen to a full CD of hers ? Probably, I'd give it a go anyway
How quickly would I eject said CD of hers ? Track Four
Who/What does her voice remind you of ? Suzanne Vega, maybe, sometimes.
3. Beth Rowley - In a very similar vein (sometimes) to Lily Allen but this one can actually sing and hold a note and leave you feeling like you've listened to serious music instead of Ed "Stewpot" Stewart's Junior Choice - Myspace site right here
My ratings ...
Yes
Is very easy on the eye too.
4. Jack McManus - Sounds like every other solo male performer at the moment in the same way that the above three female solo artists all sound like every other solo female artist, but thats not necessarily a bad thing if the quality is good although it makes you wonder where the music business is going at the moment - anywhere but into the hands of messrs Cowell and Walsh, please god.
My ratings...
Is he any good ? Sounds OK
Will you be gloating in Jan 2009 at having tipped him for fame ? I doubt it.
On a slightly related topic, I have used Napster's £9.99 a month unlimited streaming service for several years now and it became our households jukebox with the three (the wife doesn't count when we speak of technology) of us having a PC with access to it we didn't buy a CD at all for two years.
Then just before christmas in a fit of curiosity I downloaded Winamp to use as an alternative media player, its OK, nothing more, but it did offer me the bargain of the year in a service called eMusic where, for £8 a month I could download 30 tracks, and better still I could have 50 free tracks just for signing up.
I signed up, I let the Napster account lapse, Napster converted me to their "light" user status which means I only get previews now, not to worry I thought, I now have eMusic for my downloading delight each month.
eMusic is complete shite.
eMusic boasts of having billions of tracks just ready and waiting for your musical delight, it may have millions, but it doesn't have any of the ones you want to listen to - if you are into obscure artists or recordings of you favourite artist that you'd wish they'd never recorded, you know, the ones that get dropped off the album and are then released ten years later as "extra material never before heard" (theres a reason why they were never heard before) then eMusic is for you - it specialises in shite music that no-one wants to listen to and specialises in not having the music that you do want to listen to.
I have cancelled my subscription to eMusic after managing to snaffle 40 of my 50 free downloads (I've tried but just cannot find those last ten tracks anywhere on their site) and will get around to re-subscribing with Napster again any day soon.
Saturday, January 05, 2008
Another Meanwood lad done good...
Barry Ryan and his twin brother Paul were a singing duo of 1960's vintage until Paul decided that teenage adulation was not his bag (fool) and turned to writing music for his brother to sing - Eloise was their biggest hit together in 1968.
The Ryans (or Saphersons to use their real names) were from Meanwood and my dad never tired of telling anyone and everyone that when they were young lads putting their act together they used the concert room at his local club for rehearsals, a story which stood him in good stead when we visited France for our extremely adventurous holiday in 1971 as for some fluke of pop history the song "Eloise" had been a massive hit in France and Barry Ryan can still be seen performing on various French TV stations to this very day.
Working Mens Clubs were extremely important to our dad, he was a trustee at Meanwood Con Club and had various stints as concert secretary, snooker and billiards ace and bingo caller under his belt, but nothing was as sacred to him as the traditional "turn" on a Saturday night, the only night of the week that the concert room would be used, and it would be packed out with couples, it being the only night of the week that men would take their womenfolk out with them.
Acts like the Ryan twins cut their performing teeth on the stage in working mens clubs, if you were rubbish you were paid off after your first session (generally "turns" did two or three 30 minute sets per night), if the audience hadn't started talking or going to the bar during either of your sets then you might get a rebooking for next year - but the good "turns" could easily double their "day job" weekly wages just by performing every Saturday and Sunday night in a random club somewhere on the northern circuit so repeat bookings for next year (marked down in the concert secretary's little black diary) were very important.
Our dad also claims responsibility for discovering another Meanwood act at his club, "The Grumbleweeds" and I must admit to being split between them and Barry Ryan for todays video choice - Barry Ryan will do my street cred much more, well, cred, though.
He also lays claim to a lad named Alan Hawkshaw who allegedly used to sneak into the concert room and tinkle on the organ when no-one was looking, a disgusting habit but it paid off - yes I know you won't have heard of him but you will have heard of his music for Mr Hawkshaw moved off to that there London as a young talented organist and started writing theme tunes for TV shows - at one point in the 1970's every TV show theme on TV had been written by Alan Hawkshaw, if only he'd made sure that his contract included royalties...
But our dads biggest claim to "discovering" new talent was the day that his boss at work rang him up to ask if he knew of a good northern comedian who could do a very short five minute spot at the Royal Albert Hall in that there London at the very prestigious and televised Burma Star Organisation's annual piss-up - our dad recommended Paul Shane.
"What !!!" you cry, "Paul Shane of Hi-de-Hi fame ?"
"Yes" I reply smugly
"He was shit comedy actor" you all shout back, in unison.
And yes I agree, his comedy acting talent was zero although as we all know to our cost, that did not stop him from starring in the BBC's most popular sitcom for several years (and then some more that were not popular at all), but Paul Shane was one of the big stars on the northen club stand-up comedian circuit - if you booked Paul Shane at your club you had to pay top whack even before he appeared on TV, but you knew that your club would be full that night - without a doubt he was one of the funniest stand-up comedians I have ever seen.
Such a shame that his acting ability was zero.
So there you are - famous club turns and Barry Ryan - check out the Grumbleweeds on YouTube though, you will either love them or you will think that I have lost any marbles that I ever owned for recommending them.
PS - Barry Ryan perfectly demonstrates the dance style known as "Your dad dancing at a wedding", how I wish it was fashionable again for I could take to the dancefloors once again without shame or ten pints of ale inside me...
Friday, January 04, 2008
When your Hi-Fi starts calling your name...
My father was not a man to throw his money around willy-nilly and so the day that he announced that he had replaced his old "music centre" (which he had naturally bought second hand) with a brand new state-of-the-art Aiwa Hi-Fi caused eyebrows to be raised within the JerryChicken household.
He had bought the smaller model of the one that I already had from, of all places, a furniture store - if you have ever wondered who on earth is ever tempted to buy electrical goods from a furniture store then the answer is people like our dad on his once in a lifetime fecklessness trip.
A few days later I was sat in my house when the phone rang...
"You've got an Aiwa system haven't you ?"
"Yes dad"
"How do you code your name into it ?"
"Eh ?"
"How do you code your name into it ?"
"Why would you want to do that ?"
"You have to code your name into it so that it shows your name on the screen when you switch it on"
"Don't be daft"
"You do"
"It shows your name on screen when you switch it on ?"
"Yes"
"Mine doesn't"
"Mine does, it says Geoff"
"Geoff ?"
"Yes, Geoff, I think its a second hand one, someone called Geoff has programmed his name in"
"What does the instruction book say"
"It says nothing, doesn't mention programming your name in"
"Well mine doesn't"
"Come around and have a look"
I was often ordered to "come around and have a look" when he couldn't work something out, I lost count of the amount of times I had to go and program his video recorder when he was going out somewhere.
I arrived at his house, he switched his new Hi-Fi on, sure enough it said "Geoff" on the LCD display.
"Its bloody second hand" he told me, a bit more annoyed now, "I'm taking it back, they've bloody conned me with a second hand stereo"
"Give me the instruction book"
I read the instructions from cover to cover, there was no mention of the function that allowed you to program your name into the system so that it welcomed you when you switched it on, no mention at all.
"You'll have to take it back then" I told him
"Bloody conning buggers" he muttered, "I'll bloody tell them, flogging a second hand stereo to me, how did this Geoff manage to programme his name in anyway ?"
"I don't know" I told him, "I can't see anywhere where you can do this"
"Bloody conning buggers"
It was some time later when I'd returned home that the penny dropped...
I rang him...
"Dad, has your stereo got a graphic equaliser ?"
"A what ?"
"A graphic equaliser"
"What do you mean ?"
"Does it say graphic equaliser anywhere in the instructions ?"
"Do you want me to look ?"
"Well, yes"
"Bloody hell"
I sat and waited on the phone while he rustled lots of paperwork around , then picked up the phone again...
"There's a chapter in the manual that says graphic equaliser, what is it ?"
"Its a posh way of saying Bass and Treble"
"Bloody hell"
"Does it say anything about switching the graphic equaliser on and off ?"
"Wait a minute while I go get my glasses"
I waited for more than a minute while he went to get his glasses and then read the instruction book.
"Yes it says theres a button round the back where you can switch the graphic equaliser on or off"
"Thats it then"
"Whats it then ?"
"Thats what its saying when you switch the Hi-Fi on"
"What, when it says Geoff ?"
"Yes, its not saying Geoff, its saying Graphic Equaliser Off"
There was a long pause, a very long pause.
"Bloody hell"
And he put the phone down.
I still think it would be a good idea to have your stereo welcome you by name though, his did as long as you were called Geoff.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Another Strange Neighbour
Apart from the nutty Mr Hall who spent all of his waking hours staring into our glass fronted living room and apart from the bone idle deaf couple next door, we had another strange neighbour at Wrenbury Avenue.
And here is where I will have to be careful, for he is still alive and easily identified, I've already identified the street where he lives, if I tell you his name is Mr Anthony Cook then I'll blow his identity completely.
So instead we will use the name that us cheeky young scamps used to call him by, Mr Puff, the word "puff" being a 1960's British vernacular for "homosexual", that being what we suspected Mr Puff of being to our 11 year old eyes and ears.
Mr Puff was a respected music teacher at a very respected senior boys school in the City of Leeds, in fact it would be fair to say that it was the most respected senior boys Grammer School in the City of Leeds, but for the same reasons that I can't tell you Mr Puff's real name I can't tell you the name of the school for some people would easily put two and two together and re-arrange the bold words in this sentence to make the name of the school where he worked, and that might get me into trouble, and Lord knows I have enough trouble within my own family without the lawyers from Leeds Grammer School to cope with as well.
Anyway, he's retired from there now so anyone with a son at the very prestigious and well respected educational establishment can relax and hope that they have tightened up on their employment procedures now.
You see Mr Puff liked to dress up in his spare time.
Actually thats not quite true, Mr Puff liked to invite young boys into his home in order for them to dress up.
"Weirdo !" I hear you exclaim.
"Well yes" I counteract, "but this was the 1960's and we young boys, I mean those young boys knew no better"
Oh bugger it, yes I admit, it was our gang that he used to invite into his home to dress up in, erm, unusual costumes.
You see he explained that as head of music at the very prestigious and very well respected seat of education in our fine city he also got to be involved with the dramatic society and their various productions, and with it being an all-boy very prestigious seat of education, the boys sometimes had to dress up as girls, so theres nothing that sounds too wrong about that then is there, it all makes perfect sense...
So we'd be playing football or rugby out on the street of a summers evening and suddenly Mr Puff's voice would call out from over the road asking if we'd all like a drink of orange, it being a warm summers evening and all, and what with a drink of orange being something of a luxury to us impoverished lads we'd gratefully accept, whispering to each other that we wouldn't actually go in his house this time...
Five minutes later one of us would be stood there in Mr Puffs kitchen dressed from head to toe in a rubber scuba divers outfit complete with marigold washing up gloves (as he'd lost the proper scuba divers gloves) - a scuba divers mask and snorkel completed the outfit - and then he'd take photographs of us...
Yes, yes, yes, stop laughing, we all know now that he was a pervert, don't you think that every time we gather together in pubs we talk about Mr Puff and wonder how the hell he's managed to avoid conviction all these years ? We know now that he was, how shall we say, strange, but in the 1960's he was just, how shall we say, a little eccentric with his holiday snaps.
It wasn't always the scuba divers outfit, although that one seemed to be ever-present, sometimes it was a sailors outfit (yes, I know...), and a motorcycle riders leather suit complete with helmet and marigold gloves (again) also made it onto several photographs, yes, yes, yes, its obvious with hindsight, lets just say you had to be there though.
Occasionally theatrical clothing from the very well respected all-boys Grammar School arrived back at his house and from this we deduced that nautical themed plays must have been very popular at said well respected all-boys school, matelot and admiral combinations seemed to be ever-present, maybe they spent a lot of time rehearsing HMS Pinafore or something.
He offered to teach me to play the piano for free and often invited me to sit on the piano stool with him while he showed me where to put my fingers, but our mum thought it was not such a good idea when I told her as we'd need to have a piano in our house to practice on and there was no room what with all the junk furniture we already had - or maybe our mum had her suspicions about Mr Puff all along.
We knew Mr Puff was a puff because he had a "gentleman friend" who called around for him on a weekend on his motorbike and off they'd roar, Mr Puff astride the pillion of the old Triumph clad in the very same all-leather motorcycle riders gear that he'd photographed us all in, even down to the yellow marigolds which he used to gather a good grip around the girth of his boyfriend, erm, gentleman friend on the bike.
30 years later was the last time we saw Mr Puff on the day that Ned and I spent clearing out our dads bungalow after he had died - I really must write of that day soon, it was hilarious - as we were getting in our car one of the neighbour's came out to express their condolences and then out of the corner of his mouth I heard Ned whisper "Mr Puffs here" and suddenly there he was right in front of the pair of us explaining that he too wished to express his condolences...
Neither of us could look him in the eye, nor could we look at each other, as Neds brother I know when he is on the verge of hilarity and he me too (does that make sense), we were dying to crack out laughing and ask for a glass of orange so we mumbled something about being in a hurry, jumped in the car and sped off leaving him to view our hysterical laughter in the rear view mirror - he must have thought that we had a very strange way of handling grief.
And here is where I will have to be careful, for he is still alive and easily identified, I've already identified the street where he lives, if I tell you his name is Mr Anthony Cook then I'll blow his identity completely.
So instead we will use the name that us cheeky young scamps used to call him by, Mr Puff, the word "puff" being a 1960's British vernacular for "homosexual", that being what we suspected Mr Puff of being to our 11 year old eyes and ears.
Mr Puff was a respected music teacher at a very respected senior boys school in the City of Leeds, in fact it would be fair to say that it was the most respected senior boys Grammer School in the City of Leeds, but for the same reasons that I can't tell you Mr Puff's real name I can't tell you the name of the school for some people would easily put two and two together and re-arrange the bold words in this sentence to make the name of the school where he worked, and that might get me into trouble, and Lord knows I have enough trouble within my own family without the lawyers from Leeds Grammer School to cope with as well.
Anyway, he's retired from there now so anyone with a son at the very prestigious and well respected educational establishment can relax and hope that they have tightened up on their employment procedures now.
You see Mr Puff liked to dress up in his spare time.
Actually thats not quite true, Mr Puff liked to invite young boys into his home in order for them to dress up.
"Weirdo !" I hear you exclaim.
"Well yes" I counteract, "but this was the 1960's and we young boys, I mean those young boys knew no better"
Oh bugger it, yes I admit, it was our gang that he used to invite into his home to dress up in, erm, unusual costumes.
You see he explained that as head of music at the very prestigious and very well respected seat of education in our fine city he also got to be involved with the dramatic society and their various productions, and with it being an all-boy very prestigious seat of education, the boys sometimes had to dress up as girls, so theres nothing that sounds too wrong about that then is there, it all makes perfect sense...
So we'd be playing football or rugby out on the street of a summers evening and suddenly Mr Puff's voice would call out from over the road asking if we'd all like a drink of orange, it being a warm summers evening and all, and what with a drink of orange being something of a luxury to us impoverished lads we'd gratefully accept, whispering to each other that we wouldn't actually go in his house this time...
Five minutes later one of us would be stood there in Mr Puffs kitchen dressed from head to toe in a rubber scuba divers outfit complete with marigold washing up gloves (as he'd lost the proper scuba divers gloves) - a scuba divers mask and snorkel completed the outfit - and then he'd take photographs of us...
Yes, yes, yes, stop laughing, we all know now that he was a pervert, don't you think that every time we gather together in pubs we talk about Mr Puff and wonder how the hell he's managed to avoid conviction all these years ? We know now that he was, how shall we say, strange, but in the 1960's he was just, how shall we say, a little eccentric with his holiday snaps.
It wasn't always the scuba divers outfit, although that one seemed to be ever-present, sometimes it was a sailors outfit (yes, I know...), and a motorcycle riders leather suit complete with helmet and marigold gloves (again) also made it onto several photographs, yes, yes, yes, its obvious with hindsight, lets just say you had to be there though.
Occasionally theatrical clothing from the very well respected all-boys Grammar School arrived back at his house and from this we deduced that nautical themed plays must have been very popular at said well respected all-boys school, matelot and admiral combinations seemed to be ever-present, maybe they spent a lot of time rehearsing HMS Pinafore or something.
He offered to teach me to play the piano for free and often invited me to sit on the piano stool with him while he showed me where to put my fingers, but our mum thought it was not such a good idea when I told her as we'd need to have a piano in our house to practice on and there was no room what with all the junk furniture we already had - or maybe our mum had her suspicions about Mr Puff all along.
We knew Mr Puff was a puff because he had a "gentleman friend" who called around for him on a weekend on his motorbike and off they'd roar, Mr Puff astride the pillion of the old Triumph clad in the very same all-leather motorcycle riders gear that he'd photographed us all in, even down to the yellow marigolds which he used to gather a good grip around the girth of his boyfriend, erm, gentleman friend on the bike.
30 years later was the last time we saw Mr Puff on the day that Ned and I spent clearing out our dads bungalow after he had died - I really must write of that day soon, it was hilarious - as we were getting in our car one of the neighbour's came out to express their condolences and then out of the corner of his mouth I heard Ned whisper "Mr Puffs here" and suddenly there he was right in front of the pair of us explaining that he too wished to express his condolences...
Neither of us could look him in the eye, nor could we look at each other, as Neds brother I know when he is on the verge of hilarity and he me too (does that make sense), we were dying to crack out laughing and ask for a glass of orange so we mumbled something about being in a hurry, jumped in the car and sped off leaving him to view our hysterical laughter in the rear view mirror - he must have thought that we had a very strange way of handling grief.
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
When Your Neighbours Are Deaf
We moved to Cookridge in 1964.
In those days our street was one of the very last ones in Leeds, walk to the end of our street, turn left and walk for a few minutes more and you were in fields, real countryside with farms and cows and things, its still pretty much the same.
The bungalow that our dad scrimped and saved for cost him £2300 in 1964, an extraordinary amount of money, most of which was borrowed from the Leeds and Holbeck Building Society, to give an idea of just how extraordinary an amount of money it was he always spoke of "the other bungalow" that they just missed out on buying and how glad he was that someone else got their deposit to the builder just twenty minutes before he did because that bungalow cost £2400 and our dad knew that he couldn't afford that extra £100.
We moved into the bungalow one November night in 1964 in the middle of one of the thickest fogs I have ever seen, so thick was the fog that you couldn't see the road at all from inside the car as our dad drove us up the big hill that Cookridge is perched on top of and it was fortuitous that we almost ran into the back of a bus which crawled up the long hill at 5mph as we could at least follow the weak rear lights and hope that the bus driver could see the road ahead.
The bungalow was of a daring new 1960's design with the whole of the front wall of the sitting room being one huge window facing out onto the concrete street and your opposite neighbours, every bungalow in the street was the same, this was cutting edge housing design, the new decade when our country had finally put the war years and the war debt behind us and was striving on with a brave new building plan, Leeds was becoming the "Motorway City of the North" as our local politicians liked to emphasis at every opportunity and glass fronted bungalows were hyper-cool, we would sit in our glass fronted bungalow wearing the latest in nylon clothing and plan our holidays on the moon according to the vision of the very near future that was presented to us at Wrenbury Avenue.
The very first evening as we sat in our glass fronted living room and pondered on the wisdom of sharing our family life with everyone who walked past the bungalow and our mother berated our father for not letting her buy some new nets and curtains for the ones she had brought from the last house were for a far shorter and narrower window and our father worriedly perused his building society savings book for nets and curtains for such an expanse of glass would indeed be extremely costly, we realised that the bungalow had two other slight, teensy-weansy built-in snags.
The first had been immediately apparent from the first minute that we arose on that first morning - the neighbour in the glass fronted bungalow opposite liked to spend all day long standing at his large front window staring straight across the road into our glass fronted bungalow.
When I say he had stood at his front window all day staring into our bungalow then that's exactly what I mean, a bald headed man who wore an old cardigan even on the warmest days and with a pipe constantly hanging out of the corner of his mouth John Hall (he would later introduce himself) had only one aim in his life - to stand at his window, arms folded behind his back, puffing at his pipe, staring into our bungalow.
Our dad tried shouting at him at first, shouting from inside our bungalow, surprisingly Mr Hall couldn't hear him being that two large panes of glass and thirty foot of road stood between them, so our dad motioned with an obscene gesture across the road to Mr Hall, inviting him to, erm, go away, Mr Hall appeared to misunderstand the obscene message and just waved back jauntily.
Eight hours later and it was our teatime and Mr Hall was still standing at his window staring into our house when our dad stormed across the road to berate him, it was then that his long-suffering wife explained that her husband was on long term sick from his civil service job having suffered a nervous breakdown some months earlier, in short Mr Hall was our local nutter and for the next twenty years we had to learn to ignore his constant observations from over the road.
The second snag became obvious as soon as our dad returned from the Hall residence over the road and the next-door neighbours turned on their TV set for the night - their TV set was so loud that we couldn't hear ours, at all.
Our dad had just sat down and started to recount the tale of Mr Hall the nervous nutter over the road when the blast of the Coronation Street theme tune made the cheap glassware in our china cabinet rattle in sympathy, our mum instantly jumped up and switched on our TV set without thinking - it was OK while we were watching the same channel as next door, we could have the sound on our set turned off completely and just listen to next doors and as our dad liked to observe, that was "saving our speakers" but we had to watch whatever they watched all night long or else we couldn't hear what was on our TV at all, and their taste in TV programmes was crap.
So for the second time on that first evening at Wrenbury Avenue our dad stormed out of the house again determined to give a neighbour hell over their objectionable behaviour.
He returned ten minutes later with a "I don't believe it" look on his face and the TV set next door blaring out just as loud - our next door neighbours were both stone deaf, deaf as doornails, well almost totally deaf, the wife could just barely hear something when the TV was turned up full and would explain to her husband what was happening, she promised to turn down the volume but for the next thirty years did not in fact do so - we learned to live with it.
In fact it turned out to be no bad thing having deaf next door neighbours for later on when our dad splashed out on a radiogram and we started buying the popular music of the 1960's we found that we could play our records as loudly as we liked, full volume so that neighbours way down the street would stand out in the street and wonder where the hell that racket was coming from but our next door neighbours never heard a word - or at least that was the theory for our mother would always put a stop to our high volume antics by insisting that we turn down the radiogram "before we all went deaf" and despite our inarguable factual argument that it didn't matter as the neighbours were already bloody deaf, she always won despite not actually knowing which of the knobs on the radiogram was the volume one - our mum and technology were not happy bedfellows.
More on the deaf neighbours some other time for they are a rich source of anecdotes, what with him being the laziest bastard in the known universe and all...
PS - there is a 1960's photo of the Wrenbury Avenue bungalow on the, erm, photo bit to the right...
In those days our street was one of the very last ones in Leeds, walk to the end of our street, turn left and walk for a few minutes more and you were in fields, real countryside with farms and cows and things, its still pretty much the same.
The bungalow that our dad scrimped and saved for cost him £2300 in 1964, an extraordinary amount of money, most of which was borrowed from the Leeds and Holbeck Building Society, to give an idea of just how extraordinary an amount of money it was he always spoke of "the other bungalow" that they just missed out on buying and how glad he was that someone else got their deposit to the builder just twenty minutes before he did because that bungalow cost £2400 and our dad knew that he couldn't afford that extra £100.
We moved into the bungalow one November night in 1964 in the middle of one of the thickest fogs I have ever seen, so thick was the fog that you couldn't see the road at all from inside the car as our dad drove us up the big hill that Cookridge is perched on top of and it was fortuitous that we almost ran into the back of a bus which crawled up the long hill at 5mph as we could at least follow the weak rear lights and hope that the bus driver could see the road ahead.
The bungalow was of a daring new 1960's design with the whole of the front wall of the sitting room being one huge window facing out onto the concrete street and your opposite neighbours, every bungalow in the street was the same, this was cutting edge housing design, the new decade when our country had finally put the war years and the war debt behind us and was striving on with a brave new building plan, Leeds was becoming the "Motorway City of the North" as our local politicians liked to emphasis at every opportunity and glass fronted bungalows were hyper-cool, we would sit in our glass fronted bungalow wearing the latest in nylon clothing and plan our holidays on the moon according to the vision of the very near future that was presented to us at Wrenbury Avenue.
The very first evening as we sat in our glass fronted living room and pondered on the wisdom of sharing our family life with everyone who walked past the bungalow and our mother berated our father for not letting her buy some new nets and curtains for the ones she had brought from the last house were for a far shorter and narrower window and our father worriedly perused his building society savings book for nets and curtains for such an expanse of glass would indeed be extremely costly, we realised that the bungalow had two other slight, teensy-weansy built-in snags.
The first had been immediately apparent from the first minute that we arose on that first morning - the neighbour in the glass fronted bungalow opposite liked to spend all day long standing at his large front window staring straight across the road into our glass fronted bungalow.
When I say he had stood at his front window all day staring into our bungalow then that's exactly what I mean, a bald headed man who wore an old cardigan even on the warmest days and with a pipe constantly hanging out of the corner of his mouth John Hall (he would later introduce himself) had only one aim in his life - to stand at his window, arms folded behind his back, puffing at his pipe, staring into our bungalow.
Our dad tried shouting at him at first, shouting from inside our bungalow, surprisingly Mr Hall couldn't hear him being that two large panes of glass and thirty foot of road stood between them, so our dad motioned with an obscene gesture across the road to Mr Hall, inviting him to, erm, go away, Mr Hall appeared to misunderstand the obscene message and just waved back jauntily.
Eight hours later and it was our teatime and Mr Hall was still standing at his window staring into our house when our dad stormed across the road to berate him, it was then that his long-suffering wife explained that her husband was on long term sick from his civil service job having suffered a nervous breakdown some months earlier, in short Mr Hall was our local nutter and for the next twenty years we had to learn to ignore his constant observations from over the road.
The second snag became obvious as soon as our dad returned from the Hall residence over the road and the next-door neighbours turned on their TV set for the night - their TV set was so loud that we couldn't hear ours, at all.
Our dad had just sat down and started to recount the tale of Mr Hall the nervous nutter over the road when the blast of the Coronation Street theme tune made the cheap glassware in our china cabinet rattle in sympathy, our mum instantly jumped up and switched on our TV set without thinking - it was OK while we were watching the same channel as next door, we could have the sound on our set turned off completely and just listen to next doors and as our dad liked to observe, that was "saving our speakers" but we had to watch whatever they watched all night long or else we couldn't hear what was on our TV at all, and their taste in TV programmes was crap.
So for the second time on that first evening at Wrenbury Avenue our dad stormed out of the house again determined to give a neighbour hell over their objectionable behaviour.
He returned ten minutes later with a "I don't believe it" look on his face and the TV set next door blaring out just as loud - our next door neighbours were both stone deaf, deaf as doornails, well almost totally deaf, the wife could just barely hear something when the TV was turned up full and would explain to her husband what was happening, she promised to turn down the volume but for the next thirty years did not in fact do so - we learned to live with it.
In fact it turned out to be no bad thing having deaf next door neighbours for later on when our dad splashed out on a radiogram and we started buying the popular music of the 1960's we found that we could play our records as loudly as we liked, full volume so that neighbours way down the street would stand out in the street and wonder where the hell that racket was coming from but our next door neighbours never heard a word - or at least that was the theory for our mother would always put a stop to our high volume antics by insisting that we turn down the radiogram "before we all went deaf" and despite our inarguable factual argument that it didn't matter as the neighbours were already bloody deaf, she always won despite not actually knowing which of the knobs on the radiogram was the volume one - our mum and technology were not happy bedfellows.
More on the deaf neighbours some other time for they are a rich source of anecdotes, what with him being the laziest bastard in the known universe and all...
PS - there is a 1960's photo of the Wrenbury Avenue bungalow on the, erm, photo bit to the right...
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