Hoist up the John B's sail...

Isn't Napster great ?
For £10 a month I can get to do this...
I can sit here tonight and listen to at least five different versions of The Beach Boys singing "Sloop John B".

See, the thing with searching Napster for The Beach Boys is that all you get is loads of compilations of "Greatest Hits", the Beach Boys must have more greatest hits compilations than any other artist in world history, aided and abetted no doubt by the fact that their entire back catalogue was flogged off early in their career by Murry Wilson their manager.

But appearing on Napster at the moment is a huge anniversary album release "The Pet Sounds Sessions, a 40th Anniversary" upon which are dozens of unreleased versions of such tracks as Sloop John B sung in different styles and by the different brothers/cousins.

OK you've got to be a geek to listen to stuff like that, the sort of person who would buy the Beatles Anthology series.
(Holds hand up)

So, we have "Sloop John B (the stereo mix)" the one that everyone knows, remastered in 96, you've heard it a million times.

"Sloop John B (Carl sings first verse)" does what it says on the label - Carl Wilson (died of lung cancer in 96) sings the first verse and makes it a much softer introduction, its not as good as the "original" and you see why they dumped it, especially the strange line "I feel so break up, I wanna go home" which is changed in the "original" to "broke up" of course...

Fook off, I'm not a geek.

"Sloop John B (Brian sings lead throughout)" is better than Carls version but he still sings "break up", maybe it was a groovy word in 1966, there aren't as many backing vocals on this version and maybe Brian recorded it during their dinner break without the others knowing.

"Sloop John B (Stack-o-vocals)" are all the backing harmonies that are missing off Brians version, maybe the others just said they were going for dinner but in fact sneaked into the next door studio and recorded the harmonies without Brian, not knowing that he was next door recording the whole song on his own anyway - this is a good version in a wierd sort of acapella stylee.

"Sloop John B (Stereo backing track)" is just the instruments, all ready for your own kareoke interpretation, so I kareoke'd along to this one having heard the song about forty fekking times by now - what actually happened of course is that while Brian was recording the song on his own thinking the others were out to lunch and while the others were recording the harmonies thinking that Brian was out to lunch, the real musicians in the studio sat down and did the job that they were getting paid a daily rate for and then buggered off to the pub to count the loot.


I'm in for a long night, theres a lot more of this stuff to go at, including eight versions of "Surfin Safari".

We come on the sloop John B
My grandfather and me
Around nassau town we did roam
Drinking all night
Got into a fight
Well I feel so broke up
I want to go home

So hoist up the John Bs sail
See how the mainsail sets
Call for the captain ashore
Let me go home, let me go home
I wanna go home, yeah yeah
Well I feel so broke up
I wanna go home

The first mate he got drunk
And broke in the capns trunk
The constable had to come and take him away
Sheriff John Stone
Why dont you leave me alone, yeah yeah
Well I feel so broke up I wanna go home

So hoist up the John Bs sail
See how the mainsail sets
Call for the captain ashore
Let me go home, let me go home
I wanna go home, let me go home
Why dont you let me go home
(hoist up the John Bs sail)
Hoist up the John B
I feel so broke up I wanna go home
Let me go home

The poor cook he caught the fits
And threw away all my grits
And then he took and he ate up all of my corn
Let me go home
Why dont they let me go home
This is the worst trip Ive ever been on

So hoist up the John Bs sail
See how the mainsail sets
Call for the captain ashore
Let me go home, let me go home
I wanna go home, let me go home
Why dont you let me go home

Sloop John B - The Beach Boys 1966

That reminds me...

The news that two people have been cautioned for stealing other peoples wireless broadband connections, or specifically "dishonestly obtaining electronic communications services with intent to avoid payment." is one of those "flag" moments, one of those moments when a little flag pops up in your brain and you remember to remind yourself of something that you forgot to remind yourself of several weeks ago.

I must put some security on our wireless network at home.

I installed it a few minutes after moving into the house at the begining of March, I get my priorities in the right order me, but because all of the computers weren't yet unpacked and they hadn't had the wireless gubbins installed int hem yet I left the security issue so that it would be easy to install the pc's later.

And it still sits there merrily transmitting a free broadband connection to any geek who walks past with a laptop - I know at least one other family of geeks live int he street because I can see their wireless connection on my laptop, unlike me though they have secured theirs - presumably they can see my connection and so when they want to download the anthology of Linda Lovelace they'll just log on as me - blame me officer, everyone else does in this house.

I had an email from a friend several weeks ago with a list of things to do to protect our wireless connection but it was so intricate and so flaming geeky that even as I was reading it I was thinking "if I do all this I'll lock myself out of my own internet connection and never see it again", so if you're reading this Danny, send those instructions again, in English this time, or better still come around and do it for me.

Do we have the solution ?

The death of up to 33 students at Virginia Tech University once again brings into question the liberality of American gun laws - hearing a BBC correspondant in Virginia on the radio today mentioning that she could this morning purchase up to 12 guns with minimal background checks simply makes you gasp.

Or at least it does on this side of the Atlantic where possessing a gun is simply illegal, full stop, no excuse.

You can apply for a licence to own a gun but unless you are a farmer you are almost certain to be turned down - farmers may keep a shotgun for control of vermin, the definition of vermin being rodents and not burglars as Norfolk farmer Tony Martin found out when he received life imprisonment in 2000 for killing a young scrote in his house.

Gun clubs exist in the UK of course but they are incredibly rare, I know of the location of one but I've never heard of or met anyone who uses it and the gun clubs that do exist are constantly complaining that the regulations that they have to comply with are driving their members (certainly the serious competitors) abroad to europe to practise their sport.

So the likes of me never get to touch a gun, I see them in museums but I've never held one and I don't know anyone who owns one and the beauty of that staus quo is that if I see any of my neighbours with one, whether in their house or out, then one phone call will bring an armed police response to my neighbours house as that gun will undoubtably be illegal - that the way it works in the UK.

I think we've got it right.

On the opposite side of the equation you have of course the infamous National Rifle Association of America who today are carrying a very terse and simple comment on yesterdays events, right here, which basically says "its nothing to do with us, now piss off".

Its when you visit the NRA website and are first of all taken to a news portal that you realise just what a well organised and well funded association this is, its not a place for loony toons to visit and slaver over the latest weapon of choice, its a very politically motivated association determined to protect their constitutional right to bear arms, defend themselves in a manner that they see fit, and as a by-product fight against legislation which threatens any aspect of the American constitution - its a powerful lobby, probably more powerful than the government itself and the chances of a yet another high school or university shooting rampage changing weapon laws in the US are virtually nil.

Dear Jim'll Fix It, I think Leeds should ...

Since they've almost sold the airport now Leeds City Council are pondering on how to spend the estimated £40million windfall - and they're asking us residents for suggestions.

Councillor Carter suggests that Leeds could be "an even more attractive and vibrant place to live, work and play" and in doing so makes our city sound like a soundbite from a Mars bar advert.

One thing that has long since been touted as a way to quickly spend the airport money is to build an arena on an already earmarked riverside location - our failed supertram was going to call there on one of its stops. For the fourth largest city in the UK to not have an indoor concert venue is quite honestly astounding and at long last it appears that we may be getting one, in the next decade or so, if no objections are lodged, and if the airport money comes through, and if we can get planning permission what with the venue now not having any public transport access to it.

But what can be done to improve the city to "make it even more attractive and vibrant" ?
Well...

A couple of years ago I wrote this about my home city, and as far as I can tell it is still a valid critique.

So a good place to start would be a squad of highly trained chewing gum police who, with the aid of the thousand and one cctv cameras that cover every square inch of the city centre, would swoop on any citizen seen chewing with intent to spit out in an unauthorised way, I'd even offer that phrase to entitle a new by-law, "chewing with intent to spit it out in an unauthorised way" - five years imprisonment or a day spent on your hands and knees peeling it back off the pavement, and my shoes.

And while we're on with specialised snatch squads of police, we really, really, I mean really, need the chav-o-cops in Leeds - the city centre is now over-run with multiple generations of nylon tracksuited, gormless, dateless, pointless and fruitless cretins wandering our streets in daylight with their hang-jawed, mouth breathing expressions, shouting at each other with their awful Leeds-accented gutteral expletives, chomping on a Greggs pasty while at the same time and from the opposite corner of their mouths, spitting out said pasty into their mobile phones with which they converse with their parents who are walking two yards behind them, all of them shoving pushchairs so that you cannot work out which generation has squeezed out the infant from between their thighs, the generations only being recognisable because of the premature ageing effect of 100 Silk Cut a day and the fact that the smallest will use the word "mam" in ten second intervals to attract the attention of the wrinkliest.

City centre shoe shops and sports shops are another problem that needs working on - you cannot walk further than five yards down any of Leeds's many precinct streets without passing a shoe shop, in theory us citizens of this otherwise fine city should be the best shod citizens in the country for we have on average one shoe shop per resident, all of which sell the same design of shoe - if you spend 12 hours on a saturday looking for shoes in Leeds you will discover, as I have to my chagrin, that whilst you will visit approximately 1,287 shoe shops in that time you will in fact only view four different styles of shoe, and they will all be priced at £29.99 - how fucking pointless is that - an instant ban on any more shoe shops is urgently needed from our councillors.

In order to be served in one of the many "sports shops" in the city you should first of all have to demonstrate knowledge of what constitutes a "sport", a simple question and answer would do, something on the lines of "what is a cricket box" although in fact you'd find that most of the sports shop sales assistants would bar themselves from entering their own shops if that was the case. Its an inescapable fact that sports shops do not sell sporting goods, they sell clothing that several decades ago would have been confined to the sporting efficionados, but now your average "track suit" will not come within twenty miles of a running track during its life, and neither will its purchaser, or its vendor - similarly sports shoes, or to give them their generic name "trainers" will not be used to train their owners in anything and will only burst into anything more than a slouch when their owners are on their toes after robbing a different sports shop for another pair.

I could go on...

What the hell, I will...

Fast food outlets - how fooking hard is it to eat BEFORE you go shopping or perhaps save yourself and actually make it all the way home to eat ? Its not fooking hard at all is the answer, you do not NEED to eat whilst out of doors, no-one ever died of starvation during a two hour shopping trip, "poor love, she'd not eaten for nearly 30 minutes, dropped dead just ten yards away from a Pizza Hut too" - and if you do desperately NEED to eat when in town then the least you can do is to throw the remnants into a waste bin and not throw it on the pavement two yards away from the wastebin, what happened there then love, faint from starvation on your way to the waste bin after eating a 12" family pizza but forgetting the strawberry flavoured slush puppy afterwards did we ?

Street vendors - how many fookin mobile phone covers do you need ? Who the fook buys themselves an expensive mobile phone with all its latest designs and features and then feels the need to clad it in a plastic cover with a picture of Britney Spears' arse on the back, purchased from an eastern european chav who will of course keep proper accounts and declare all of his taxable income when he gets back to his lodgings - probably while he's laughing at the thought of the 250 of you who will be out on the town tonight with your Britney Spears arse phones.


Of course, will Councillor Carter ask me ?
Will he bollacks

What is he building ?

What's he building in there?
What the hell is he building
In there?
He has subscriptions to those
Magazines... He never
Waves when he goes by
He's hiding something from
The rest of us... He's all
To himself... I think I know
Why... He took down the
Tire swing from the Peppertree
He has no children of his
Own you see... He has no dog
And he has no friends and
His lawn is dying... and
What about all those packages
He sends. What's he building in there?
With that hook light
On the stairs. What's he building
In there... I'll tell you one thing
He's not building a playhouse for
The children what's he building
In there?

Now what's that sound from under the door?
He's pounding nails into a
Hardwood floor... and I
Swear to god I heard someone
Moaning low... and I keep
Seeing the blue light of a
T.V. show...
He has a router
And a table saw... and you
Won't believe what Mr. Sticha saw
There's poison underneath the sink
Of course... But there's also
Enough formaldehyde to choke
A horse... What's he building
In there. What the hell is he
Building in there? I heard he
Has an ex-wife in some place
Called Mayors Income, Tennessee
And he used to have a
consulting business in Indonesia...
but what is he building in there?
What the hell is building in there?

He has no friends
But he gets a lot of mail
I'll bet he spent a little
Time in jail...
I heard he was up on the
Roof last night
Signaling with a flashlight
And what's that tune he's
Always whistling...
What's he building in there?
What's he building in there?

We have a right to know...

"What's he Building" - Tom Waits from his album Mule Variations

A question on the lips of all my neighbours as I drilled and hammered away all day long yesterday, interspersed with the whine of a knackered old electric circular saw with all the safety guards missing, one day I will saw off my own leg with that vicious bastard as it kicks like a mule when it hits a knot.

I drilled and banged and hammered away all day to their chagrine and then suddenly with an "oh shit" I released 598 gallons of water down the street nearly taking three cars with it and just stood and the top of the dirve and laughed hysterically, then cried as I returned to the enclosed back garden.

"Whats he building in there ?" they must have all wondered.

And today they would have heard the curses as the spade hit stone, they would have heard the creaking of the wheelbarrow and then seen the bags and bags of turf and soil mount up in the driveway ready for my trip to the tip seeing as the council haven't given me a garden waste wheelie bin even though I had one at the old house just two streets away, here at the new house we are just outside the trial zone for the garden waste bins, I knew I should have brought the one with me from the old house - now that would have confused the binmen with just one garden waste bin to collect in our street, "what is he building in there" they would have scratched their heads and wondered.

And while I was stood knee deep in the hole where the redesigned pond is to ultimately be our new neighbour poked his head above the hedge and bade me a good morning, "How is the pond coming on" he asked, "It went yesterday" I explained but told him no more, leaving him with a strange lopsided grin and an awkwardness that the conversation was going no further as I turned back to the hole and started singing the old Bernard Cribbins song "There I was, diggin this hole, hole in the ground sort of big and sort of round it was..."

"What is he building in there ?" he must have wondered as he returned to waving at his own fish in his own pond, which is nowhere near as good as mine is going to be, oh no.

The planning committee sat today and advised me that I could proceed with my revised plan for the pond, consisting of one half of its depth above ground and one half below ground, I've managed to sneak 18 inches of height above ground past her and I've dug 12 to 15 inches below ground, and I'm fooked now, haven't dug and wheelbarrowed that much soil in years - ever in fact.

And the neighbours are well intrigued by now.

Dude, wheres my pond ?

On the 5^th of February, 1852, there occurred in this district one of the direst calamities upon record, when Bilberry Reservoir burst its banks, and spread death and destruction for miles down the Holme Valley. Up to that year, it may be safely affirmed, nothing more terrific and destructive had ever happened in England.

Thus spak The Holmfirth Express on the 5th February 1852 after 82 people were killed by said dam burst.

Something similar happened this afternoon in my back garden.

Up early this morning to purchase all the various bits of wood and stuff that I needed to construct my superbly designed above-ground pond, £100 worth of 3x3, 3x1, ply and nails in order to build me a box that is eight feet long by four feet wide and two and a half feet deep after Suzanne forbade me from building it any higher in case it started to look like a swimming pool.

Set to by mid morning and at 3pm we start filling it with water, it takes ages to fill because our garden hose is crap but by 4pm its within three inches of the top and I have a good look around it all for signs of bulging or stress on the liner that I bought yesterday and its while I'm leaning over one end of it that I hear a small creak.

I walk around to the other side to check it and theres another creak, louder this time, hmm, something is settling I tell myself, nothing to worry about, the timbers are bound to move a little until they settle down, afer all, theres a hell of a lot of water in here now...

...and then the whole of one end simply falls down and 598 gallons (I've since calculated) of water cascades down our garden towards the house in tsunami stylee, taking plants and soil with it - I stand at the dry end of the quickly emptying pond and observe with a voice in my head saying "oh shit" several times then "oh fuck" when Suzanne comes to the back door to see what the thunderous roar is - fortunately our back door is two foot higher than the lowest point of the garden and we escape the sight of our whole house being washed away.

It takes a full five minutes for all of the water to run off the garden, around the corner of the house, down the driveway and thence down the street to a drain right down the bottom of the hill and the kids next door think it hilarious, so does Jodie who was sat in the garden a few feet away and so do I although I don't laugh out loud because Suzanne is still standing at the back door watching our plants and soil flow past her and onwards to the street and I know she won't be very pleased.

And she wasn't, wasn't pleased that £100 worth of timber was now lying in pieces all over the lawn, wasn't pleased that several of our plants were merrily floating down the street, wasn't pleased that our patio was covered in mud and wasn't pleased that Jake was lying in it unpeturbed as he knawed at the bone that we'd just given him - dogs are so stupid.

The inquest was held and of course it was my fault but I knew it would be anyway, it was my fault that I'd built it so high, so long, so wide, I should have known that three nails wouldn't hold back 2.49 tons of water (I've since calculated) and a rethink has been ordered.

I rethunk for two minutes then got the circular saw out and chopped six inches off the height and salvaged all the rest of the timber which now lies drying out on the lawn ready for me to have another go tomorrow, for which I face an evening of constant criticism as She wants me to focus my attention on laying the kitchen floor tomorrow.

I'm sure that NASA faced similar harrangueing when The Challenger exploded at takeoff, I'm sure that somewhere in government some senators told them that they should be laying a kitchen floor tomorrow instead of redesigning their faulty shuttle, but did they lay that kitchen floor - did they hell, they went straight back out there and reconstructed their space craft just like I'm going to reconstruct my pond tomorrow only this time its six inches shorter and I've done the calculations - its only going to be 478 gallons now, thats 1.9 tons of water - oh fuck, I'm going to need some bigger nails.

How much for a fish ?

Found myself in Bradford yesterday afternoon at a clients which was located just behind QSS Aquarium and Koi Centre, so I popped in for a look.

Its in an anonymous old methodist-style chapel building on a busy six lane carriageway out of the city centre and it does not shout its presence from its ideal location at all, a small sign above the door it has by way of identity and for all of the years that I've known its there its always looked closed.

But WOW ! When you walk inside your perception changes.

Its obvious where the money has been spent once inside the building - its been spent on the stock and the presentation of said stock.

I was there to price up a liner for the new pond which is now under construction after She decided that it was time to improve the garden instead of the inside of the house but of course while in there I might as well have a look at the fish eh ?

I wish I hadn't.
My requirements for my own fish have now risen tenfold.
I want some Koi.

The pond stock at QSS ranges from small English Koi at around £7.50 each to huge, unique, registered Japanese Koi specially imported by QSS with a price that is not displayed - you have to ask and if you have to ask then I can't afford - the highest marked price that I saw in there was £225 per fish for some carp but I suspect that we would be talking thousands, possibly tens of thousands for some of the registered Koi.

Lowering my sights slightly they do have some beautiful Koi marked Comets (a sort of big goldfish) and I may/will go back there for a scoopfull of them when the pond is completed.

Bought my liner at a cheaper price than I'd seen anywhere else so this morning will buy the rest of the timber needed to finish the pond and hopefully by tonight it will be filling with water, the garden is now a developing project and is under way.


PS - It'll never be as good as if this guy had done the job but there are stacks of good ideas on his blog.

Elvis in supermarionation...

First off - I'm an Elvis fan ok - don't bite my head off.

Poor old Elvis was mis-managed and swimming way out of his depth for most of his career from the early 60's onwards and his "Comeback Concert" of 1968 was achance for him to get back to doing what he loved - singing rock and roll to a live audience, and indeed most of the televised gig is just that, and very good it is too - I have a dvd boxed set of it, its only a boxed set because they put the whole bloody thing across several dvd's so that you get the excellent 50 minute tv concert and then five hours of retakes and mistakes, rehearsals and lighting gaffs.

And then you get the closing number.

Removed from his live, in-the-round audience the producer obviously thought it would be great to close the show with a big gospel number and let Elvis let rip on it - well as the dvd shows it took many, many takes and retakes to create this, the most Gerry Anderson puppet inspired performance seen on tv - you can almost see the double sided sticky tape on the bottom of Elvis's shoes so that he doesn't stray off the stage marks and if you look hard enough you can see the strings tugging on his sleeve from above to make his arms swing back and forth like they do at the end.

Still, Colonel Parker must have thought it would suit his idea of an Elvis audience.

The continuing driving test theme...

Having extracted some comedy mileage out of my mothers awful attempt at driving yesterday its only fair that I should describe my own.

And in a true spirit of Friday lazyness I have not written one word of this but instead have lifted it word for word from my official biography, hosted on the excellent jerrychicken.co.uk web site.

So, the story goes ...

Hilton Lodge was the second most nervous person I have ever met, a small rotund gentleman with thick glasses and a habit of sitting forward in his seat like a small child on his first roller coaster ride, Hilton Lodge was Cookridge’s only driving instructor, so I booked two lessons a week with him.

In a rare act of stupidity my boss at work had offered to pay for my driving lessons and did not put a limit on the number of lessons that he’d pay for, so I initially booked 20 lessons at £5 each.

I still remember that first lesson. Hilton Lodge (yes his christian name really was Hilton) turned up at the door in his beige dual control Austin Allegro and the very first thing I noticed when I sat in the car was the picture of a second world war Lancaster bomber sellotaped to the dashboard.

At the time several of my friends were also taking lessons with Hilton Lodge, it was the done thing to take driving lessons with Hilton Lodge as soon as you were seventeen, and we all noticed the Lancaster bomber on the dashboard, but none of us ever dared ask him what the relevance of it was, I suspect that he’d coloured it in during one boring afternoon with no bookings and was proud of his work, or maybe he really was a wartime bombing ace even just in his imagination, who knows.

He drove the Allegro to a quite street near the cricket field then told me to get out and swap seats, I sat behind the wheel of a car for the first time, and started the engine. At his command I lifted my foot off the clutch and nothing happened for a few seconds because of course he was actually controlling the clutch from his side of the car, but then we started to move –straight across the road to the opposite kerb.

“Turn the wheel, turn the wheel, turn the wheel” he gabbled in quick succession, all the time bouncing his chubby little frame up and down on the passenger seat. This amused the hell out of me, he was getting quite excited by the fact that I was going to crash his car after just three seconds of driving and I couldn’t help but turn my head towards him and laugh.

“Don’t look at me, look at the road, at the road, turn the wheel, turn the wheel, turn the wheel” he gabbled on and on, and I wrestled with my laughter and the steering wheel and managed to swing the car away from the opposite kerb only to oversteer it and point it back at the kerb that we’d started from,

“turn the wheel, turn the wheel, turn the wheel” he bounced up and down and was almost shouting now, “straighten up, straighten up, turn the wheel, turn the wheel”

This was just hilarious and the best five pounds that I had ever spent on behalf of my company, then came a variation,

“change gear, change gear , come on, faster, change gear, second gear, second gear”

Change gear already ?

We’d only just started the lesson and he wanted me to change into second gear, we hadn’t even got the car going straight yet and he wanted me to go faster ?

It was all over too quickly, that first one hour lesson was brilliant, I was a danger to everyone in cookridge, even the ones who had wisely stayed indoors, we managed to get the car into second gear at one stage and kept it straight sometimes for up to ten yards at a time, I overtook a bus when it was parked at a bus stop and caused the Corona pop man to brake suddenly when I shot out of a side street without looking and continued on my way on the wrong side of the road.

Hilton Lodge was shaking visibly when he dropped me off at home, so much so that he had trouble signing my appointment card and instead of writing out a receipt for the company’s five pound expenditure he just tore the receipt out of the book and told me to fill it in myself.

I thanked him and told him that I was really looking forward to my next lesson tomorrow and he looked at me in horror having just realised that he’d booked two lessons a week for me.

It got better, after about five lessons I could keep the car something like straight and even got up to third and sometimes fourth (top) gear, these were exhilarating moments when we rushed down the ring road at an incredible 45mph and the Allegro screamed in pain and begged Hilton Lodge to make me slow down.


Hey thats just a snippet, like those annoying "free" computer programmes that you download from the t'interweb only to find that they are only free for 30 days, the rest of the story is embedded in the "Workdays" chapter and can be found here - and it really is free.

I don't know why I like this song...part two

Just heard Eleanor Rigby on the DAB radio whilst washing the dishes upon command from She (I'm too good for her) and it struck me as another of those "I don't know why I like this but I do" songs.

Except that I do know why I like this song
Its 'cos its bloody good thats why.

I was 10 years old when this song was released as a single and it was unlike any other Beatles tune we'd heard up to that point, it was the Beatles getting serious for a minute instead of shaking their heads to the screaming crowd and singing "yeah, yeah, yeah", I loved it and it became the anthem to our holiday at Cayton Bay that year.

And on the same radio station tonight came the news that The Beatles, ok Paul and Ringo, have finally agreed a deal to release their back catalogue to purchase on t'interweb which immediately brings visions of Eleanor Rigby spending time in the singles charts again - The Beatles back catalogue is the only thing I'd pay for on the likes of iTunes and Napster but thats just a sign of my vintage - a fine vintage if I may say so myself.

Oh yes, the video ?
The crap and terribly dated cartoon film "Yellow Submarine" but you knew that anyway.

The myth about women drivers

Sat in the office this morning listening to Bob Newharts "The Driving Instructor" audio on Napster - yes we do do some work - in which he, as an imaginary driving instructor takes a woman learner driver on her second lesson, her first lesson having ended when her instructor leaped from the car at 70mph while she was reversing down her drive.

There is a myth which seems to transcend international borders that women drivers are rubbish - I offer no opinion on this matter, I am not so stupid as to do so, what with having two women drivers in the household and me relying on them occasionally to get me back from the pub.

Instead I will relate the tale of my mothers driving lesson...

Back in the 1960's not many women took to the road behind the wheel of a car, they had husbands and driving is what husbands did, but as the 60's drew to a close and women got the vote in this country there grew a desire amongst females to move across to the drivers seat, much to the hilarity of men in general as there was zero chance of husbands ever putting their wives on their car insurance policies, they'd rather insure a blind pig to drive their car than their wives, and some of them did just that.

My mother was not endowed with many brain cells, she was a lovely mother, no-one had a bad word for her, but to use a popular phrase of the time she was "dool-alley", daft, insulated in a world of woman-things she simply did not understand machinery of any kind, her Kenwood food mixer was a thing of confusion to her and she only ever learned how to use it on its slow setting and only then because someone set it for her and she operated it by pulling the plug out of the wall when she wanted it to stop.

My dad warned her, to his credit he did warn her, he told her "you'll never learn to drive" and you can't get much plainer than that, of all the women in the world who could possibly have mastered driving then you would not pick my mother as the prime example, a Bornean forest tribesman who still used twigs to start fires would have learned to drive quicker than my dear old mother.

But she wanted to drive and she had a part time cleaning job that my dad had let her take up, she had a bit of money in her purse and she enrolled with a driving school, to my dads absolute hilarity.

It wasn't a regular driving school, they didn't take their pupils out on the road in learner cars, not immediately anyway, they used a new technology which they called "driving simulators" to teach the women in their care how to operate a car and they charged them lots for the priviledge.

In order to understand what the new technology was then you do not have to try any harder than to picture an amusement arcade driving game, the ones where you sit down in front of a video screen and put your pound coin in a slot to find yourself racing a formula one car around silverstone - well the driving school "driving simulators" were exactly the same and no more complicated, in fact they were less complicated because in an effort to make the video of driving along a road more realistic they had filmed it in black and white.

For many months my mother went to the driving school and sat at an amusement arcade game pretending it was a foggy black and white day and tried to drive the pretend car all over the streets of the imaginary town on the telly in front of her - and for that they took all of her cleaning money off her every week.

The idea was that after a few weeks the man at the driving school would decide that the pupil had had enough pretend driving and they would promote them to an actual dual control learner car on the real full colour streets of Leeds, but the call never came for my mother - for months she sat behind the tv set driving hopelessly on the same foggy black and white day watching her fellow pupils get promoted to real cars with real seats in them instead of this hard wooden bench, it must have been demorilising and she must have been really rubbish at it but she was happy in her little world and she kept going.

She kept going for so long that we had all forgoten that she was taking lessons at all when one sunday afternoon, about a year later, we were all out in the car making our way back from the east coast where we'd been for the day on one of our rare days out, me and my brother Ned sat in the back of our green Vauxhall Viva , fighting.

An argument was also taking place in the front seats, an argument which was sparked by the realisation from our dad that our mum was still taking the video driving lessons and her insistence that she was actually getting better, the man at the driving school had said so and that in a few months time, maybe another year, she might be able to drive on the real roads.

The argument culminated in her insisting that if our dad pulled off the road and they swapped seats then she'd be able to drive the car for one mile, she dared him then she bet him that she could and to shut her up, and because we were on a very quiet country road, he agreed.

Me and Ned were horror-struck.

In those days of no seat belts in cars we found the only place of safety that we could think of and both curled up in a ball on the floor behind the front seats, quite honestly we would have walked from there if our dad had let us out of the car.

They swapped seats and after three stalls my mother managed to get the car going and at fifteen miles an hour she started fiddling around down the right hand side of her seat for something, our dad asked her what she was doing as he peeked from behind the fingers that were covering his face and she told him that she wanted to change gear, he pointed to the gearstick in the middle of the car to her left to which she replied that that was a stupid place to put a gearstick, our dad told her that all car gearsticks were in the middle of the car to your left to which she replied that they weren't in her video car - she was video learning to drive a pretend american car.

Our dad should have told her to stop right there and then but I think he was too terrifed.

The impromtu lesson of terror ended when we approached a crossroads.

I can still see the scene today, a crossroad in the middle of a forest, quiet country roads, nothing had approached us in the three minutes of our mothers drive but as she slowed to a stop at the junction a car approached from the opposite side and stopped, then signalled to my mother to proceed across said junction.

She asked our dad which way we were going and he told her to turn right, she turned the indicator to show right, the indicator light flashed right, we were turning right, the other driver waited for us to turn right.

My mother turned left.

As we turned left I can still recall the look of astonishment on the other drivers face and I can still see my father raising his hands in submission to him in an all-male signal of "what the fuck is she doing ?".

We drove only far enough the wrong way in order for my father to regain his voice after being rendered speechless by the manouvre upon which he berated my poor mother with language that had never before passed my eight year old ears, the car stopped, they swapped seats and did not talk to each other again for several weeks.

She cancelled her video driving lessons shortly afterwards and never again mentioned the words "me" and "driving" in the same sentence.

Sometimes, just maybe, there is a god...

Now I'm the first to admit that I'm, occasionally, cynical about religion, I sometimes take time to mock those who "Believe" and I often question the theory of an old man with a beard floating on a cloud controlling a few billion lives like a huge scalextric game.

But just occasionally things happen that make you stop and think.

Sometimes a payback time happens and its so well organised that you wonder if the old man in the clouds decided to sort it out.

Yesterday a man by the name of Mark Langford died in a car crash in Marbella in Spain - and I think god did it.

Mark Langford was the founder of the UK company The Accident Group (TAG), our very first very public ambulance chaser in a very USA stylee, although int he USA they've been doing it much longer than us.

Ten years ago if you tripped up over a loose paving stone anywhere in the UK you quickly looked around to see if anyone had witnessed your own stupidity, brushed yourself down and scurried away with a red face.

After the advent of Mark Langfords Accident Group, if you tripped up over a loose paving stone you quickly looked around to see if anyone had witnessed your terrible misfortune that inevitably would lead to such debilitating injuries, took down their names and addresses and contacted TAG to commence legal proceedings for a half million pounds against your local council.

But TAG were more inventive than that, after a while they realised that they couldn't afford to wait around for people to trip over paving stones, time was money and people were not stupid enough to trip over paving stones every day of the week - so they invented stupid people.

The problem was that TAG weren't regulated by anyone, they had invented a new category of middleman where they simply referred their cases to a panel of solicitors - on the one hand they had the solicitors working for their clients and on the other hand they sold some rather expensive insurance policies to their clients in order to cover the costs of the legal work - the solicitors and insurers were heavily regulated, but the new middlemen weren't, and they could do anything they liked to generate more business for themselves.

A BBC programme investigated the working of the new ambulance chasers and found that they were employing very high pressure sales reps to generate new business paying good rates of commission to them to bring new idiots into the claimant process - most of the claimants that they found were family members or neighbours and some individuals were found to have submitted up to 60 or 70 claims in a very short space of time - investigators estimated that up to 30% of all claims handled by TAG were invented and fraudulent.

In one famous incident a bus in Manchester had a small accident one day and the very next day a team of TAG salespeople were out on the street looking for people who had been on the bus who would be looking to claim for injuries - they were succesful and found around 20 such people all of whom were suffering from whiplash, knee injuries and all sorts of good stuff that would keep the courts busy for months - until the bus company's insurers investigated the claim and found that the bus was out of service and on its way back to the depot when the accident happened, the only person on the bus at the time was the driver, and he was uninjured.

After the BBC revelations the insurance industry tightened its grip on the likes of TAG and gullible members of the public who thought they were in for massive payouts if only they'd buy this £1000 legal costs insurance policy grew wise about salesmen knocking on their door asking if they'd like to claim for that broken leg that they hadn't sustained on the loose paving stone outside their house.

The company folded in May 2003 and famously informed its 2500 employees by text that they were dismissed - the directors of the company were eventually barred from holding such office again and Mark Langford relocated to the area around Marbella that is host to many of the UK's millionairres, not all of whom have gained their wealth by honest means, so he fit right in there then.

He was being pursued by HM Inland Revenue for a £1.5million unpaid tax bill at the time of his accident which will inevitably lead to a few conspiracy theory's as well as a nice insurance claim, maybe his family know of a good claims lawyer who could handle it for them ?

Sometimes god can be an ironic bas'tad.

Another bad law from the baying mob

Proposals in the UK to introduce a law enabling anyone to request details of the location of convicted paedophiles in their area are fraught with danger.

Danger from the public that demand the information.

For years now its been a vote-winning proposal and its even got its own name, "Sarahs Law" after a young girl who was murdered by a convicted paedophile in 2000, this follows the same course taken in the USA by "Megans Law", created after a similar incident.

The problem is that we have too many fekkwits in the UK who cannot control their urges to string offenders up from the nearest lamp post.

The last time that this issue was in the news a couple of irresponsible tabloid newspapers risked their own necks in the courts by publishing extensive lists of convicted paedophile home addresses - this information is currently only available to authorised individuals such as police and in limited cases headteachers - what happened after the publication of these lists only just stopped short of riots in some instances when whole estates full of outraged people (and some just along for the riot) beseiged addresses, erecting and painting signs to inform others of the presence of paedophiles and in some instances arson - all that this did was to drive out the convictees from their known address and send them elsewhere and in one instance a paediatrician was burned out of her house by ignorant fekkwits who didn't know the difference.

Thats what happens when mob law takes to the street and its what happens when the mob gets to invent new laws.

There is nothing wrong with the law as it stands, the only people who need the information is the police, it is they who are charged with the safety of the public at large and as a convicted sex offender has to report to them on a frequent basis and advise them when they change their location then that it is they who should own and control the information.

You cannot execute sex offenders, you cannot send them away to a deserted island, you cannot isolate them and much as the mob would like to you cannot string paedophiles up from the nearest lamp post, so given that, the next best thing is for a specific body to know and monitor their location - make that information public and the offender will disappear and while the mob on one estate may be happy to drive them out they will simply become someone elses problem, a problem that may not be known the next time because the offender is unlikely to register if he knows that the mob will be burning his door down again within days.

Mob rule and newspapers do not make good legislation.

I'd just found an empty spot on the beach...

...and set out the deckchairs, turned around to look for the sun block and this happens...

Which idiot invented womens clothing sizes ?

So who was it then who invented the theory of womens clothing sizes ?
For the record, clothing sizes mentioned here refer to British clothing sizes, god forbid that anyone introduce one of the myriad of international and alternative womens clothing sizes into the equation.

Mens clothing is easy - you need a suit, you measure your chest and your waist, you go to shop, you pick colour, you look for a jacket label that says your size, you repeat for trousers, you have your suit, you have wasted only ten minutes of your life in finding your clothing, you go do something much more enjoyable instead.

Add to that the fact that after you have worn said suit it goes in your wardrobe until the next christening/wedding/funeral when its worn again with exactly the same shirt and tie, repeat for several more years, and guess what - not one of your friends looks you up and down and remarks, "you wore that for thingy's wedding didn't you ?, oh no, because men have far more important things to do at such events, like find a bar for instance.

Women and their clothing are totally different,
Let me illustrate with todays episode ...


So we've got this friend called Andy, and he's getting married at the end of this month.
He's 51 years old and he's never been married before but don't look at me with those raised eyebrows, he's a lovely lad and he'll make Deborah a lovely husband, why just the other day one of our team rang him and he mentioned that he was doing the dusting, then hesitated whilst thinking "I shouldn't have told the lads that", but never mind, we won't mention it too many times at his wedding, oh no,not many times at all.

Anyone who ever saw the 1980's tv series called "30 something" will have a picture of our group of friends, all the lads have known each other since we were 7 or 8 years old and we're all 50 this year so we go back a long way - our wives not so long but even so the group has been together as married couples with children for decades now and Andy is the only single one left - it won't be his mum that cries at his wedding, it'll be all of us lads.

He's the only one who lives any distace away from this area of Leeds that we were all raised in, he lives on the east coast so its a weekend away for all of us in a fancy golf course hotel next to the sea, we're currently working on a plan that involves a round of golf on the saturday morning and wondering just how late we can book the tee time so that we just make the wedding in front of Deborah - we're including Andy in that plan of course.

However, today found us on a retail park shopping for a new iron (old one blew up) and a clothes airer (washing line snapped), really mundane stuff like that that makes shopping a chore - but then the one who is betrothed to me (caught me when I wasn't looking) noticed a Next on the same retail park.

"Theres a Next" says she, "I'll show you that outfit I want for Andys wedding"
And she did, it was brown.
"You've got a brown suit just like that" says I, it was a wild guess, I haven't a clue whether she has or not
"I know" she says (so that was a lucky guess then), "but I wore it for Sue and Chris's 25th anniversary do"

And there is the first rule of womens clothing, they can only wear their outfits once, and once only. Every time you get invited to something else its another outfit and that is why the likes of Next have such firkin huge womens departments and such tiny mens departments - its because women shop for clothes constantly and men shop for clothes when the old ones fall off them.

"I don't like that one" I say without actually having an opinion at all, "but I like that one" says I pointing to another without actually having an opinion at all.
"So do I" she says and holds up the houndstooth check jacket and I notice the price - £60, sixty fooking pounds for the jacket when I can buy a whole suit for £49 in Asda.

And there is the second rule of womens clothing - the law of supply and demand works inversely with womens clothing - the greater the demand for womens clothing the higher the price, the more stock they sell the more the price goes up, when they stop selling it and the outfits get rarer then the price goes down - contrast to mens clothing where Walmart Asda stock three different mens suits, three styles and colours is enough to suit up all of the men in the UK, and all for £49 all-in, if you're there in a sale they'll even give you a shirt and tie, it won't match of course but why complain, we'll all look a dick together.

She tries on the houndstooth check jacket,
"It doesn't fit here" she says tugging at a spare millimeter of cloth above her boobs
"Well grow bigger tits then" I think to myself but it comes out as "hmm, yes", I'm no fool and I'm certainly not suicidal

She tries on another jacket, this time its blue, she likes it, it fits everywhere that it should fit, she looks for the trousers to match, she takes a size 12 long and a size 14 regular to the changing rooms, I follow and stand outside holding her handbag feeling as vulnerable as George Michael stood outside a public toilet and sure enough teo men walk past and grin in my direction in that way that men grin at other men left standing outside womens changing rooms, its the grin that says "ooh that handbag suits you love" and leaves you waiting to reciprocate when their wives want to try something on.

And heres the third rule of womens clothing - why are womens clothing changing rooms all located adjacent to the underwear department leaving men with handbags standing outside not knowing where to put ourselves ? Stare too long at the gusset of a skimpy pair of floral knickers and you get the shop assistants glaring at you in a "filthy old bas'tad" sort of way, keep staring at them when your wife comes out of the changing rooms and you get a "what are you looking at you filthy old bas'tad" - all just for standing there minding your own business, with a handbag.

She re-appears holding the trousers, "The 12 is too tight and the 14 is too big" she informs me
"Well you need a size 13 then" says I, moving away to go find one
She gives me a withering look and informs me that there's no such thing as a size 13, womens sizes are only even numbers - what a fucking stupid system, why can't women just measure themselves like men do and then pick the measurement to suit, why do they have to convert it to a random size ?

No wonder they take so long choosing clothes.

She eventually finds another suit in two different colours, "Hand me the 12 long and 14 regular" she says
"I thought you said they don't fit " I asked, innocently
"That was the blue one" she says with a note of exasperation in her voice at my stupidity

Rule four of womens clothing - a size 12 in blue is not necessarily the same as a size 12 in brown, or black, or any other fricking colour you care to name, all colours apparently have their own peculiar sizing system, you just have to try them all on.

She took two outfits into the changing room, came out wearing the first one to declare that it fitted like a glove, which was strange because it was a suit, but still, it fitted which is all that counts, I said I liked it when in fact I held no opinion whatsoever on the matter, "Its £110" she informed and I smiled through gritted teeth and promised myself that when I meet Andy at his wedding I'm going to slap his head very hard and ask him why he had to invite us.

She need a blouse, and then some shoes, and of course a handbag, if I'm lucky I may buy myself a new hankerchief for this wedding and wear some eight year old clothes that come out of the wardrobe for funerals, its only appropriate what with Andy finally getting snared at 51 years old.

Money well spent...

This is one of those news story's that makes you wonder why the newsdesk editor bothered to even get it typed up let alone give it web space.

According to Government papers released under the freedom of information act (an act that we have the USA to thank for as previously we were entitled to see sod all of any government doings), the Governments legal representatives have spent the sum of £13,000 in defending the new identities of the killers of James Bulger.

Who he, you cry ?
"You're not British are you ?" we all cry in response.

Anyone who is British will remember the news story of 1993 when two 10 year old Liverpool youngsters took 2 year old James Bulger away from his mother (when her attention was diverted for a minute or so) and walked him to a nearby railway line where they murdered him with bricks and an iron bar.

Robert Thompson and Jon Venables are pictured above at their arrest some days later, remember they are 10 years old in the photos, they don't look like murderers do they ? And that was the thing that no-one could ever get their heads around, news media at the time blamed video games, violent tv cartoons, anything at all to explain why those two boys could have done what they did without realising that it was, at the very least, wrong.

They were both sentenced to detention "at Her Majesty's pleasure" a strange British legal term which is used for serious juvenile convictions where the young person is suitable for rehabilitation and acted beyond their own comprehension of what is "right" or "wrong".

The sentence satisfied the British public and media for a while until it realised that what it really means is that once the psychiatrists have finished delving into the minds of such offenders to find out why they did their evil deeds, they then set about correcting the imbalance in preperation for Her Majesty's pleasure to have been satisfied and the young person can be released under licence - the thought that these two boys could be released as teenagers sent the British tabloid press into apoplexy or at least as much apoplexy as they thought would sell more newspapers to those who thrive on apoplexy.

The 18 year old Thompson and Venebles were released in 2001 to even more apoplexy as the tabloids learned that they had been given new identities and new locations, and that they had actually been living that way for several months before the press were informed - all of this because some of our news media would love nothing better than to track down either/both young men and cruxify them - metaphorically speaking of course, but in reality there would be plenty of volunteers to do the actual deed themselves even now, 16 years after the event.

And so it is no suprise that HM Government spent £13k on injunctions to foreign news media who wished to reveal the current identities of the now 24 year olds, if we value our legal system then we must abide by it and if our legal system is based on a rehabilitation of offenders principle then we must accept that offenders can rehabilitate, whether we like it or not - being the father of a 5 and a 1 year old at the time of the incident I can understand the pain that James Bulgers parents must still feel, but we are talking of complete strangers who would happily commit murder in these, and other rehabilitated and released (under licence) offenders, and £13k isn't that much tax money to pay for the protection of them, and our legal system.

I don't know why I like this song...

For some strange reason I've always liked this song.
I can't stand Celine Dion.
Her of the warbling tremelo and over emphasised stage movements
She's not my cup of tea.

But I've always liked this song, for 12 years or more I've liked it, in fact somewhere in this house is a live video of the bitch, purchased simply because this video was tagged on the end of it, for free - I bought the video just for the free gift.

Maybe its because its sung in French which is such a great language of song, maybe its because when I saw a translation in English I'd already worked out enough of it to know what the words meant anyway, maybe its because when you see the English translation its a crap song.

But I think its the video.
I love the video.

So like my Barry Manilow admission of some months ago I stand in front of you all and confess, "My name is JerryChicken and I once purchased a Celine Dion video of my own free will"

Such a sad waste...

I don't know why but this news item struck me hard between eyes this morning.

Its specifically made the news of course because the latest British Army death in Iraq happens to be that of a young woman, Second Lieutenant Joanna Dyer, and if that weren't enough to promote it to the front pages then the youg lady in question was on the same officers training course as Prince William at Sandhurst and passed out at the same ceremony in December.

As if all of that wasn't sad enough and as if all of that wasn't enough to focus Prince Williams attentions on what the fuck he is going to be doing in Iraq when he is shortly to be deployed out there with the Blues and Royals, then the saddest part of the news is reading of 2nd Lieutenant Jo Dyers background.

Born in Berlin (I'm making a huge assumption that she is from a military family hence the presence in Germany) she studied at Oxford and gained a degree in philosophy, politics and economics before taking up a commission and a 44 week officer training course at Sandhurst.

Its all such a waste.

Its a common misconception that the foot soldiers who get killed on a daily basis in Iraq and Afghanistan are all "cannon fodder", young lads for whom the infantry was the only chance of a decent job, poorly educated, under achievers for whom the call "make something of yourselves" was the only call that came when they left school.

Well its not always like that, the army attracts graduates too and whatever their educational qualifications they are people with families who are often left alone to sit and stare at pictures on the wall and wonder what would have been if their children had picked a different line of work to the one which requires them to sacrifice themselves for the good of a politicians career.

Jesus the fish hath departeth

Friends, with a heavy heart I bring you forlorn news of great sadness from the back garden of my house.

Jesus the fish is dead.
He is no more.
He is an ex-fish

Killed by his own stupidity he tried to walk among men and quickly came to realise that which all doomed fish have come to realise through the ages - air doth not sustaineth fish.


I arrived home from work yesterday to be told by my eldest offspring that I had a fish in the pond who had taken to swimming on his back, I asked if he was still alive and she confirmed that indeed at 12 noon he was - a miracle thought I, Jesus the fish has survived his idiotic yet strangely heroic, in a way that only the British can appreciate, heroic, doomed to failure, stupid adventure.

And yet verily when I ventured down the garden to the temporary pond I foundeth Jesus the fish floating on his back, motionless, even when prodded with a stick.

With heavy heart and face full of mourning he was gently lifted from the pond with a net and dumped in a plastic Primark carrier bag then dispatched to the big black "general waste" wheelie bin from whence he will travel on Tuesday morning (bank holiday excepting) to the great landfill-not-in-Leeds (we send our refuse elsewhere, we are too posh for landfill in Leeds) where all dead pets smaller than a cat end up.

And later in the evening, after beer had been drunk, I reflected on the death of Jesus the fish and came to realise just how closely it mirrors the story of the death of another Jesus, yes thats right, the Jesus (I don't know many other Jesus's) that the wittering old bags all go to the methodist church at the bottom of our road to sing prayers at, the very same methodist church that is right now ringing its frikkin bells to gather in its flock of elderly believers to berate and force to sing songs and throw coins in a bucket on this, one of their so-called holy days.

My Jesus (the fish) died just like their Jesus, died for something he believed in when all the other fish were mocking him, died trying to evolve too quickly, died convinced that he could breath air and not water, died trying to walk whilst all the other fish in the pond laughed at him and caled him crazy - they were right of course, but still.

And just like the old biddies own Jesus, my Jesus (the fish) was gathered up and wrapped in a shroud, a shroud of plastic with "Primark" written across it, and placed in a tomb which was then sealed by a huge rock, or in my case, the bin lid.

If the vicars crazy story of ressurection is correct then I fully expect to awake on Sunday morning to find the wheelie bin lid lifted open and the shroud (Primark bag) empty with just a fish imprint on it, and turning I will see my Jesus (the fish) standing behind me saying something like "fear not oh pond keeper, for I died to save fish" or something profound like that - and like Dustin Hoffman at the end of the film "The Graduate" I shall race to the methodist church at the end of the road, dash to their balcony and yell at the top of my voice to the astounded congregation of ancient bones, "Elaaaaaaaaaaine!!!" or possibly something like "Jesus (the fish) is ressurected, fall to your kness oh elderly god-botherers and worship Jesus the fish".

OK so I've got two more days to write my speech to the old gits in church and I'm sure I'll come up with something better eventually, but if I am to become a preacher of the gospel according to Goldie the Fairground Prize Fish then I need some spontinuity in my sermons - maybe we could give away small fairground goldfish in plastic bags at the good friday service in future, fish that will all die within hours, be shrouded and entombed, then self-ressurect on sunday, a sort of Blue Peter stylee home miracle kit ?

In the meantime, the permenant pond is in planning stage and a household row is beckoning...

Will he be ressurected ?

This one is fortuitous what with it being easter, fish and all that jazz.

Stood in the kitchen this morning munching on my breakfast toast (very extravagent today, the honey nut cornflakes have run out), gazing out of the window at Jake sniffing around the garden when he stopped and took lots of sniffs at something laying on the ground near the pond.

It was one of my golden orfes (see picture for detail although if I'd just said "fish" then you'd have known anyway).

"Oh bugger" thought I, but with thoughts of saving the new neighbours from the sight of me running up the garden in my jimmy-jams at 7am in the morning I decided to investigate later, after all if the fish had been howked out of the admittedly shallow pond by a heron or magpie. or worse still a cat, then there wouldn't have been much left of it to mourne over.


And now a lesson in how marriages work ...

Last night I was forewarned by a wife who has ruled my life for the last 24 years that this easter weekend I would be put to hard labour with an impossible list of jobs to achieve in this new house. I casually acknowledged her hieracy in the house junta with a resigned "I know" and then mentioned that I also wanted to make a start on the proper pond in the garden as the orfe have been living in the temporary one for a month now - what followed was an hours worth of harrangueing in which I was left in no doubt that the orfe were classified even further down the scale of importantness than me, the roller blind in Jodies bedroom is but one of a thousand items that are rated as vital to the continuing state of our marriage, long before we get to the new pond.


And now, less than twelve hours later, proof if proof were needed that the new pond should be placed on black alert, nay, I should have started its contruction before I'd even finished my toast this morning, jimmy-jams or not.

One hour later (my morning toilet is considerable) and with a heavy heart I trudged down the garden to observe which of the orfe had been stupid enough to stray into the shallow end and be snaffled by birds/cat and with dismay I realised it was "the big one", the twelve inch long orfe that I've had for five years now, looking even bigger now that it lay on the patio a couple of yards from the pond.

Checking it for injuries it didn't seem to have been scratched or ragged about by a third party bird/cat and as I stared at it, it blinked and opened its mouth - of course I shoved it back in the pond where it sunk to the bottom, opened its mouth a few times and blew huge gobs of air bubbles out of its gills.

If I had gone out to look at it at 7am I'd have saved it another hour of lying there trying to evolve quick enough to be able to breath air instead of water, but still, when I left it it was 10% alive back in the pond, lying on its back.


The burning question is of course - will there be an easter miracle ?

Will my fish rise from the dead ?

Are you really that bothered ?


The answer to the question on all of your lips is of course that I think it must have jumped out of the pond of its own accord, emphasising the need for the new one asap - expect another animated discussion on the topic tonight - how long it lay there I do not know but I may ring the vicar today and ask him to get his group of wittering old bags in the church to sing a prayer for him and if he pulls through I'll promise to call him Jesus and allow the god-botherers access to the garden to worship at my temporary pond for a small donation.

This is all very exciting isn't it ?

You shouldn't laugh really...

Shouldn't laugh really.
But I love this story

A Batley dentist stands before the General Dental Council accused of "unhygenic practices".

He admits to not getting into the habit of wearing latex gloves for all patients but denies using sterile dental tools to clean his ears and also to urinating in the surgery sink - his explanation to the Council of the urinating in the sink incident where a nurse is said to have witnessed the event, is that she was mistaken as he was cleaning his teeth instead.

No me neither.

How the hell do you make cleaning your teeth look like you're pissing in a sink ?

The only thing that could improve this story is if he'd actually used one of the instruments, one of those pointy things that end up getting stuck in the gaps between your teeth, to clean his ears whilst doing an inspection on one of his patients when he stopped and scratched his arse with it before continuing with the treatment.

Better still he could have finished the inspection and started telling the patient about the treatment needed whilst walking across to the sink, unzipping his trousers and taking a piss while continuing to talk over his shoulder at the patient.

Personally I don't see anything wrong in any of that.

For no other reason than I wanted to see if it would work, and it also nicely rounds up my episodes on my weekend sojourn to the north east, here is the ancient geordie group Lindisfarne performing their anthem "Fog on the Tyne".

Yes I know who all of the ones on the left are.
Yes its a very old video of them (1971)
No I haven't a fucking clue who Catweazle on the right is,

And yes, I used to look like that in 1971 too...

Can't go home yet, I'm not drunk...

This one's going to sound like a grumpy old gits rant at the world - and it is.

Drunk people are fuckwits.
And I've seen lots of them this weekend.

But before we get onto the evidence, a partially related topic which struck me hard between the eyes on Radio Leeds this morning.

An exhibition of road crash victims opens in Leeds this week and in an emotional interview on the radio one of the members for Brake, the road safety campaigners described how her son, brother, cousin and father had all been victims of road crashes, she used the word "crash" in preference to "accident" as crashes are almost always avoidable and hence not accidental.

Take a look at the Brake web site in the link above , read some of the victims stories, then try and justify your decision to step on the gas by an extra 5mph on the way home tonight.
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So back to fuckwit drunks.
Its not that I don't like a drink myself, I do.
But I've got a "tilt" switch in my head that makes me puke when I've had too much, and by too much I mean three pints of beer, certainly no more than four.

Thats not much is it ?
It used to be more, much more.
But the "tilt switch" reformatted itself around ten years ago and four is absolute maximum now, and if I get away with four then a hangover will certainly ensue, sometimes it won't even wait until the next morning and the hangover will start before I've finished the last pint.

This weekend I've been amongst thousands of people for whom a tilt switch was an optional extra that they couldn't afford when they were made.

Newcastle is no different to Leeds or any other city or town in the UK on a weekend - the city centres fill with drunks who refuse to go home until they are totally incapable of getting themselves home.

While waiting for my companions to stuff kebabs down their faces in a takeaway shop in Dean Street on Friday night (I wasn't drunk enough to eat the shit that they carved off the revolving column of shit) I partook of my favourite occupation of people watching.

Within one minute of leaning in the shop doorway I was shoved out of the way by a well dressed woman in stilleto heels who bore an uncanny resemblence to Beryl Reid - she was pissed, so pissed that as she exited the doorway she fell off one of her heels and spilt the contents of her kebab all over the pavement without noticing, with a "oooh dear" she regained her balance and staggered up the steep hill that is Dean Street, not noticing the distinct lack of kebab in the polystyrene carton that she held at arms length as if it were an olympic torch.

Seconds later two extremely fat young Scottish girls, linking arms, tottering on their own high heels, came charging down the hill unable to stop, the clatter of their stilletos getting faster and faster along with their screams, shrieks of laughter and drunken obscenities. They came to a sudden halt just opposite me when one of them grabbed a lamp post and they both spun round as a pair and fell into a shop doorway three doors down where they lay spread eagled on the pavement laughing and swearing at passers-by until a foreign photographer asked if they'd mind if he took their photograph, he sounded eastern european and took several photgraphs while they lay there on the pavement incapable of getting up to lamp him one although their curses and threats mentioned that they'd like to do so - I'd love to see the Warsaw edition of Hello! magazine next week with "Scottish slappers in traditional night out stylee" headlines.

saturday night was even worse, the streets of Newcastle were filled, and I mean teaming with mainly young people, huge swathes, football crowd quantities of drunk male and females, I doubt very much whether I could have found one single sober person on thsoe streets by 10pm - after midnight on my walk back to the hotel I could, had I been so inclined, have had my pick of any young female to ravish or murder being as there were so many of them unconcious in doorways or simply laying across the pavement, christ knows how they all get home again and how fortunate for them that most taxi drivers are honest enough to take them home without robbing them or worse, if Peter sutcliffe the Yorkshire Ripper is ever released or escapes from prison then he certainly won't have to limit his activities to prostitutes on murky streets, there are rich pickings on the streets of all our cities after midnight every weekend amongst the drunk and incapable females.

Sound like a miserable old bas'tad yet ?
I said I would.

Just try doing the same though in any UK city - stay relatively sober and take a walk after midnight - you'll be suprised and amazed at what you see and what passes for normal behaviour among the pissheads.

The gee-gees...

Saturday dawned bright and early and after a "neet on tha toon" we were off to Newcastle racecourse and the first flat meeting of the season, not that it meant anything to me, a day at the races is one of the most boring events in my life calendar, being that I've never placed a bet in my life and have no intention of handing over my wallet to a grinning bookmaker - I have three females at home who own my wallet without some toerag in a camel hair coat and trilby wanting it too.

I don't understand the betting thing either, my travelling companions were well into it, studying the Racing Post form guide and spotting the on course bookies who were giving the best odds, quoting unknown language like "10-1 there, 12's on this one, make it each way" and other assorted crap.

I left them to it, went to get a coffee and a kit-kat and wandered down to the parade ring which at Newcastle is just yards from the finishing post meaning that you can watch the horses walk around for a bit then simply by turning around 180 degrees, watch them as they race past the winning post.

Standing at the rail on the parade ring gets you up close and personal with the horses, very close, very, very close - I was less than two feet away from them as they were led around the ring by their scruffy, hard looking stable girls who, if it wasn't for the fact that they had to wear what was possible described as a "smart suit" on the course, looked as though they'd be happier in shell suits and trainers - the word "chav" wasn't misplaced.

The horses were beautiful though and I found myself wishing that I'd brought my sketch book more than once.

As it was the first outing of the season for them all, and for the first race of the meeting it was the first outing ever for the two year olds, the horses were obviously interested in the attention and as they were led around the ring every one of them was looking at the crowd gathered there which meant that as they walked past my position I was staring them straight in the face often less than a foot away, they are gorgeous intelligent animals, tall and muscular, highly alert, some very nervous, all obviously up for a good run out and I loved being so close that you smelled of horse when you left, and indeed got covered in gob from one of them when it sneezed as it walked past me.

I stayed there for the whole meeting, taking phones calls from my party asking where I was, did I want a beer (no), and did I have any tips, until I told them that number 15 in the second race had the waggiest tail in the paddock so maybe he would be worth a punt, they didn't bother asking again after that.

Another observation was that the jockeys were obviously all midgets, but that they were either 12 years of age and hadn't yet started shaving or were 90 years of age and had faces like a 3D contour map of the hymalayas - and they were without exception Irish - and another good thing about being stood so close to the action is that you get to hear what the trainers, handlers and jockeys are saying as they mount up and if I'd had half an interest in the proceedings then I could have told my mates not to bother putting money on one particular horse who's jockey was told, in my hearing range, by the trainer to "stick in the middle and try to keep up with the pack", theres one horse that wasn't expected to earn its hay that day and yet I'll bet (not that I do bet mind) that thousands of pounds of mugs wages went on that nags back on saturday.

The one thing that I really don't understand about gambling is the totally random nature of it all - the punters will tell you that you can study form and come up with the winner more often than not, but of course that is all so much crap - one of the favourites on saturday unseated his rider when three furlongs from the winning post - the form book never predicted that.

When I rejoined my companions at the end of the day they were still stood where I'd left them in the betting ring with all the bookmakers, except this time they were nearly knee deep in thousands of used betting slips - every one of those betting slips was a lost betting slip and they must have numbered into the tens of thousands - my companions didn't buy them all of course, the thousands of other punters stood around them were responsible for most of them but our party had spent its fair share too.

We'd all thrown five pounds into a kitty when we walked into the racecourse and with six races someone had placed a bet on each one, when I asked how we'd gone on I got the reply "not bad actually, we've got £20 left", we'd lost on five races and got a place on one and apparently that "was not bad", whereas in my reckoning we'd actually lost £20.

Likewise six of the other lads wouldn't discuss how much they'd lost but two of them were in good spirits, one had won £140 but on close questioning admitted staking £110 in total through the day and the other had won £80 having staked £70 - in reality both of them were lucky that they had picked one winner on the day, if they hadn't then they would have both lost a considerable amount of money (in my eyes) - and again that is why the bookmakers flock to the courses in such large numbers, they simply wouldn't be there if it wasn't for the fact that a few thousand people are prepared to give them a decent wad of money for no particular reason at all other than a faint chance that they might just win something - most people don't.

Still, I had a good day, spent nowt except a couple of quid for a coffee and a kit kat, stared a lot of horses in the eye, got gobbed on by one of them and burnt my head in the sun, not a bad day at all.

A weekend on the lash...

'twas good.
'twas very good.
Our weekend in Newcastle on the lash.

Newcastle has changed a lot since I first stepped out of my company van in 1977 wondering why the hell I'd agreed to go work for our office branch up there and nowhere is that more evident than on the quayside.

Like many cities with a maritime history Newcastles quayside was forgotten and neglected in 1977, a collection of fine victorian shipping merchants offices and huge storge warehouses all of which had fallen into disrepair and dereliction, in fact the quayside was a dangerous place to visit back then - its totally different now, millions if not billions of pounds worth of money has been invested into the area and its now well worth a visit, especially on a stag weekend as the nightlife on the quayside is especially famous.

But to that later.

We started our weekend at the F1K karting arena in Gateshead, and indoor track of 500metres or so including an elevated section, eight of us and another stag party of seven Belfast lads who were lighter than us to the tune of several stones each - why should that matter you think - because weight is important on a small lightweight racing cart - thats our excuse anyway and we're sticking to it.

So we're split into seven pairs and told to take a ten minute practice session and straight away my partner jumps in the kart and zooms off and despite holding up our team number board to him every time he whizzed past the pits he declined to return and give me a go.

The circuit closes after the practice sessions with three of us not yet had go, so clad in racing overalls helmet and gloves I drag my partner off the kart and slap him on the head, which actually did no good at all as he still had his helmet on, and I take my place on the grid for the Le Mans start of a one hour endurance race.

Its good fun.
Correct that, its bloody good fun.

By the time I'd sat on the bloody thing and got comfortable the Belfast lads were a thing of distant memory in a cloud of petrol fumes, I managed to get out off the grid in sixth place out of seven then instantly lost that slender advantage at the first corner to someone who had practised earlier and knew that you didn't need to brake for the 180 degree turn at the end of the first straight.

Had twenty minutes in that first session and bloody enjoyed myself, average lap times were 30 seconds at top speeds of 62kph according to the printouts that were available in the pits - 62kph feels record-breakingly fast when you're sat one inch off the floor and its Star Trek Warp Speed fast when you're taking 90 and 180 degree turns without braking - only two laps seperated all of us when I handed over the kart to my partner.

I think he was feeling guilty at having knicked the practice session because when I held up the board for him after ten minutes he came in and then gave me a second session of another twenty - this one was much faster and I actually managed to overtake people this time, including one of the Belfast lads who were all significantly faster than us, ok I admit that he overtook me and then I shadowed him inches from his bumper for two laps until he made a mistake on a turn, I swerved to avoid him, stamped on the accelerator instead of the brake and by some miracle not of my making zipped past on the inside with millimetres to spare - laughed my face off for seconds after that until he got me on the next bend.

What a wonderful way to spend a Friday afternoon, certainly several hundred percentage points better than working and even though our four teams finished far behind the Belfast teams we consoled ourselves with that great English sporting motto "its the taking part that matters" - instead of winning a trophy we bought one instead to present to the stag of our party later.

Horse racing to be mentioned tomorrow.