Oh for gods sake just give it back

First of all - this news sprung off the page at me.
Imagine my disappointment at the third reading when I realised that it read "PARITY" and not "PARTY".
A party would be a mighty fine concession to bargain with your employers over, maybe a party every Friday afternoon, with cakes and buns and fizzy pop and a bouncy castle in the garden and someone sick over the azalea bush at the end - I'd strike for that and I'm not even a teacher.


But then I saw this news story, its a head shaking "what the fook is going on" sort of news story.

For those not in the know (ie anyone outside of the UK or Spain), Gibraltar is a headland.
Its part of southern Spain.
Most of it is a big rock sticking out to sea.
Most of it is a British armed forces base.
It is British sovereign territory.
Which means that it belongs to the Queen.
Which means that we get to pay for it via taxation.

And its been that way for 300 years.
And Spain have asked "why" or "Que" for 300 years and they want it back.

It is theirs after all, we stole it from them when they weren't looking and when Britain had a navy made of wood that just blew up everything that didn't smile and wave at them from the shoreline. Picture the scene, some British admiral sailing past an island, or in the case of Gibraltar a headland, looking through his telescope at the natives lined up on the beach...

"Carruthers, carruthers, come here man, look younder, be those natives on that thar beach ?"
"Aye captain, that they be, aye, ooh arr"
"Be they waving at us Carruthers ?"
"Nay Captain, they be cursing"
"Right, give the bas'tads a broadside or two and we'll have their fekking island or headland off them by lunch, be quick about it man"

And in this manner the British navy captured the whole of the world in just a few short weeks and gave it all to King James or whoever was King/Queen of the day, maybe it was King George with a number, who knows, google it if you're really that bothered.

The point being that we own these daft bits of rock all over the world and on these daft bits of rock we place military garrisons to pretend that they are still important to us, we even fought a war back in the early eighties to pretend that we really cared ever so much about a group of rocks in the southern atlantic even though we had a buyer for them in the shape of Argentina, but did we do a deal with them, no did we buggary, we pretended that we still wanted to keep them, spent trillions of pounds defending them, not to mention hundreds of lives, and now we've forgotten all about them again - ask someone on the street to point to a map of the world and tell you where the Falklands are and they'll point to the tip of Scotland again like they did pre 1982.

And so for the last 300 years succesive Spanish Kings and governments have, every year, asked the British government "Hey you, how about you geeev us dat rock back huh ?" and every year the British government reply "Get stuffed Manuel, its British sovereign territory, it belongs to the Queen, how dare you". and every year the British population gaze heavenwards and whimper "why for fook sake, why don't we just give it back to them, its fekking obvious that its a part of Spain, its attached to the fekking country for gods sake, you can walk from Spain to Gibralter without getting your feet wet, its a headland in Spain - give the bugger back and stop wasting our money"

On the other hand, the British have already taken over every square inch of Spanish coastline territory from Gibralter to Salou in the North, another square mile of rock isn't going to make that much difference to the flow of British currency into the Spanish exchequer.

Been and gone...

Well thats it then.

50th birthday been and gone yesterday.

The party is next Saturday to fit in with availability of friends so yesterday was a nice quiet family day, so traditional it made you squeak with whole-some-ness.

I made breakfast, a full cooked one, bacon, Lincolnshire sausage, mushrooms, fried egg on toast, tomato, and with a concession to healthy eating I fried it in olive oil, so thats ok then - all washed down with a bottle of Bucks Fizz, special offer at Aldi, fizzy and sweet, crap really but it feels so bourgeois to be drinking what you could imagine is champagne for breakfast.

We then took Jake for a walk in Golden Acre Park (which should really be renamed "Golden One Hundred Acre Park") in glorious sunshiine. It really was very warm yesterday and we sat on a bench near the lake fountain with a gentle breeze blowing a fine spray all over us, it was very pleasant, the park full of families all enjoying the late summer warmth - we had an ice cream too.

Even the presence of Mr and Mrs Chav and family couldn't spoil the morning, in fact it provided an object of amusment as Mr Chav was wearing the latest "must have" clothing for the underclasses this season - a sleeveless T-Shirt which displays your fat, tattoed upper arms to their best advantage - I'm not sure who or which magazine it is that informs the Chav clans of their sports-style clothing of choice but they have a great sense of humour whoever it is.

Returning home I made the traditional sunday lunch, a huge slab of Aberdeen Angus topside which had cost a childs ransom in Costco and tons of vegetables, which only I ate as vegetables are deemed to be food of the devil amongst the females of the household.


Real, proper, champagne was opened for dinner, French stuff, bubbly, sweet and £10 at Aldi, it must be good at that price, why the last "proper champagne" that I bought was about £30 a bottle, Aldi's buyers have their heads screwed on properly. To be honest it could have been fizzy turpentine for all I care, I hate the stuff, but again, it feels so burgeois to be drinking champagne for the second time in one day, just because you can.

And then finally all squashed onto the big leather sofa in the living room we watched "The Missing", Ron Howards attempt at a mystic cowboy film which was absolutely panned unmercilessly by the critics for its "native indian mumbo-jumbo". But I thought it was quite good, especially at the start when the snow covered plains scenery was just beautiful, maybe the story was crap but the cinematography was first class.

We also paid-to-play a film called "The Hills Have Eyes" on Saturday night but had to switch it off halfway through, mainly because Jodie was getting spooked by it but also because I thought it was complete bollax. We watched the rest of it yesterday afternoon and the rest of it was complete bollax too and is filed away now as an "18" film that should only be viewed by those under the age of 18, anyone over that age who thinks that it is not complete bollax has simply not mentally developed properly - see also "Jeepers Creepers" or any Scooby Doo cartoon.

Not almost a perfect day, but a fine day, very relaxing and just what I wanted for my landmark birthday, I'm 50 now and it was a bit weird looking at all the birthday cards that screamed "50" at me from the fireplace, realising that they were refering to me was strange as I still think I'm in my 30's but as my dad and Sinatra used to sing - "Thats Life, and I can't deny it"

I'm never going up in one of those - ever

Now this is a bit weird.

Especially if you believe in soothsayers.

Thursday night at the famous southstander.com curry neet I had arranged to meet everyone in a pub close to the restaurant, but as soon as I walked in the pub I was dragged to one side by Carolyn, that well known soothsayer of the group, to be informed that she had dreamt of me the previous night.

I threw up my hands in horror and told her that I didn't want to know about her sordid fantasies and that dreams rarely come true you know, but she insisted that just for a change it wasn't one of her "normal" dreams about various and assorted male friends and TV stars, but one in which I was involved a light aircraft crash with her.

Apparently we were trapped in the wreckage of the crash on the edge of a cliff, with her on the side that was dangling over the cliff and my substantial weight on the opposite side being the only thing that was preventing the whole thing from toppling over the edge - she was shouting at me to stay still and not move.

So, and in her words, I ever-so heroically managed to manouvre myself into a position by the door where I could jump clear, and then very slowly reached over towards her...

...where I grabbed my hand luggage from under her seat and leapt clear from the wreckage.

I agreed with her that it sounded like the sort of thing I would do in real life and we had a good laugh about it - weird, but you should hear about some of her other dreams...

So,

We made our way over the road to the restaurant where the rest of the crowd was waiting for us and the first thing that happened when I walked in the door was that Paul, the owner of the excellent southstander .com, grabbed me and told me that he had something awful to tell me.

He had been talking to his brother on the phone that night and explained that we were having my birthday curry neet when his brother gasped and told Paul that he had dreamt about me the previous night - in his dream I had been involved in a light aircraft crash but in his dream I had died, but he reassured me that everyone at the airport was really upset at the news of my demise - which was nice.

So, plane crash dreams.

According to the dream moods dictionary being involved in a plane accident can mean the following ...

"....suggests that you have set overly high and unrealistic goals for yourself. Your goals may be too high and are impossible to realize. You are in danger of having it come crashing down. Alternatively, your lack of confidence, self-defeating attitude and self-doubt toward the goals you have set for yourself is represented by the crashing airplane; you do not believe in your ability to attain those goals. Loss of power and uncertainty in achieving your goals are also signified..."

"...your dream seems to describe a positive transformation that has occurred in your waking life. You had previously been suffering from self-doubt or a lack of self-confidence as is suggested by the imagery of the crashing airplane. Since the airplane, managed to ascend and crashed away from you, it signifies that you have turned a bad situation from becoming far more worse."

... to which I can only say "bollocks", it really means, don't ever agree to elope on a light aircraft with one of your friends wife for it will surely end in tears and you will be the villian. Its a metaphor for my life, anytime I have a good idea some bastard will come along to make sure it ends in tears.

Heyho.
Fifty tomorrow.
No-one talking to me in the house yet.
Don't know why but at least they're not nagging me.
Every cloud has a silver lining.

Wonder if Leeds/Bradford airport willl hire me a Cessna ?

The birthday weekend starts right here

It started last night - the 50th birthday celebrations.

Along with a crowd of good friends from the RLFans.com network we adjourned to the Aagrah Indian restaurant in St Peters Square in Leeds (top picture) for another of our famous Southstander.com Curry Neets.

I must admit that I was most impressed with my birthday present from Rob (middle picture), a genuine greek captains hat and although it was a little on the small side I was certainly the belle of the restaurant and won many admiring glances from the ladies, and some from the men too as I carelessly and with abandon left the cap lying on the corner of the table for all to see and admire.

Carolyn graciously left a five pound note in my birthday card which will come in useful for a drink or two at the rugby match tonight but then tarnished the effect slightly when she told me that she'd found it on the pavement outside the pub along with a ten pound note - she'd kept the ten and put the fiver in my card, but still, its the thought that counts.

The ten would have been better though.

Not that I'm ungrateful or anything.

The food and service was excellent and although I always take some stick for being limp wristed in my curry choices I opted again for a Kashmiri curry that was full of lychees and bananas with a Pashwari nan adorned similarly with fruit and nuts - in my mind you smply cannot seriously consider a curry unless it looks like Carmen Mirandas headgear, or as I put it last night "If it doesn't arrive looking like the fruit basket prize in a working mans club raffle then I'm sending it back".

And better still, when the waiter found out that it was my birthday I got a free ice cream (see bottom picture) which I couldn't get anywhere near until the roman candle that they'd stuck in the top expired, by which time it had almost melted the ice cream - ice cream served with dangerous fireworks in it, wonderful, just wonderful.

But the best was saved for last - the bill. I didn't see it. It got passed around the table for a couple of circuits and then they all chucked enough money in to pay for it without me having to contrbute - thanks you very much for that guys it was a nice gesture and I appreciate it, mind if I'd known at the start I wouldn't have gone for the cheap curry, but still...

I'm still a sucker for stuff like this

See, I was brung up on the Apollo space missions, James Burke and Raymond Baxter in the BBC studios with the lunatic Patrick Moore trying to explain technical things about the moon in a language that only dedicated moonmen could understand, as a 12 year old I actually got out of bed at 3am one school morning to watch Neil Armstrong step down onto the moon and when i got to school all the other kids had done the same, and we all fell asleep in our lessons that day, luckily the teachers did too.

And so I'd love to fly in the space shuttle, it still seems like an awfully uncomfortable way to travel anywhere, but I'd love to do it anyway, and now it seems like NASA is veering more towards people like me and you rather than dedicated moonmen.

Sure they need one pilot on every mission but most of all they need builders, and thats where you and I come in. No, I'm not a construction worker but I've done a lot of DIY around the house and thats what they are looking for now because the space shuttles job for the foreseeable future is to take builders and materials up to the international space station and wait for them to finish their jobs before bringing them back home - its a sort of Ford Transit of the sky, and it is white after all.

Have a look at the latest Wikepedia entry for the current shuttle mission and then tell me that it isn't white van man and his mates off to do a cash-in-hand job ?

At the moment they're doing the proper construction stuff like putting up strutts and installing some solar power stuff, but when the international space station is properly built (I'm imagining Thunderbird 5 here) then I'm available to do a bit of painting and decorating.

Or plumbing, I'm a dab hand at plumbing with compression joints, assuming that plumbing works the same in space as it does on earth, maybe the water flows the wrong way around or something, but I'd have a go at plumbing too.

I'm no good up ladders though, I can "foot" a ladder all day long for more brave people, but I won't go above head height on a ladder, especially if its standing on grass, which it won't be in space of course, but still, we'll see how the ladder thing goes eh ?

So if anyone from NASA is reading this blog then this is my application for employment, handyman for hire.

Just one thing puzzles me - the current shuttle mission is up there for a few more days yet but the first thing that they do now is to put the space suits on and crawl all over the aircraft looking for stuff that might have been damaged on takeoff and that might cause problems on re-entry (for problems on re-entry read, burns up in a huge fireball all over three states in America).

To me thats a bit like the pilot of my holiday flight to Menorca walking down the aisle of our 737 while we're at 37,000 feet, parachute strapped to his back, telling us all "just popping out to see if the wheels will come down when we try to land in Menorca folks, toodle pip", its a bit off-putting to say the least and the fact that NASA have already stated that a rescue mission for the current crew would be launched sometime around November 11th suggests a bit of a lack of urgency , it might be just me being jittery though, I'm like this when I have to fly anywhere - don't let this put you off though NASA, I'm good with a brush.


POSTSCRIPT
I've just read that the builders on the shuttle are having problems this morning.

I should be up there now, I could sort that out for them, a software problem, I could do that.

Software problems are easy, you just reboot the PC, or reinstall the software, or download another version off the internet, or borrow your mates install disc and use that if yours is corrupted - see, I have all of the solutions, I could fix that.

But like all builders they'll all be stood around looking at the problem right now, sucking the rareified air in through their teeth and shaking their heads while telling NASA, "oooh its yer extrapolator joint pal, its a bad one, never seen one as bad as this, have you John, no neither have I, it'll cost you will this one mate, you got cash ? John can you take this man down to the cash machine ?"

Is it fair ?

I have a little problem with this news story - part two.

Not in the fact that some serious driving convictions cannot stand up in court because of technicalities - there is no excuse for the case mentioned in that news report where a driver escaped a drunk driver conviction due to a police balls-up with evidence collection - and thats not to mention that the driver was only persued for a drink driving offence when he had allegedly caused an extremely nasty road crash.

No, the problem that I have is in the way that the simple stuff will be targeted first, the simple, money raising stuff like speed camera convictions for instance.

It happens thoughout the public service sector, there is a finite amount of money to spend on specific projects and initiatives, and the success of those projects are measured by the amount of cash they bring in.

Which is why the introduction of speed cameras at random intervals throughout our land has been so successful, the ratio of cash income against initial cash outlay for the equipment is immense and if a private company had been set up to run the UK's speed camera network it would by now be quoted on the FSTE100.

And which is why, in the BBC report, the heart-rending stuff about serious road accidents and crippling injuries to innocent road users is just a smoke screen to hide the paragraph that states that people who wish to appeal against a simple 3 penalty point £60 speed camera notification may be put off by the fact that the defence costs will be quoted at £4000.

I have had three speed camera convictions in the past and I paid every one of them without fail, no excuse, i was wrong, I now watch my speed far more than I ever used to, so the speed camera debate is dead and buried as far as I'm concerned - it works and its better for all of us that it does.

But for most citizens the plop of the speed camera notification on their doorstep is probably as close an involvement in the public prosecution process as they'll ever have, its bad enough being told that you're in the wrong, its bad enough paying a £60 fine, but if you genuinely doubt that you were the driver on a particular day, or that you were indeed speeding on that particular location, then it is just not on to be threatened right at the outset with a £4000 cost if you dare to appeal.

I appealed against one speed camera notification, I won.

I won because the authority who issued the notification were inept and incapable of doing the job that they had been appointed to do, but I seriously doubt that I would have appealed if the threat of a huge cost to me had been made and in that case ineptitude and careless administration in the law would have been rewarded.

It wasn't my speeding that caused the arrival of the self-convictiing letter, the one that says "we have a photo of you speeding, you know you did it, we have the proof that you did it, now tick this box and send us £60 and your drivers licence", no it was my brother - or to be precise, we think it was my brother, in fact I'd better be careful here, it was a pool car and so it could have been any one of three of us who were driving on that date.

How could you not remember I hear you all asking ?

Well, here is where the ineptitude comes in - the date of the alleged offence was 12th June - we recieved the notification on 4th November.

I spoke to a lawyer friend and he advised that the notification should be sent to you within 14 days - I wrote back to the authority and told them that because more than 14 days had elapsed we couldn't ID the driver without seeing the photo and in any case was their approach absolutely legal at this time ?

They replied that the 14 day rule only applies when vehicles can be instantly traced to their owner, our vehicle was leased and so they were allowed to take as long as they liked when tracing the registered keeper of the vehicle, which was me, and PS they don't release the photo as its their evidence, they'll show you it in court - if you dare go that far.

I replied to inform them that the leasors of the car were Peugeot UK and had been since the car had rolled off their own production line, they were the only people on the registration document and they knew who I was, and they would have informed the authority within 14 days of who I was as they would have been prosecuted if they hadn't done so - I asked them again what th ereason for the five month delay was and explained why the five month delay made the ID of the driver so hard and could I see the photo as it was the only way that I could help them.

They eventually sent me a copy of their evidence - the five month old photo that they were hoping to present in court.

We pissed ourslelves laughing when we saw the picture of the front of our car on a very sunny day in June with the windscreen completely bleached out by the sun and the knuckles of the driver just about visible on the steering wheel, and nothing else to ID him/her/whoever.

We had a quick meeting in the office and agreed that we'd all love to have our day down at the magistrates court where we could all stand in line and hold our knuckles out for the magistrate to decide who the driver was and I wrote back to the authority to inform them so.

That was two years ago - they haven't replied to me yet.


The Road Safety Partnership that was involved had obviously made a huge balls up of this case and I dare say that our photo was one of a batch from that June day which had been misplaced and only discovered five months later, but the authoritiy had the brass balls and arrogance to still send out the speeding notices in the smug knowledge that a good percentage of those folk involved would simply cough up the £60 and stand the 3 points on their licence - when we stood up to them they backed down (or at least I think they've backed down, I wouldn't put it past some fuckwit civil servant to write to us again sometime soon).

And that is where we are heading with this new initiative, only those willing to risk a £4000 cost will question the validity of their speeding notifications, and ineptitude and crass bad evidence handling will be swept under the carpet.

Financial threats for asking question is not how the justice system should work .

Would you smote down one of your employees like this ?

I have a little problem with this news story.

In fact its not so much the news story itself, but the whole basis of organised religion.

Poor old Archbishop Lord Dr Hope (that man has an impressive list of titles) has been smote down with a "debilitating illness" which is nothing to laugh or point fun at, I do hope he is OK and that he enjoys his retirement.

Just as a bit of background filler poor old Archbishop Lord Dr Hope is the bloke who used to be the Archbishop of York, which is the second most important job in the Anglican church behind the Archbishop of Canterbury.

OK so its the third most important job in the Anglican church, given that God is the boss first, then possibly his lad Jesus (what does Jesus do in the organisation these days since we nailed him to a tree all those years ago), so maybe the Archbishop of York is a bit further down the pecking order - but hey, its a big job ok ?

But having clawed his way up the corporate tree, no doubt kicking lots of other aspiring Archbishops in the teeth on t he way up, ex-Archbishop Lord Dr Hope stuck out the job for a short while then told God that he couldn't be arsed with all this Archbishop-ery stuff and that he wanted to be a parish priest again.

And God saw that it was so and gave the job to someone who wanted the job much more and he made A-L-D Hope a simple parish priest again.

But as we all know, God can be a right vindictive bas'tad when he wants to be and he has obviously sat and stewed on this one for a long time, who knows, maybe he started recieving prayers from some of the priests that A-L-D Hope kicked in the teeth on the way up, maybe there is a lot of infighting and cats-claws within the Anglican priest business, maybe there is truth in the motto that you shouldn't upset people on the way up as you'll have to meet them again ont he way down - whatever the truth God has seen to it that A-L-D hope does not have the quiet and happy retirement that he wished for himself and has smote him down with a debilitating illness to cope with .

"Ha !" said God, "See how you like that you bas'tad. That'll learn'ya" (for God has spent too long in the Bronx)

And thats where I have the problem with organised religion - as an organisation its just too vindictive for me, the range of punishments meted out to transgressors is so ferocious that the Cosa Nostra would be calling for reforms to their punishment book if they followed the same course.

I once had the misfortune to visit a church - yes just the once - it was the church where we were getting married and the bans were being read - and the vicar, who had been a very nice man when we met him in his house, turned into a raging, spitting, fire-breathing, brimstone-hurling fekking maniac who terrorised the dozen or so old ladies in his congregation by graphically explaining how Gods punishments would rain down on their heads and tear them limb from limb if they didn't sing up a bit when he got to the hymn singing part of his sermon - I left his church absolutely terrified and couldn't sleep for four nights, I still check the sky for falling meteors from on high whenever I swear and I dread to think what will happen to me today after wrtiting this piece.

Have to go to Hull now (God works in mysterious ways) - toodle pip and good fortune.

I hate paying for car parking ...

If there is one thing that I enjoy in the avoidance of paying for, then its car parking, and on Friday night I had the most bizarre experience of avoiding car parking fees that I've ever seen.

We've spent this weekend again in the North East (nearly found our holiday home, but more later) and on Friday evening Jodie and I went to Kingston Park, the home of the Newcastle Falcons Rugby Union team to watch their 2006 Guinness Premiership opening fixture.

A little earlier in the evening we had dropped by the ground to purchase our admission tickets which at £21 (£11 for Jode's) to stand behind the goals caused a sharp intake of breath, and whilst doing so had "borrowed" a car park slot in the official car park which I noticed would have cost me £8 if I wanted to use it for the actual game itself.

"Bollax to that" was my first and only thought, "we'll park in the streets".

But they (the club and the local council) have now introduced a residents parking scheme where, on a match night, it is legal for residents to trash any strangers car which is parked ont heir streets without the necessary badge or permit - or something like that - suffice to say that you can't park on the streets within a mile of the stadium anymore.

"Not to worry" thought I, "last time we came I parked on a grass verge on a country lane" they could shove their £8 parking fee, I'd use the country lane again.

But as we approached it in the car I could see no other vehicles using the grass verge which sort of set the alram bells ringing, maybe this area was enwrapped in the residents scheme too ?

And then just a few hundred yards further on I saw where all the other cheapskates like me were parking - an abandoned field where a rough track entrance had been forged out of the waist high grass, we followed a Land Rover into the field and should have been a little alarmed by the way in which it bucked about in the entrance, riding up and down ruts and potholes like it was crossing the sahara - and me in a ordinary saloon trying to follow it.

Jodie had her doubts, I could tell by her screaming "You can't be serious dad" at me as we negotiated, ever so slowly, the moonscape-like entrance to the field. I had noticed that the Land Rover had by now disappeared into the field and that only its lights were visible as a ghostly green glow beneath the head-high grass but hey, this field was for free, and so, as if in an episode of Daktari, I followed its tyre tracks and eventually after fifty yards or so of bumping up and down rows and rows of earth mounds we found the end of the row of cars and in tears of laughter abandoned the car there.

Jodie pleaded with me to drive straight back out of the field and even offered to pay the £8 to use the official car park but I was well chuffed with myself by now at having found this secret hidey-hole for cars and wouldn't hear of it although I confess that wading out of the field was a little tricky and the fact that you couldn't see any of the cars from the roadside was a little disconcerting, still, it was free though.

We walked the short distance to the ground and took a short cut through the official car park where disgruntled drivers were being fleeced for £8 to park in raw sewage - there was a problem somewhere int he vicinity with a burst sewer pipe and the car park was being gradually flooded with a stinking brown gunge which got to be so bad that at half time and throughout the second half the club pleaded with spectators to take great care when retrieving their cars from the new sewer lake, or as I explained to Jode "Pay £8 and park your car in poo"

9/11 and my fear of tall buildings

Yes, everyone knows what today is, but even if you'd been hiding in a cave for the last five years like, well, erm, like a terrorist leader for instance, then you would have noticed that in the last seven days the TV companies have had a glut of documentaries, drama-documentaries and outright fictional accounts of what went on in New York five years ago.

But one thing offers a crumb of comfort to me,
I could not have been in the World Trade Centre on the 11th September 2001, it is just impossible.

You know the feeling when you are watching a dramatised account of what those poor people went through, you sit there in your nice warm living room with a nice cold beer in your hand and your mind wanders and you find yourself saying things in your head like "I'd have evacuated the building immediately, stuff the announcements telling me to stay at my desk".

But I know for a fact that I would never have been in that situation to start with.

Because I hate lifts, elevators, ascenseurs, call them what you like, I hate them.
Which is a bit of a drawback if your office is on the 102nd floor.

And unlike other people with phobias I know exactly where and when my one started.
It was at Leeds College of Technology circa 1975.

My first lesson on a Monday morning was at 9am on the fifteenth floor of the college.
The college had two lifts for something like 1000 students to be elevated to their classrooms at every start/finish/break time.
And each lift held exactly 15 students.

Not one more than 15, and sometimes a few less.
I don't have to describe the scene on the ground floor of the college at 8.55am every Monday morning with every student in the building trying to get into a lift do I ?

You'd stand there outside the lift door in a crowd of several hundred, glancing around you thinking "we won't all get in this one" and then with a "ping" and a groan of sliding doors the lift would arrive and you'd be forced through the open door to find yourself rammed against the back wall of the lift...and you'd wait.

You'd wait until someone near the front could shove enough people back out of the lift until there was a clear space for the doors to close...and they'd press the buttons to select a floor, in fact they'd press all of the buttons, they'd press them all individually and then they'd press them all together at the same time, but to no avail.

There above our head would be the big red sign that flashed out the word "OVERLOAD" with a smaller sign below it that read "Max load 15 people", and you'd glance around the rammed full lift and you'd count at least forty bodies in there and without the aid of the technology degree that sooner or later you were hoping to obtain at the college, you'd just know that 40 people is too many for a lift that wants to take just 15.

And the stupid thing is that some of the students who were stubbornly refusing to leave the lift in the vain hope that the mechanics would somehow change their mind and take all 40 of us in one go, were actually trainee lift engineers.

So you'd stand there for a few minutes and then someone, probably a trainee lift engineer, would mutter, "some of you will have to leave" and the ones at the front would mutter "fekk off" back to them, and everyone would shuffle around a bit as if shifting their weight by a few centimetres would alter things.

And the stand off would continue, and continue, and continue, until eventually enough people near the front had lost their patience and stormed off to the staircase, probably the ones who only needed to go to the first floor anyway, and after enough of them had alighted the lift would suddenly reconsider its obstinancy, turn off the OVERLOAD light and close the doors to a resounding cheer from us intrepid passengers.

And then someone would shuffle one inch to the left and the OVERLOAD light would come on again and the lift doors would open and we'd be back to square one, to a round of resounding groans and "who fekking moved ?"

So we'd all shuffle around a bit more to redistribute the weight again, and the light would go off, the doors would close....and we'd start to move ever so slowly upwards, cables and panels groaning and straining to take the weight of 23 students, 7 of whom shouldn't be in there, all of us trying to stay absolutely still so as not to trip the OVERLOAD again, and then someone would move and we'd stop mid-floor and the doors would open to reveal a concrete wall and everyone would moan and boo and we'd all start shuffling our feet around again until the lift changed its mind.

Half an hour later we'd arrive on the fifteenth floor, late for lessons - again - and having read every piece of graffitti on the inside of the lift shaft onthe way up, clearly the lift doors were fairly superflous pieces of equipment as the college lifts spent more time inside the lift shaft with the doors open than closed.

And it was all repeated again at lunchtime and again in the evening, it was actually quicker by ten minutes or so to use the staircase than to go anywhere in the college lifts - and so was born my irrational hatred of lifts and the not so irrational fear that whatever lift that I am in will open its doors mid floor somewhere leaving me to stare at a concrete wall with "Janice Ecclesly shags Gordon Barmpot" written in blue biro across it.

Robbie chaos predicted

The amazingly untalented Robbie Williams is in Leeds this weekend, playing two gigs in Roundhay Park tonight and tomorrow, they've sold 90,000 tickets for the event in the natural open air amphitheatre (think Hollywood Bowl but much bigger).

(No not the ten pin bowling arcade, the proper Hollywood Bowl, open air concert venue.....oh never mind)

The local radio and TV stations love events like this as they can confidently predict "Robbie chaos" on the roads and send out reporters to the scene to interview the disgruntled residents of Roundhay who didn't realise that the huge city park that is on their doorstep, the same huge city park that they love to use for 362 days of the year, the same huge city park that increases their house valuations by £200,000, is occasionally used by the city fathers for open air summer concert venues like the one that Mr Williams is presenting this weekend - no radio interviewer ever asks the question of a disgruntled resident "well why don't you just fekk off somewhere else for the weekend ?"

But this event seems to have captured the media attention for another reason - schools have had to close because of Mr Williams its a disgrace, the BBC say its a disgrace so it must be.

Fortunately I will be out of town this weekend, back up to Newcastle for two rugby games so I'll miss the whole Robbie schmozzal, not that it would have affected me anyway as Leeds is a big enough city for the screaming Robbie pant-wetters to keep well away from my neck of the woods, but even if I was staying home this weekend I'd be able to rely on the BBC Radio Leeds "Robbie-Watch" quarter-hourly travel bulletins to alert me to road blockages of fainted young females or their similarly excited mothers.

The suprising thing is that the diminuative self-proclaimed warbler can manage to sell so many tickets for two successive events, its very likely that most of the purchasers will be going for both nights, and the aforementioned Radio Leeds was telling the story yesterday of one poor girl who's sister had paid over £400 for two tickets in the VIP area which hadn't turned up in the post and would not be replaced by the promoter - presumably on the grounds that the two sisters were obviously mentally unstable for having handed over the money on a promise in the first place.

Last month when on holiday in Menorca I was unfortunate enough to be trapped in a bar with some beer in my hand (it was an awful experience, honest) while a Robbie Williams "tribute act" tried to generate some interest from a totally uninterested audience.

To be fair to him he was as good as the real thing.
But thats not really saying much is it ?

So at 3pm this afternoon I'm heading two hours north, to sanity and a Robbie-less town, two rugby matches this weekend to watch and some beer to drink.

Thats Life.

When you're ready Tony...

So you're at work and you sit next to a bloke who keeps mithering on about how he wants to retire and at some point in the past he's told you that he's going soon and that you can have his chair when he's gone.

And thats quite a big deal to you because in the office hierachy he's got the best and newest chair, the cup that he keeps his pencils in is better than yours is and you've got your eye on his waste paper bin too because it doesn't smell of sour milk like yours does since that day you threw away a McDonalds milkshake thinking it was finished whereas in fact it was only frozen hard in the bottom.

So all year long you've put up with his sighs as he sits down in a morning and his gentle moan "not long now" as he sits down every morning, and the way he crosses off each date with glee on the calendar every morning and you really thought that by now he'd be gone and you'd have the chair, the pencil cup and the non-milky bin.

So for the last seven days you've been pushing him, gently at first , just prods really, you started last week with "Not long now eh ?" but all he said was "No you're right", so the next day you tried " Be putting your feet up soon eh ?" and he just gave a non-committal "Aye", and on Friday you pointed out that he'd be having a good lie-in very soon now, no more number 19 bus to catch at 8.16 every morning, but he just smiled at you.

So this week you got a little bit more serious, involved some of the other office dwellers, got them to nag him a bit to try and prise a retirement date out of him, he was having none of it, just smiled at them and said "Aye, not long now".

So yesterday you waited at the lift door down in the entrance lobby and as he arrived you held the lift door for him and then shoved that fat Mrs Workington out of the way when she tried to get into your lift, telling her "its full" when in fact there was only you and your non-retiring collegue in there, and as the lift door closed and started its ascent you grabbed him around the throat and told him in no uncertain terms that if he didn't step aside very soon, like possibly next week very soon, even this Friday very soon, then you'd be tempted, sorely tempted to open the office window and howk him out yourself, laughing as he fell, all fourteen floors worth of laughter.

He stared at you with saucepan eyes and promised that he'd make a statement to your boss tomorrow and you released your grip and nodded in agreement, that would be a good course of action you assured him as you straightened his collar and tie.

And today when he arrived at work he went straight into the bosses office and spent a half an hour in there talking to him, then came out and went straight to the photocopy room and while he was in there your boss came out and said that he had something to announce to the room.

At last you thought, at last you get to see the back of your miserable bas'tad of a colleague, he's off, he's retiring, and you shuffled a little closer to his desk so that you could have first dibs at his chair.

"As you know" your boss had started, "Tony has been talking for some time about his retirement" and you all nodded your heads in a tired acknowledgement of the fact, "and this morning we've been discussing a date for that retirement...."

This was it, here it comes, he's got to go now, no later than tonight, the weekend at the very latest, and you reach out and take a hold of the arm of his chair so as to drag it towards you as soon as the boss finishes his speech.

"...and we've concluded that the best time for Tony to step down and retire is ..."

Yes, yes, come on man, out with it ...

"...is sometime in the next year"

What ????

"...or so..."

Or so ???

"...thank you for listening"

And you find yourself searching in your desk for a key to the window in the corner...

Its where I live ...

Apparently, my home city Leeds has been voted in the top five city destinations in the Conde Nast travellers awards. Now that may be top five in the UK, or in Europe, or in the World, but unfortunately the Conde Nast web site appears to be bugged at the moment so I don't know, however the introductory paragraph that Google gives is that Leeds was voted "best value for money" in a world poll - so we'll take that one then.

A Yorkshire city giving value for money ?
Surely some mistake ?

Hint - For those from outside of the UK, Yorkshire people are reknown for "being careful" with their money, a scurrilous accusation I say, but one which might help explain why our hotels and shops are "good value for money".

Hint 2 - For those outside of the UK or those English soft southern nancies who don't know where Yorkshire is...
1. Find map of UK
2. Find London on map
3. Move finger in a northerly direction
4. Further than that
5. Go on, keep going
6. Stop when you get to that gap on the east coast, just opposite Holland
7. Go left a bit
8. Go up a bit more
9. All of this is Yorkshire


Anyway, back to the survey.

Just a year ago I wrote my own guide to the fine city of Leeds, one in which I was less than complimentary after a disasterous shopping trip, and having read it again I still maintain that its by and large still true, and by the way, the large sports store is still there and still having its final closing down sale.

But...

What Leeds does have for the visitor and indeed its residents is a superb and original city centre shopping area.

No I don't mean a shopping mall, I mean a city centre full of shops, like it used to be in the olden days, before shopping malls blighted most of our other cities. If you've forgotten what a shopping trip is like where you never leave a mall and never see an original shop then pay us a visit one day, you might like the experience.

I point now, dear people, to Newcastle, but could just as well point to Sheffield. Both of these cities jumped straight in with both feet in the 1980's when the urge to build huge, gargantuan out-of-town shopping malls was all the rage and within a few short months they had their Metro Centre and Meadowhall (respectively) malls sucking the lifeblood out of their city centres. Within twelve months the centres of both city's were like ghost towns and most of the retaillers had moved to the mall whilst citizens bleated about their city "not having a soul left to it" - repeat the scene for many other city's across this fair land.

But not Leeds.

By some fluke of planning office mis-organisation Leeds never gave planning permission for an out-of-town shopping mall until after central government decreed that they were a bad thing and not to be built anymore - Leeds sneaked a small one through the net and so we got our very own baby mall at the White Rose Centre - you could fit the whole of the White Rose Centre into Debenhams in the Metro Centre.

Instead our city fathers concentrated on our great asset in Leeds - our Victorian and Edwardian heritage of buildings, unique arcades, and our huge, huge market hall, and in a move for which we will always be grateful they told a Dutch development company to fook right off when they suggested demolishing our beautiful terracotta tiled victorian market buildings to repace them with a concrete block with elevated walkways (name one building with elevated walkways that is still in current use, its so 1960's Thunderbirds set).

In the past five years another massive building explosion has hit the surrounds of Leeds city centre - that of hotels and apartment buildings, there are currently more tower cranes at work in Leeds than in any other city in the country, hence the ease in which visitors can find a bed for the night for their weekend shopping and clubbing trips.

Leeds has turned itself into a tourist attraction and every weekend the city centre is full of accents of all shapes and timbres , and in a massively ironic turnabout we are inundated with coach parties from the Northeast who drive right past their own (now very boring) Metro Centre and keep driving for two hours just so that they can come and shop in our gorgeous terracotta facaded streets, drink in our victorian alleyway pubs but most of all haunt our indoor market, shopping malls can't compete with a proper city centre.

If you annoy enough of them...

So poor old Steve Irwin finally annoyed the wrong creature enough for it to kill him.

And while we can all shake our head and mumble "he asked for it" and while there is some truth in the fact that if you annoy enough wild animals then eventually one of them will fight back, you can't deny his achievements in the field of wildlife education for young children.

He, and his scare-you-shitless style of wildlife documentary programming, are a perfect example of how the boundaries of educating young people have changed in so short a time since I was educated, ok maybe its not so short a time, but its certainly changed in my lifetime.

When ah wor nobbut a lad we learned about wildlife by reading from big, stuffy, cardboard-backed books called encyclopedia's, most of the content of which was both unintelligible and uninteresting to us, we'd scan the alphabetically listed topics until we found something readable, such as "african lions" or maybe even "how to wrestle a crocodile" and when we finally arrived at the page in question, and if we were very lucky, we might find a hastily sketched picture of the subject, or if the encyclopedia was an expensive one (like the ones your auntie's bought you at christmas) then you might be fortunate enough to find a photograph.

Programming for children on TV was still being birthed by the BBC when I was at my optimum infancy learning curve and so, aside from the specialist "Schools Programmes" which we watched occasionally in class, we only had two programmes a week to provide for our education - Blue Peter and Animal Magic.

Blue Peter is known to every single living person in the UK, and even some dead ones. Its been around for ever and you can date a UK citizen very easily by simply asking them who was presenting Blue Peter at their very earliest memory ?

My answer by the way is Christopher Trace and Val Singleton which dates my earliest Blue Peter memory to the early 1960's.

But Blue Peter was/is a "general interest" childrens programme, it featured animals but not exclusively, for your total animal fix every week you simply had to watch Animal Magic and if you are of the same vintage as me you will still be able to hum the theme tune.

I wish I'd been at the BBC when the Animal Magic producer pitched his idea in the boardroom for the new show, "Its a half hour programme to educate young children about the animal world" he would have started, "we'll be filming most of it at Bristol zoo" he would have explained, "and we've got this nice old man called Johnny Morris to present the show, we'll dress him up as a zoo keeper and he'll explain to the children all about the animals in the cages"

And the BBC board of directors would all have nodded their heads wisely and sagely and muttered to each other "I like the idea"

And then the producer would have played his ace card, "..and every animal that Johhny Morris talks about will be able to talk back to him"

And the BBC directors would have sat up with a start and gazed at each other in astonishment and one of them would have pressed the secret button underneath the boardroom table to have security alerted to escort this lunatic producer from Broadcasting House.

"How will you manage to get the animals to talk to Johnny Morris then ?" one of the more enlightened directors would have asked.

"Johnny Morris will do all the animal voices himself" the producer would have explained, "he's very good at doing funny voices, I've heard him, he had me in stitches"

"We'll have him in a straitjacket soon" one of the directors would have whispered to another.


The word for it was anthropomorphic, the art of casting human characteristics onto animals, its what Johnny Morris did and he did it well, and we all truly believed that when he walked around Bristol zoo in his zookeepers uniform, the monkeys all said "thank you old chap" when he handed them a banana.

Children today are not as gullible, frankly they are not as stupid as we were, they know that monkeys don't talk to their zookeepers every morning, but worse than that, children now need to be entertained, excited by education before it starts to sink into their heads.

Hence Steve Irwin.

And now that one of his subjects has killed him there will be another Steve Irwin waiting in the wings to entertain and educate in far more dangerous ways than Steve Irwin did, its what TV programmers want.

I just can't help thinking that its just a shame that Steve Irwin hadn't watched Johnny Morris a bit more often when he was a kid, maybe talking to the animals would not have invoked such extreme reactions amongst them.

He's a bit camp, my dog

Because we were away last night we had booked Jake the Retriever, the softest dog in the world, into his favourite kennels, the one with the dog swimming pool (yes really) and the one that breeds Weimaraners - they were excercising at least twenty identical grey ones when I delivered Jake there early Saturday morning.

Went with Jodie to pick him up this afternoon and as we got out of the car several dogs started barking, including two huge Rottweilers who could stand against the fence of their individual runs and see above the screened-in bit, they both started a very deep gruff baying at us and in amongst the bedlam we suddenly saw, in the pen opposite where we had parked, the top of a white hairy head jumping up to look out, which he couldn't quite do, and then, amazingly, two very camp "woofs"

"Thats Jake" I told Jodie.
"No its not" she said.
"It is, I recognise his ears"
"That dog barked, it can't be Jake" (because as everyone knows, Jake never barks)

But it was true, it was Jake, camp bark and all, if we let him choose his own collar he'd probably pick a pink diamante one.

We've often wondered why he never barks, or at least only barks once, just every two or three months, maybe he's embarrassed by his "woof", maybe, and this is more likely, he's just too lazy to bark, barking uses energy, energy which could be far more usefully applied to arranging your bed ready for your next sleep , and quite frankly he's got no reason to bark, everything in his life is just hunky dory, he sleeps on a suede foam filled bed, he gets fed twice a day, he knows how to tell us he needs feeding and he knows how to tell us that he needs to go out into the garden to dump the waste product of the food later - and he sleeps.

Why bother barking when everything else is so perfect ?

It never stops, this merry-go-round

7pm Sunday
Back from the North East where we've been since yesterday morning for a quick birthday party visit which seemed to be unlikely as I lay in the hospital A&E department just 48 hours previously - god bless Mr Codeine is all I have to say.

No sign at all of any kidney pain now, no sign of the "feeling the need to piss constantly" either and no sign of anything passing down the pipework that could be construed as being stone shaped either, so its on with the good Doctor Sanjays advice and drink, drink, drink, although he made it abundantly clear that by "drink" he meant water and nothing stronger or sugary-er.

Bugger.

It was (one of) my brother-in-law's birthday yesterday and my sister-in-law's birthday is next week, so they had a joint party at her house with a small but select group of friends and in the true tradition of all geordie party's it didn't finish until 5am sunday morning, much drink was consumed, laughter was the only thing heard in the house, and some cross-dressing went on as one male party-er explored his feminine side after complaining all night that certain scenes from "Brokeback Mountain" had made him feel sick earlier in the week. Several pints of Vodka and Irn Bru convinced him that the pink spangly cowboy hat would be a good start, followed by a long string of pearls, some white ladies arm-length gloves, and then a quick nip upstairs to my sister-in-laws bedroom found him be-robed in one of her little black party dresses and silver shoes, he looked lovely.

There are photos somewhere and I'm sure he's regretting drinking quite so much vodka this morning, all he could say to me at 3am this morning was "I'm not gay you know, I kept my socks on" and indeed he did, black socks in silver slingbacks, it was a good look.

It was a lot of fun made better by the fact that Mr Codeine and Dr Sanjay had insisted that I stick to the water and hence stayed sober, I was drinking from 0.5 litre bottles and by my reckoning I got through eight of them last night which meant that by the time we had travelled from the party to our hosts "holiday home" near Rothbury (a 20 minute drive) I was ready to give the toilet a good testing, and for the rest of the night too, still, no stone passed, no stone, no grit, we'll keep trying though.

I'd have been the beau of the ward

One thing I forgot to add to last nights post - when I was lying in a drugged up state in my little cubicle in the hospital A&E department there was a knock at the door and in came my two daughters, which was nice, they were concerned about me, which was nice, and they'd brought an overnight bag just in case the doctors confined me, which was nice.

See the bag in the photograph ?

That is very similar to the toiletery bag that they'd packed for me.

And they'd packed one of Suzannes pink gym bags full of clothes for me too.

How pleased am I that I'm not waking up in a male ward today with those two bags at the foot of my bed ?

My youngest sat in the treatment cubicle and told me that she'd found the book that I've currently got my head in and she'd packed that too, and did I want her to go home and bring back the laptop and some painting equipment ?

My kids know me too well.




The tablets worked last night by the way and the need to piss every ten minutes has disappeared too, a grain of sand in your kidneys is all it takes - bloody incredible.

How could something so small hurt so much ?

Today I felt pain like I've never felt pain before.

If you read backwards through this blog to just one week ago you'll know that I paid my first visit to our doctor for 13 years - because I was feeling the need to urinate far to often during the day.

She took a urine test and a blood sample and whilst a quick test showed no urinary infection she sent them off for analysis, and for a PSA test for prostate cancer, which was just one of many probable causes.

I had an appointment to revisit the surgery at 4.15pm this afternoon to get the results and in the last two days the feeling of a need to urinate was with me constantly, not that I needed to, it was just the feeling of needing to - its a bloody nuisance.

I woke at 5am this morning, went to the bathroom and took a leak, no problem there. Went back to bed and awoke at 6am with the constant feeling of a need to urinate strangely absent.

I found out why when I stood up.

In that hour someone had crept up to me while I was asleep and inserted twenty seven dozen red hot needles into the small of my back, left hand side. I had never felt pain like that at all, never.

The problem is that I have nothing to compare the pain to, I'm fifty years old in two weeks time and have never broken a bone in my body, I bruised a toe badly once when I kicked a brick on the beach at Whitley Bay (long story), but thats about as bad as pain has ever been for me - actually thats not true, I crushed a vertebrae disc in my back fifteen years ago, but that was just a bee sting compared to this morning.

For some reason I came downstairs, decided that was a stupid thing to do so went back upstairs and lay on the bed where Suzanne soon awoke to find me soaked in sweat and clutching the sheets in screaming agony, she gave me two paracetomols which were as useless as slapping me in the face and telling me to pull myself together and called the doctor.

After a long discussion with the emergency NHS Direct person it was decided to bypass my GP and head for the hospital and so an ambulance was called, but as my agony was not life threatening (all this from just a telephone conversation, clever aren't they ?) I wasn't a priority.

To cut the story short I arrived at the hospital at 9am after three hours of pain and promptly threw up in the ambulance as predicted by the paramedic who had given me the gas-and-air tube so loved by birthing females with a warning that it would make me feel intoxicated and possibly billious, it did both, but it didn't kill the pain at all - all I can say is that if the gas-and-air stuff dulls the pain of childbirth then childbirth pain can't be that bad, not as bad as what I had anyway.

There, thats got rid of all the indignant women, now read on guys...

After blood had been taken the nurse noticed my writhing on the bed and groaning in agony and asked if I'd like a painkiller - I almost strangled her for asking the most stupid question of the year.

One tiny little white tablet, just 30mg of codeine and a 200mg tablet of ibuprofen and the pain went within three minutes, I told Suzanne to write down the name of those two drugs and find a source for them on eBay, with a packet of them a person could go through the rest of their life and never have a hangover again, ever.

Kidney stones, thats what I apparently have folks, kidney stones.

Tiny little crystals of salt and calcium, tiny little things that in my case don't even show up on an x-ray (I had two), tiny little grains that sit there pressing on a nerve making you want to constantly urinate and then one morning they decide to move along a little bit and BAM - you're incapacitated with blinding agony, writhing, screaming, clenching, pain that cannot be merely described - and two little tablets make it go away.

I've got a three day supply of those little tablets and I'm hanging on to them like grim death. The pain hasn't come back yet and its now 7.30pm, they fed me and released me to come home at 2pm this afternoon - I love the NHS, its a superb service no matter what shit the politicians spout about it.

How do I feel now ?

Full of water for starters, I've got to drink between four and six pints a day now to wash the buggering stones out - and I've been warned that that could be fun too - but mainly I feel bruised...

If you've ever watched the old John Wayne movie "Stagecoach" where he's on a stagecoach being persued by Indians and he climbs over the six horses heads for some reason that I can't remember, then hangs underneath the horses and slides all the way back down underneath the stagecoach, no I can't remember why he had to do that bit either, but you remember the scene ?

Well I feel like I've just done the same stunt.

But when I did it I fell over the lead horses head and it trampled all over me and so did its five other horsey friends. Then the stagecoach ran over me too, and just for good measure all of the persuing Indians horses squished me into the sand as well.

Thats how I feel right now.
But I've got my tablet friends to keep me company tonight.

How does she do that ?

Jane Tomlinson - a remarkable lady.

Here in West Yorkshire we are well aware of this incredibly determined woman as she has dominated our local TV News screens for several years now, and quite rightly too, with her endless feats of endurance raising impressive amounts of hard cash for cancer charities.

Those outside the UK may not be quite so aware of her achievements and unfortunately it seems that the American media are not at all impressed with her latest exploits, full BBC News story here.

Why should they be so interested ? Many people cycle across the USA every year, many do it to raise money for their favourite charities and back in the 1980's a chap called Terry Fox ran across the USA with an artificial leg (lost through cancer) to great acclaim, raised a fortune, had an Elton John song written about him which was a huge hit for Rod Stewart, and probably milked all of the publicity that the news media wanted to give such an event, oh yes, he died of his cancer shortly afterwards.

Oh have I mentioned, Jane Tomlinson has terminal cancer too, her current endurance feat has had to be squeezed inbetween bouts of chemotherapy. Her first breast cancer diagnosis came at the age of just 26 years and in 2000 a scan revealed multiple secondary tumours, at that point the diagnosis was terminal with treatment simply holding the various cancer sites at bay.

Since that time she has competed in numerous marathons, triathalons and ironman events, she has cycled the legnth of the UK and from Rome to Leeds, all of these events dependant on her chemotherapy sessions working effectively, on the ride down the UK she had to break off for a cuple of days for as she was in the middle of chemo treatment.

The Jane Tomlinson Foundation has raised in excess of £1million for UK cancer charities, and a synopsis of how she has achieved this can be found here - the current ride across the USA is to raise funds for American cancer charities but as stated earlier, it has met with a wall of indifference from the media.

All of which is rather unfortunate as after every one of these fund raising events you can't help but think "surely she can't consider doing another one" and then every year the physicians prop her back up on her feet and off she goes again - but for how much longer ?

I take my hat off to the girl, as one who has cycled what I thought were long distances - the longest being a five day ride to Copenhagen - I know what its like to wake up each morning with the first thought "I've got to get back on that fuckin bike this morning", its the sort of journey you'd love to make in your dreams but deep down inside we all know that none of us could do it.

Where did our money go ?

So who spent the £40 million ?

Its old news, the failure of the Leeds supertram scheme, but there are still a hundred and one questions hanging over city hall as to where the £40 million that was spent on the scheme over a ten year period went.

Back in March central government ordered an Audit Commission report into whether or not the money represented "public value for money", which considering that as ratepaying citizens we have benefitted to the tune of zero, should be a very quick and succinct enquiry, but as all government enquiries go there has been no more news since March, still, give them a few more years eh ?

This morning, on the local BBC Radio Leeds news programme a debate was fuelled about contributions to Leeds city Council that were made by local businesses during the Supertram planning process - a sum of just over £4 million was raised from city centre businesses to contribute to "public transport enhancements" which would benefit their businesses.

The esteemed leader of our council, who has ambitions to be the first publicly elected City Mayor, admitted that the "contributions" were made ostensibly to fund the supertram bid, but there were some weasel words in the documents to state that the money could in fact be used to fund any form of public transport improvements to benefit businesses.

Which is all well and good, and the request for contributions is not illegal, its a part of any standard planning application that may or may not be granted as long as the applicant is prepared to pop some money in the city coffers to enhance the environment.

The point that two bar owners were making on the programme is that they had contributed a total of £26,000 in their two planning applications, and seen, erm, nothing.

There are no new public transport initiatives at the moment, there is one in the pipeline, but then again supertram was in the pipeline, and the two bar owners were more than a bit miffed that their money appeared to have disappeared down the same pipeline that supertram did.

Our esteemed council leader mentioned that the £4million raised was still in a bank account somewhere and that £1.5million had already been spent by the people who organise public transport in the city, but he didn't know where the money had been spent because it "wasn't his department". He also mentioned that a new free bus service was now operating around the city centre to transport people around the city centre, which is all well and good but the real initiative was supposed to bring people into the city centre, not move them around a bit once they were there.

Its all a complete balls-up of a magnitude of £40million, and truthfully its not the fault of our local politicians, its central government reneging on promises whilst at the same time encouraging local politicians to spend money, lots of money, on planning applications - its only rubbing salt into the wounds to discover that the extension to the existing Manchester supertram, which was in the same sum of money as the Leeds scheme and which was also refused permission at the same time as the Leeds scheme, has now been approved by central government leaving Leeds as the largest city in Europe without a public service rapid transport system.

But never mind eh, its only our money they're spending.



Late edit - I've just noticed that the picture above is a model, either that or they intended to let lego people drive the Leeds Supertram.

Forgive me my sins.

Bank Holiday Monday. 7.28am

I'm a terrible husband.
I'm always the first to awake in the house and so I'm sitting here alone with a terrible secret.

I forgot to put the bin out last night.
You may laugh, but that is an unforgiveable crime in this house.
We now have a full bin, the binmen have been, our bin will be mega full by next Monday
I now have to wait for the wrath to descend when she descends sometime later.

Yesterday I finally finished off the coving and hole filling on that panel of ceiling that I replaced above the stairs twelve months ago.
The earned me some brownie points.
But this bin business has nulled all that good work.

I also have to clean the excess weed out of the pond.
That's been waiting for two months to be done.
It wouldn't matter but this house is for sale and the pond is supposed to be "a delightful feature"

I painted the lead flashing above the bay window yesterday too.
That had been waiting for over a year.
That good work will be forgotten over this terrible bin mishap though.

I refused to go any further up the ladder to paint the white wall above Jodies bedroom window though.
I keep telling her that I'll get a professional in to do that.
And then I never do.
And the house is up for sale and the paint is peeling off the front of it.

And we need to start clearing stuff out of the loft.
Putting it in boxes, throwing most of it out at the charity shops
Because we intend to move and the stuff in the loft is still there from the last move
So its not going with us again.
But I can't be arsed
I'll do it when we find a buyer

But when Suzanne wants something doing
She expects it doing within minutes of her mentioning it
So she mentions it over and over and over again until it gets done
She's been mentioning the front of house paintng for over a year now.

The problem is that I enjoy doing what I enjoy doing.
I paint.
I read a bit too
I watch very little TV
I write

And none of that leaves room for being busy around the house
And she says that I'd be happy living on my own
And I probably would
I'd probably be happy being anywhere actually because I just fit in anywhere, don't take any issues with me
As long as I can paint and write and read, I couldn't really give a flying one where I am
Thats how I spent my two weeks in Menorca, sitting on the balcony painting, reading, writing
While everyone else spent time round the pool or on the beach

Ho-hum

I've thought of an excuse.
If I wheel the bin out onto the street now
Before she wakes up
I can say that the binmen must have left it

That might work.

Bank Holiday Mondays past...

In the great scheme of things I'd have posted this tomorrow, being bank holiday monday and all, but hey, I'm not that perfect, so here it is, my outstanding bank holiday monday memory, posted on a bank holiday sunday.

Actually its not that daft because back in the days of my childhood bank holiday monday in august was always at the start of august, so this post isn't a day early, its 30 days late.

Anyway, pedantary over - the only thing that jumps to mind when you mention august bank holiday monday to me is... the English Electric Lightning - see above for visual reference tool.

Picture the scene...

Its early august, 1967, "the summer of love", Procul Harem have spent time at number one with "A whiter shade of pale", and The Beatles "All you need is love" has just been usurped from the top of the hit parade by Scott McKenzies"San Fransico" - I'm 12 years old, the days are wall to wall sunshine, we're on our six week school holiday and the highlight of that holiday is the Church Fenton Air Show - you should by now have a picture in your head of the TV programme "The Wonder Years", that kid Kevin Arnold was the same age as me in that same year, keep that vision in mind while you read on...

RAF Church Fenton is/was an air force base to the east of Leeds with an unfeasibly long runway so that anything could land there, absolutely anything, and every year or so at august bank holiday they'd open up the airfield to the paying public and invite air forces from all over the world to send their aircraft for a bit of a knees-up and a jolly good time, and the other air forces from all over the world would be invited to show the British public just what they could do with their own aircraft and how good they were at flying airplanes in formation and lots of other good stuff like that, and then right at the end of the day the RAF would roll open one of the huge hanger doors and wheel out their trump card - the English Electric Lightning.

Now I'm no aircraft geek, so I'll not bore you with the stats, if you really want to read articles written by fat balding 50 year old geeky blokes slavering all over dead airplanes then you need to click here and here, but what I do know about the Lightning is that it was the star of the show, the one that we had all been waiting for.

We'd have sat there all day on the grass in the middle of the airfield, in the days before Health and Safety was invented the RAF would simply stick a rope up 50 yards from the runway and request ever-so-nicely that you shouldn't cross the rope thank you ever so much.

So several thousand of us would sit there on the grass all day with our picnics and a bottles of dandelion and burdock, and the dads would sup their bottles of Tetleys beer, and we'd all be enthralled by helicopters of all shapes and sizes flying past, we'd gaze in awe at The Red Devils parachute display team, we'd gasp in admiration at the Red Arrows formation flying team, we'd be sat just fifty yards away as a huge Vulcan bomber would arrive on the runway from a North Yorkshire air force base, and then we'd boo the German airforce when they sent a token fighter to torment us and cause our fathers to stick two fingers up at the pilot and remind the young lad that they'd wupped his dads arse just twenty years earlier - it was a great afternoon.

And then to end the show the Lightning would stand at the end of the runway and we'd all crane our necks and screw up our eyes to spot it a half a mile away as it started its take-off run and the commentator who always sounded like a jolly good RAF-stylee wing commander would remind us that this was the fastest aircraft in the world, easily faster than anything the yanks had to offer, it could fly at twice the speed of sound without breaking sweat and it was the only aircraft that had enough balls in its engines to fly vertically upwards "standing on its tail" - ooh we were impressed by the time it roared past us, fifty yards away, with a gut-wrenching, ear-splitting, crackle, a blue flame belching from both its rear mounted engines, and then with the take off delayed for as long as the pilot could hold it on the ground so that we'd all get a good look, it would heave itself off the ground and disappear into the distant blue cloudless august sky.

And we'd sit there and clear our ears out and the women would gabble away to themselves, unimpressed by technology as women are, but we kids would sit there in eager anticipation because those of us who'd been here before knew that this was just for starters, this was the aperatif, the Lightning hadn't even started yet, it was gone from view but we knew that several miles away the pilot was lining us up for a fly past at almost Mach 1 at a few feet from the ground - you'd never get to see this at an airshow now, you'd never get to sit fifty feet away from a runway while the fastest fighter in the world almost breaks the sound barrier so close to you that you can see the pilot wink at you kids as he zips by, pouring himself a gin and tonic and twirling his moustache at the same time.

With an incredible roar and thunder it flashed in front of our eyes once more, a split second and it was gone again, blink and you miss it, but it had been there, just for milliseconds it had been there so close you could touch it and now you couldn't even see it as a dot in the sky anymore - and then the noise hit you several seconds later, blasting yoru eardrums with an incredible barrage of raw, unadultarated, power, the air crackling around you mixed with the jet exhaust fumes - women screamed, babies cried and dogs barked, yes people brought their dogs to the air show and let them roam free on the airfield, life was so much simpler back then - it was the most exciting thing that a twelve year old boy could ever experience and I bet the Church Fenton airshow resulted in hundreds of twelve year old boys vowing to themselves that they would have only one career choice in four years time, they'd be an RAF Lightning pilot.

And for a finale the wing-commander stylee announcer would announce that the Lightning would return to the airfield to do its party peice, it would climb vertically to a height that was unattainable by any other jet aircraft in the world apart from the Yankee spy plane that had crashed in Russia that time - our Lightnings would never crash in Russia though.

The Lightning flew in fast and low and then right in front of us would swoop upwards and turn on something that the wing commander stylee announcer called its "afterburners" and the whole arse end of the plane would glow bright red and it would climb up and up like a Saturn rocket on its way to the stars and the most exciting bit of the afternoon would occur when the wing commander stylee announcer would patch in a radio link to the Lightning pilot so that we could all hear this brave young man go about his daily business in the cockpit.

"Roger Wilco, I say Wilkinson are you receiving me, over"
"Roger Dodger WIng Commander, I'm receiving you, over"
"Good chap Wilkinson, how are things in the old crate today then, over"
"Jolly good Wing Commander, absolutely spiffing in fact, over"
"Good show Wilkinson, good show, how high are you now old chap, over"
"40,000 feet sir, still climbing on her arse she is, over"
"Hows the canopy old chap, over"
"Fine sir just fine, Blenkinsop stuck it down with duct tape after I got in sir, over"
"Jolly good, could you tell the ladies and gentlemen how high you are now, over"
"50,000 feet sir, still climbing on her arse she is, over"
"Very good Wilkinson, we're all very impressed aren't we ladies and gentlemen ? Over"

(sound of muffled cheering from the audience)

"Sir ? Over"
"Yes Wilkinson, over"
"How high would you like me to go sir ? Over"
"We can still see you Wilkinson, can't we ladies and gentlemen ? Over"

(muffled sound of ten thousand spectators shouting "Yes" in unison)

"Its just that, well its 60,000 feet now sir, and erm, I haven't brought oxygen, over"
"Well thats a tad inconvenient Wilkinson, why didn''t you pack the oxygen, over"
"Blenkinsop taped the canopy down before he could pass the oxygen to me sir, we sort of forgot sir, over"
"Well its not good enough Wilkinson, these ladies and gentlemen have paid good money to see how high you can go haven't you ladies and gentlemen, over"

(muffled sound of ten thousand spectators shouting "Yes" in unison again)

"Well I'll do my best sir, over"
"Damn good show WIlkinson, you're a sport and no question, over"
"70,000 feet now sir, over"
"I say, over"
"The canopy's shaking a bit now sir, I think the duct tape is coming loose, over"
"Keep your pecker up Wilkinson, none of this cry baby stuff, over"
"Can I come down yet, over"
"Lets see if we can get you into space eh Wilkinson ? What do you think ladies and gentlemen, over"

(muffled sound of ten thousand spectators shouting "Yes" in unison again)

"Sir ? over"
"Yes Wilkinson, over"
"I haven't brought a parachute sir, over"
"I say Wilkinson, this just isn't good enough, first the oxygen and now the parachute, just what were you playing at boy, over"
"I'm sorry sir, over, sorry, not over, can I come down now, over"
"You'll be a laughing stock you know that don't you, we've got the yanks here today, over"
"Sorry sir, over"
"Bladdy hell, you'd better come down then, you're on a report Wilkinson, my office at three bells, over"
"Sah, over"

Thats how it went, honest.

These are my people

So, family history.
Who's done theirs then ?

This is one of just a few old photos I have of what was my mothers side of the family, the Atkinsons, obviously on holiday at some un-named beach location that I don't recognise as being any of the obvious places such as Scarborough, Bridlington (although it may be) or Blackpool.

Without having to do the research I knew who everyone was in the photo except for the old man in the bowler hat on the left. I seem to recall either my Mother or my Auntie Irene mentioning that he was a Great-Uncle or maybe he was their grandfather, I can't recall, but for the purpose of my research I've assumed that he is their grandfather as he appears in some other photos with the two girls - for no other reason than that actually, you are allowed to cheat a little on family research, just like everyone always claims to be related to King James II.

So from left to right...

My presumed Great Grandfather James Atkinson looking magnificent in his best suit, tie and bowler hat whilst on a family holiday and relaxing on the beach, its good to see that he rolled his trousers up in concession to the general frivolity of the holiday, I've got a superb picture of him and a similarly dressed woman out shooting on a hillside in full tweed sporting attire and a bowler hat, he seems to have been something of a country gent and I can't help but wonder what he did, what was his position in life, and how come his lifestyle wasn't handed down to me ?

My Auntie Irene, the only person in the photo who is still alive and well, living in a sheltered housing complex in Blackpool, mother to my two cousins Alan and Ray, wife to my hilarious Uncle Sid, stalwart of our future family holidays together in Scarborough.

My Great-Aunt Beattie, a lovely lady and a lovely Great-Aunt to have, I used to cycle to her house in Horsforth during the school holidays just to sit in the front room of her old stone terrace house and have a cup of tea and some of her home baked cake. She had had some drama and heartache in her life as her bast'ad of a husband was unfaithful to her on several occasions (more of the slut later), but she would never allow a wrong word to be spoken of his memory - a lovely faithful old lady.

My Mother, Joyce, with a football at her feet although I doubt very much whether she actually knew it was a football as she certainly had no interest in kicking one when me and Ned came along. She and Auntie Irene should have been boys according to their father, and he simply assumed that they were boys when they were young, he was an ace cricketer my grandad and would force his daughters to play cricket on the beach for every day of their holidays, if only the England womens cricket team would have been around in the 1930's then my mum and auntie Irene would have been a shoe-in for it.

My Grandma, Elizabeth, again a lovely old lady in her later years who always kept a bottle of American Cream Soda in her old sideboard for the four of us grandsons when we visited - it was such a decadent thing to do to lower the drinks cabinet section of the sideboard, take one of her sherry glasses and help yourself to some of her American Cream Soda, drinking with your pinky finger sticking out as she had taught us.

My famous Grandad Richard, famous in Meanwood anyway. Stalwart of the Woodhouse cricket club, cricket dominated his life, my grandma was a cricket widow but after he died of lung cancer in 1961 she was ever so proud of his gold medal that he won for winning a local league one year and kept his cricket bat in her sideboard, oiling it with linseed oil still, as she had watched him do so often. I vaguely remember my grandad as I was five when he died and would have loved to have known him better as he always spoke of his joy at having four grandsons and couldn't wait until we had grown a little older and to have taught us the wonder of cricket - unfortunately he died before he got the chance.

The bas'tad Great Uncle Victor who broke my Great Auntie Beattie's heart. He died of lung cancer in 1958 shortly before my brother Ned was born and such was the affection that my Great Auntie Beattie held him in that she asked if Ned could be named in his memory, hence Ned's middle name being "The Bas'tad". My Great Aunt Beattie had suspected his infidelity for a long time before one day she followed him to work on the bus to find him greeted in Leeds by a floozy - I can only imagine what she felt like having sneaked out of the house behind him and somehow hung around out of sight, running to get on the bus at the last minute and sitting downstairs while he went unsuspecting to his upstairs seat where all the male smokers sat, then sitting there and watching him in the arms of a sluttern women as she waited for the bus to pull away so that she could alight at the next stop, heartbroken and just wanting to get back home again, how horrible that must have been for her and how magnificent that she remained faithful and loyal to him right up until his death - yes you're right, I've put her on a pedestal because in reality thats what women did in those days - still, I can think of no other suitable word but "bas'tad" for my Great Uncle Victor, at least my middle name is Richard as I got named after the cricketing hero of the two brothers.


I'd estimate the picture to be in the 1930's, my mother was born in 1923 and I'm guessing that she is about ten years old there so we're talking about 1933-ish, just 15 years after the Great War in which my Grandad and the Bas'tad had served and just five or six years before the world would once again be thrown into turmoil and even as they sat there (presumably) on the north east coast of England, just a hundred miles or so away across the North Sea a small man with a scribbled on joke moustache and a bad haircut was making his plans for European and world domination, and my Grandad and the Bas'tad would once again be called to arms, this time as home guards on firewatch at Leeds railway station armed with buckets of sand and brooms, its a good job that Hitler never invaded this country as the Bas'tad would have had it away with Eva Braun on the 56 bus to Leeds.