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Socks and sandals.
Yes its a cliche, but its a cliche that is alive and well, unashamably alive and well in the psyche of the Brit abroad.
I've seen so many of these abominations in the last two weeks that I've given up staring the culprits in the face and tutting and shaking my head in despair at them, now I just point and laugh.
The ones in the picture are only the mildest of the genre though, I've actually seen knee length white socks walking the streets with impunity, and worse, white socks with coloured bands on the top, simply awful - I even spotted someone trying to wear socks and sandals with a pair of sandals that had one of those bars that you're supposed to slip between your big toe and the one next to it - the poor idiot was limping badly down the street as his white socks prevented him from using his chosen footwear in the manner which the designer had intended.
It never ceases to amaze me that with all the publicity on how moronic you look when wearing socks and sandals, it is so easy to find a prime example in holiday resorts all over the world, and that when you spot that prime example, usually within ten seconds of stepping out of your hotel room, the wearer will be a Brit abroad.
Do these men have no wives ?
Do their wives not physically prevent their menfolk from leaving their rooms with said apparel gaff as mine would ?
Obviously not, probably because their wives are too busy trying to find a bar in their choice of foreign holiday resort that will allow them to view their fix of three British TV soaps and two "reality programmes" per day.
Which brings us to "British Bars".
You have to seriously question the sanity of a person who is prepared to spend a couple, possibly several thousands of pounds on an annual family holiday in Europe and beyond, but who insists that on arrival in their foreign clime they only eat "British" food with HP Sauce on it, they only drink "British" beer and that they can surround themselves with lots of other like minded British people in a bar that is managed and run by British people who have a satellite dish of sufficient and impressive dimensions so that they can illegally pick up transmissions of British TV programmes to drip feed their British clients with 24 hours a day.
These people then spend the whole of their expensive two weeks abroad leaning on said bar with a pint of British beer in their hand, ordering their British bacon sandwiches, "we have the bacon flown over specially" (ie someone brings it into the foreign country illegally in their suitcase), watching their horrendous offspring destroying the pool table in the foreign owned bar next door, while all the time complaining to each other about how bad it is back home in Britain what with all the immigration and taxes and the cost of living and how you can't get a decent pint anywhere now and the country is going to the dogs and no-one cares because we're all too busy paying benefits to dole scroungers and illegal immigrants and letting career criminals out of prison after serving just three days of their eight year sentences and they are glad they've come away for a holiday because they've had enough of illegal immigrants and what they really want to do is open a bar in the sun just like this one and do you still get your dole money sent out here John ?
Fortunately our chosen holiday destination only had one example of the aforementioned "British Bar", but it was a prime example, an example that could be placed proudly in the museum of British culture abroad as a perfact example of the genre of which I complain.
Owned by a Londoner called John (are all Londoners called John ?) serving a selection of British beers, British bacon and sausages with British sauce, speaking only the English language even to the Spanish suppliers who turned up at his bar with deliveries of, shock, horror, Spanish fruit to put in the British cocktails that he made "for the ladies", a Kareoke night every third night and a quiz night with questions such as "what was Ethels dogs name" (pre-supposing of course that you automatically know that the Ethel that they relate to is a character of TV's "Eastenders" fame), and the ubiquitous eight foot diametre satellite dish illegally sucking in the broadcasts of Emmerdale, Coronation St, Eastenders, whateversoapthatchannel4shownow, Big Brother, The Bill, Casualty, I'm-a-celebrity-get-me-on-TV, I'm-a-talentless-cretin-get-me-on-a-TV-talent-show, and of course, football.
The sock and sandal men sit at the bar with John and moan about illegal immigrants while their obese foul mouthed lycra clad wives shout at their obese foul mouthed football kit clad offspring who are now vandalising the Flintstones kiddies ride in the bar next door, while they stuff their faces with British crisps, "we have them flown in specially" (ie someone brings them in illegally in their suitcase) and gaze open mouthed (as the crisp crumbs fall out) at todays episode of Emmerdale and they ask for the two hundreth time "is this on live then from back home or is it last weeks episode".
We almost caused a riot last Friday in this British bar.
The previous Sunday we had managed to persuade John-at-the-bar to show the rugby league challenge cup game between Leeds and Huddersfield and had ended up cheering on Huddersfield with perhaps the only Huddersfield fan who was abroad that day, and after it had finished we'd thanked John-at-the-bar and asked if he'd show the rugby game between Leeds and Hull on the following friday, he assured us that there would be no problem.
Turned up the following friday to find John-at-the-bar with the usual crowd of white sock and sandal men complaining about illegal immigration while their wives gazed in awe at the TV - a small crowd of similar rugby league fans had gathered as John-at-the-bar had promised them too but as we took our places they shook their heads at us and pointing to the screen and the women mentioned that we'd have to wait until these fat bitches had finished watching Eastenders.
So we waited.
And after ten minutes Eastenders finished, we'd missed some of the game but hey, we weren't going to argue with the fat bitches, we were in their territory now and you have to comply with their rules, you don't want to be on the end of their verbosity when you're supposed to be on holiday.
As the duff-duff Eastenders signature tune started John-at-the-bar changed channels to Sky Sports where we caught ten seconds of the Leeds-Hull game.
And then the riot started.
As one body the fat lycra bitches all stood up and turned on John-at-the-bar and spitting crisps (we have them brought in specially you know) out of their wide gobs they berated him using some of the finest profanity known to man as apparently he should have known that Big Brother was on Channel 4 and it was an eviction night and if John-at-the-bar didn't put Channel 4 on right now instead of the effing rugby then they'd be over there to do it for him.
John-at-the-bar was in a hopeless situation, he depended on these British trailor trash refugees for his livelihood every night, indeed every day too for the fat lycra bitches spent all day and all of their holiday dole money in his bar, he meekly hung his head and apologised to bullying bitches and changed to Channel 4.
One of the blokes that had gathered for the rugby did raise a half-hearted query but was told to "fook off to another bar" by one of the fat lycra bitches, a comment echoed by her two year old offspring who was strapped into a pushchair next to her, John-at-the-bar couldn't look us in the face as, head bowed he whispered, "sorry lads".
We went to another, Spanish owned, bar next door and asked the owner if he could show the game there. He couldn't do enough for us and broadcast it on all of his twelve plasma screens, brought us large cushioned chairs to sit in and made a small fortune in Valencia's finest Amstell beer sales.
The fat lycra bitches were still glued to Big Brother three hours later as we passed and their menfolk still in earnest conversation with John-at-the-bar on how you could "work out here and still draw the dole" while not declaring your presence in Spain to the Spanish government - of course they wouldn't understand the irony of their plan, but still.
Hit UK soil again at 6.20pm tonight and despite the worst predictions from Sky News that the UK air network was at a standstill we departed on time from Menorca and arrived on time in Leeds with the only concession to a supposed heightened security level being that our mobile phones had to be checked in with the hold luggage and a van full of overweight police officers were spied on arrival at Leeds/Bradford airport, sitting in a van stuffing their faces with Greggs pasties, however it was good to know that had liquid explosives been discovered there then at least they'd have been able to smother the devices with cooked meat, potato and pastry.
I've been keeping a journal these past two weeks so have mucho observances to write about over the next few days and have to find a way somehow to get the above Jerry Chicken photo onto this site as a logo somehow, what do you think of him ? Four Euros he cost me and I had to carry him very carefully in my hand luggage along with a rather large and rather expensive piece of Lladro as neither would have survived the aircraft hold, Jerry Chicken got all the bubble wrapping though and I took the above photo before we left in case hand luggage had been banned and he didn't survive the journey.
So, to start the ball rolling before tomorrows post - Sods Law Number One (proved once again without fail this afternoon), aircraft turbulence will always start exactly one minute after I have been served my inflight meal.
Tomorrow we discuss the average British tourist abroad.
Finished work that is, for 18 days, 14 of which are going to be spent once again on the island of Menorca, laidbacksville-on-sea, the place where you can drive your hire car at 15mph on the one major road ont he island and no one minds even though you have a tailback of beer delivery trucks snaking all the way back to the airport behind you.
Well, I've nearly finished anyway.
Tomorrow theres two hours of clearing up in the office, doing the banking and leaving last minute instructions to the two fools that are my brother and my engineer, they are responsible for the whole operation now for the month of august and they will probably make a complete arse of things.
But I don't care.
I'm on holiday.
Tomorrow I sign for the new car, I go to the library for some reading matter, I have batteries to buy for the minidisc player that is making the trip in preference to the MP3 player, and I have a bag to pack. At some point in the day beer may be consumed, money needs to be stuffed into envelopes and labelled so that my brother can take Jake to the kennels on saturday and pay for him and so that Amanda has money at the airport to get herself out to Menorca on Saturday.
But still, apart form all that I am on holiday now, I have dined alfresco tonight on pasta and beer and I'm in the holiday mood now, everyone can go and take a flying fook, I'm officially relaxed now.
My normal persona is relaxed but my holiday persona reaches new heights of relaxed-ness that are thoght impossible by scientists, you could not unrelax me on holiday if you used guided bombs or those fierce flying monkeys that are in The Wizard of Oz.
Oh yes, tomorrow I must also pack some painting gear, its going to be watercolours that go on holiday with me this year, the pastels weren't such a success the last time, watercolours are much easier to handle and this time I have my nice new white panama hat to wear so I will look like a proper artist, or a proper prat, the photos will help you decide later.
I will probably post tomorrow but if I'm too laid back to do so then toodle-ooh until the 12th August.
I'm gone.
For absolutely no other reason than I read one line in someone elses blog this morning, I've been thinking and a-pondering on how cruel kids are to each other, and whether it just all a part of growing up or something more sinister.
Its 34 years since I left school, flinging books off the back of the bus while the conductor was distracted collecting fares (that dates me, a platform on the back of the bus and a conductor) but at our all boys grammer school we had our fair share of victims to pick on and cruel nicknames to use for the five years that we were there - its called bullying these days but back then it was called "building characters".
So while I cant be sure that "Pretty Woman" David England is not a homosexual by now I am sure that he will probably be grateful that being nicknamed after the Roy Orbison song was preferable to being noted also as the heaviest boy in class. He was though also the recipient of the name "Marine Boy" when he became the last one in our year to learn how to swim, the weekly swimming lessons in our ancient school pool must have been hell for him and as far as I can recall he never did learn to traverse the pool without keeping one foot on the bottom, the deep end was a mystery to him.
Tony Bateson ignored any reference to "Master Bates-son" and that joke wore thin by year three, he was without doubt a wanker though.
Pete "Muddy Waters" Waters was unique in that his nickname was awarded to him by a French master who was trying to appear cool and trendy to us 11 year olds. Unfortunately in 1968 none of us had ever heard of the blues legend Muddy Waters and while the name stuck, the joke fell flat, as did the French masters attempt to ingratiate himself to us with tales of Johnny Halliday - we'd never heard of him either, but the name stuck with Johnny Johnson for a while.
But of course under the surface things were always slightly more sinister.
The school caretaker was a disabled man who I'm guessing with hindsight probably had a mild cerebral palsy and walked with quite a severe limp - from time immemorial he had been known as "Shane" after the Alan Ladd cowboy hero and he'd clip your earhole if he heard you calling him it but in the year below us was a boy who wore leg calipers and despite warnings from the Head as to what would happen to any boy caught bullying him, the kid was always known as "Little Shane". he was a nasty bad tempered bast'ard though and kick from his calipered leg hurt like buggery, if anyone deserved bullying it was him.
Ian Lee in our year had one leg shorter than the other and wore a built up shoe. He never had a nickname though and no-one ever mentioned his strange shoe, he would beat the shit out of you if he ever heard you mention it, he was our class bully and would often hit you in the face for no other reason than he felt like doing it, nasty piece of work he became a psychiatric nurse when he left school.
And of course racism reared its ugly head. Its hard to believe but in 1968 when I joined that school there were 840 white boys attending, and it had been a similar story in my primary school, I'd seen black and asian people but never been to school with them.
A year into grammer school and in the year below us one of the new boys was a Seik and of course wore the turban. It was lucky for him that he had moved from a primary school with many of his white friends and that the school had had the common sense to place those friends in the same form room as him, they formed a protective barrier around him but he was still subjected to what would be regarded now as a most terrible and prolonged racial abuse and name calling, hard to believe it now but it was regarded as "normal" to offer such abuse and apart from keeping him in his familiar group of friends the school did little else to protect him.
We have certainly come a long way since then, not far enough to be true, but there is plenty to be grateful for that children have to be taught racism in the home by misguided parents who wish to perpetuate the hatred, and do not learn it as a matter of rote at school.
"A long, long time ago,
I can still remember,how that music used to make me smile"Anyone know who this bloke is ? No ?Robert Hoffman ?No ?No neither did I, but I cheated and google searched for him using the phrase "Robinson Crusoe TV Programme"Yes thats right - school holidays - late 1960's - ingenious TV scheduling idea - lets try daytime TV.I can just see the board meeting at the BBC now, oak panelled room full of cigar smoke, brandy decanters, bath chairs and assorted maids to assist the old duffers that make up the BBC board of directors all meeting for their monthly chin wag and set-the-world-to-rights session.Some young upstart of a producer addresses them and explans his plan to revolutionise TV during the school summer holiday - they'll show a French TV series about an Englishman who is shipwrecked on a coral island and befriends and then enslaves a "native" and teaches him the English way, such as cleaning your masters straw boots every morning, ensuring your master has a nice kipper for his breakfast when he awakens, and holding your masters straw umbrella above his head when he goes out for a walk on the beach in the midday sun.The board of directors love it, one mentions that it reminds them of the Daniel Defoe novel "Robinson Crusoe", another comments that he knew Daniel Defoe, nice chap. The young upstart producer assures them that this story is nothing to do with the Defoe novel and that no royalties will be payable, in any case it was made in France and it will be their fault if Defoe's lawyers contact the BBC, the director who befriended Defoe explains that the novelist died 200 years earlier so there will be no copyright issues and everyone is happy again.They go for it, but then discover that the film is broadcast in the French language, damn those Johnny Foreigners, so they hand the series over to the Shocking Dubbing Department who have recently won awards in TV circles for their work on the shockingly dubbed "Tales From Europe" series of childrens programmes. They pull it off and "Robinson Crusoe" becomes an instant hit among schoolchildren everywhere, every summer holiday, for decades.
"Day 72 and wance aga-yan ah am aluurn"
"Poor Robin"
"Fack off parrot"
"Pooooor Roar-bin"
"Ah weell ring your facking neck yuu stoopid bard, carn't yuu see ah am herm-seek, carn't yuu say anny-think else except "poooor Roar-bin" ?"
"You didn't teach me anything else"
"Well dern't say anytheenk then yuu mangy avian yuu"
"Teach me something else and I'll cheer you up then, who's Friday for instance"
"What ? What ? Whaart do yuu know abart Friday"
"Well I hear you calling his name out every night, you seem to enjoy that, teach me about Friday"
"Yuu fackin nosy bas'tard parrot yuu, yuu marnd yuur own business abart me arnnd Friday"
"Only trying to help old boy, only trying to help"
We loved it, never missed an episode, cried when it finished.
Friday came back to London with Poor Robin and was placed as an exhibit in the newly founded London Zoological Society in Regents Park.
Poor Robin turned to drink and lived on the streets for twenty years until he was run over by a brewers dray cart in Soho.
The parrot was elected Member of Parliament for Bow in 1798 and completed 20 years of public service being promoted to Education Minister in 1812, he is now stuffed and resides in the Members Terrace Bar.
I did, I messed up big time at the weekend.
In fact its taken until now for me to tell anyone, I feel so guilty.
Someone may have died because of what I did, she could have choked and gagged on her veggie burger.
Let me explain,
It was a close friends 50th birthday party on saturday afternoon/evening and as is tradition on his birthday we all gather at his home and have a barbeque and sit in his gazebo in his garden until the early hours of the following morning making merry noises with the assistance of beer.
This weekend, after a beautifully hot week, it was stormy and on saturday afternoon a thunderstorm crept up on us and it started lashing down, so while everyone else hid in the gazebo I wandered out in the violent rain to help our host and another friend at the barbeques.
Because it was his 50th there were many more people there than normal and he had three bbq's on the go, one of them a gas one which he was unfamiliar with but as I've got a gas one I volunteered to get piss wet through and cook fifty chicken legs on it, after a couple of beers you could hardly notice the rain, or the thunder and lightning anymore, well you only get wet once don't you.
So the three of us were standing there waving steel spatulas in the air in the middle of a thunderstorm singing along to a Beach Boys CD when another guest turned up and handed us a small tinfoil parcel in which she told us was her two veggie burgers that she needed bbq'ing and would I oblige while at the same time requesting that I didn't contaminate said burgers with any animal products.
She disappeared and we started doing our best Gordon Ramsey impressions complaining about fekkin vegetarians and why would you want to fekking bbq a fekking veggie burger anyway - you eat fekking vegetables raw so why would you fekking bbq them when they're in burger form ?
I put the parcel on my bbq and opened up the tin foil parcel, being careful to create a bit of space around it on the grill, but to do so I had to put several of the chicken legs on the shelf above the grill which is actually attached to the lid so that when you lower the lid the shelf rests above the grill and can keep the food cooking.
Yes, I know you've guessed the rest, the chicken legs continued cooking and dripped themselves all over her fekking veggie burgers - but I didn't know that at the time did I ?
It was five minutes later that I lifted the lid up to see how the fekking stupid fekking veggie burgers were getting on and my fellow chef to my right pointed out that the fekking veggie burgers appeared to be swimming in their own little pool of chicken leg fat.
We just laughed.
Chef three stood to my left looked over my shoulder and started laughing too, it was infectious, we laughed and laughed until it hurt and someone came out of the gazebo to see what we were laughing at, at which point I quickly shut the lid and told them everything was just fine thank you and we laughed a lot more, then went and got some more beer.
We discussed the fekking veggie burger business for all of ten seconds and decided to drain off the chicken leg fat and not tell her, but we placed bets to see if she'd notice that her fekking veggie burger tasted of chicken - the best odds that we gave were 3/1 on that she would with odds of 50/1 that she'd actually choke and die when the chicken fat hit her throat.
The fekking veggie burgers looked awful, they resembled that light brown colour best known as the colour of baby shit and they had bits of what I took to be straw sticking out of them, they didn't even turn brown after being fried in chicken fat.
The fekking veggie woman ate them anyway and never said a word except to compliment us on the corn on the cob chunks that we'd done at the same time - they were soaked in chicken fat too and she made us go back to the bbq and turn the gas back on and make some more.
So there you have it - fekking vegetarians don't die when they eat meat after all.
Not that chicken is meat of course, I mean, its not red or anything is it ?
Bought a new car yesterday.
Well, you could almost call it a new car, when it grows up it will be a car, Suzanne has handbags that are bigger than the Peugeot 107, but her and Amanda like the yellow one and they've dug deep in their pockets and bought a nice spoiler for the back too so that it looks a bit like a fairground dodgem car.
What ?
Me ?
Won't be seen dead in it, no.
Anyhoo,
The chap at the dealership, who I know quite well, starts to tell me all about GAP Insurance, which I also know quite well as we bought it for the Ford Focus that this handbag on wheels is replacing, and so I said no we don't need GAP Insurance, its just a scam.
But Suzanne insisted that we do need GAP Insurance and so we got it - see how it works in our house ?
So what is GAP Insurance ?
If you buy your car on finance then the chances are that on the day that you drive it out of the dealership it will be worth less than what you have just borrowed from the finance company.
If your brand new baby car is stolen that very same night and trashed out of all recognition by the sort of low life mouth breathers who haunt the gutters late at night, then your insurance company who provide your accident cover will make you an offer for the "value" of the car, which will be considerably less than the "cost" of your car.
In other words the insurance company are a lower grade of shit than the low life mouth breather who trashed it in the first place, but if you've read this blog before then you'll know all about lower grade shit insurers.
And they tell you all this up front, they are not ashamed by the fact.
"In the event of a total loss your motor insurer will only pay you the market value of the car at the time of the incident, and your outstanding balance could be more than the market value paid out by the insurer"
Notice how in that statement the GAP Insurance company has distanced themselves from this dubious practice by referring to "your motor insurer", conveniently omitting to mention that the GAP Insurer is quite likely to be the same insurer that won't pay out in full if your car is lost.
So what do they do after they have brazenly admitted that they will only pay you the absolute minimum that they feel that they can get away with in a court of law ?
They sell you another insurance policy to make up for the dreadfullness of the policy that you've just bought off them.
And the bas'tads rake the money in once again.
So she bought the GAP Insurance, another £199 on the price of the yellow rollerskate.
I'm just the fool that signs for all this stuff.
Jake is a big wuss, its official.
You need some background information.
Jake is our Golden Retreiver (left) (obviously) thats is his portrait that I did of him last year, he likes it and hangs it above his bed.
Anyway,
We bought him from a gamekeeper eight years ago, way up in the Yorkshire Dales we went, way, way up almost into Richmondshire to a place that I didn't even know existed, a place where we were driving on private land, a country estate where the landed gentry had staff to look after the game on their land, I thought that sort of thing had died out after the first world war, but not so in North Yorkshire.
We eventually found a pair of small cottages on a hillside and around the back of these cottages were the kennels where the gamekeeper kept his collection of hunting dogs, Labradors for sniffing out shot-down birds on the ground (ground scenters) and Retreivers for sniffing out shot-down birds using the air (air scenters) - see, you learn something new every day don't you ?
The litter of pups that Jake came from had already been split up (he was twelve weeks old) according to their destiny, all of Jakes brothers had been moved to another location for their gun dog training and three sisters had been kept back for breeding from - when we eventually got Jakes pedigree it read like a "who's who" of gun dog champions, his mother had been matched up with his father to specifically breed working pups.
But it had all gone wrong with Jake.
The gamekeeper told us that he would be the softest pet dog on the planet once he got over his little problem.
He hates loud bangs.
Which is a bit of a handicap if you're supposed to be a gun dog.
They had taken all the pups out into a field at eight weeks old and fired a shotgun in the air, Jake was back in his kennel before the "g" of "bang".
So he was offered up for sale as a pet dog rather than a working dog, to the eternal disgrace of his family bloodline.
Their loss, our gain.
He is a fantastic family pet dog, totally fekkin useless as a guard dog because he doesn't bark. In all of his eight years I have only heard him bark on a few occasions - when we had a burglar in the house, he didn't even wake up.
But we love him anyway.
So, thats the background.
Oh yes, one more background thing - he is not allowed upstairs in the house and he never, never, ever breaks that rule, ever.
Except for this morning.
5am this morning and a thunderstorm was pasing overhead. The rain started first, it was heavy rain, and then it got heavier, sleeping with the windows open for the last week or so it sounded really, really heavy rain and it woke us up.
And then we heard the tiptoe of paws coming upstairs, the rain was so heavy that it had frightened Jake into breaking the upstairs rule for the first time in his life.
And then the thunder rolled across the valley from the airport and we heard a scurry of claws on the wooden floor of Jodies bedroom, presumably as he tried to get under the bed.
Suzanne shouted at him to get down stairs and like the obedient dog that his breeding makes him he went, despite being obviously terrified, she is a cruel woman is my wife.
I got up shortly afterwards because I could hear him pacing about downstairs and panting in panic.
So I've had to sit with him holding his paw since 5.30am this morning and even after the thunder went away he wasn't convinced, I'm a soft sod me, none of the females in the house have even woken up yet and here I am holding a dogs paw telling him not to be afraid of some weather.
I feel like Judy Garland sitting with the cowardly lion.
We've had a brainstorming session tonight, me and my brother.
We've got a car in the business which, I believe, is called a lemon in the car trade - a car that spends more time at the dealers repair shop than it does on the road.
Its a Peugeot 307SW, a sort of smallish 7 seat MPV, looks nice, its got a glass roof and other gubbins, but its fooked.
I got it for a family holiday to France in 2003 then gave it to one of my engineers to use, he's done 90,000 miles in it since and two weeks ago it had the latest of its nervous breakdowns on the M62. Our garage has replaced its deisel additive injection thingy and got it going again but now the turbo charger has packed up and it won't do more than 3500 revs, in short its going to cost us another £1000 for a new turbo to get it back on the road.
We'd dump it somewhere if it wasn't for the fact that we still owe £4000 on it, we'd trade it in if it wasn't for the fact that no dealer will offer us any more than a balloon and a goldfish for it, I actually had a private buyer interested in giving us £4000 for it but I just can't sell it to him if he cant drive it round the block without wondering why its got all the pulling power of an old lady pushing a zimmer frame, in a treacle pit.
So we're stuck with it and my new idea tonight would be to park it up at one of our houses and forget all about it and lease the engineer another car, then maybe sometime in the future when we have a spare £1000 lying around, get the turbo fixed and flog the bastard.
Sounds good, my brother agreed, and if it works slowly on the roads then maybe my brothers wife could use it too, sounds good.
And the more we thought about it it got to be a better idea, and then I hit the jackpot - we have an old Dyson vacumn cleaner in the workshop that doesn't work very well but it still whizzes the dust and fluff around in its plastic tub thing a treat, its turbo works just fine.
So maybe, just maybe, we could take the turbo thingy off the Dyson and fit it somehow under the bonnet of the Peugeot, that wouldn't cost us anything, OK we'd probably have to cut a hole in the bonnet to fit the purple Dyson turbo to the engine, but I reckon it would work.
There is a problem though.
Suppose the Dyson turbo starts to pick up all the dust and fluff off the road, as is its habit, and whizz them around and around inside the car while Jon our engineer is driving it, making a loud sucking buzzing noise at the same time - it wouldn't present a very good image for our company when our engineer turns up at customers in a car that whines as loud as a vacumn cleaner and that has a cyclone of road kill whizzing around inside it, would it ?
Time for a slight rethink.
Today is the day that all children of school age love, the day when they finish for their school summer holidays.
I was reminded of this when driving past our local primary school this evening and seeing the school railings festooned with school ties - its the tradition around here for the ones who are leaving primary school and going onto high school next term to tie their now-unneeded and unwanted school ties to the fence on their way out.
Don't know who started that tradition but they are a genius, its a rite of passage, the day when mothers stand in the school playground for the last time as their now 11 year olds leave the safety of their primary school and in the same way that those mothers shed a tear when their kin entered that school at 5 years old, they now shed one for their grown-up son or daughter as they gleefully rip off their ties and abandon them on the fence not realising what awaits them in high school in september.
Amanda is now 17 and has just finished the first year of her A level course with a view to moving into vocational further education next year, possibly in tax accounting which is study based whilst working, she passed her driving test last month and is now mobile having snaffled Suzannes car for 90% of the time - Jodie is 14 and moving inextricably towards GCSE's, making subject choices now that will determine which sort of career path her adult life goes down - and yet I can still remember both of them coming home from primary school with their shirts covered in autographs from their clasmates (some of whom went to different high schools and so have never been seen again) and their ties secured to the school fence - it seems like it was last week.
Just imagine tonight, sitting at home, with at least six weeks holidays stretched out in front of you in what promises to be one of the best summers that we've had in recent years, make the most of it kids, it doesn't last for long.
The screen door slams
Mary's dress waves
Like a vision she dances across the porch
As the radio plays
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely
Hey that's me and I want you only
Don't turn me home again
I just can't face myself alone again
Don't run back inside
darling you know just what I'm here for
So you're scared and you're thinking
That maybe we ain't that young anymore
Show a little faith, there's magic in the night
You ain't a beauty, but hey you're alright
Oh and that's alright with me
You can hide 'neath your covers
And study your pain
Make crosses from your lovers
Throw roses in the rain
Waste your summer praying in vain
For a savior to rise from these streets
Well now I'm no hero
That's understood
All the redemption I can offer, girl
Is beneath this dirty hood
With a chance to make it good somehow
Hey what else can we do now
Except roll down the window
And let the wind blow back your hair
Well the night's busting open
These two lanes will take us anywhere
We got one last chance to make it real
To trade in these wings on some wheels
Climb in back
Heaven's waiting on down the tracks
Oh oh come take my hand
Riding out tonight to case the promised land
Oh oh Thunder Road, oh Thunder Road
oh Thunder Road
Lying out there like a killer in the sun
Hey I know it's late we can make it if we run
Oh Thunder Road, sit tight take hold
Thunder Road
Well I got this guitar
And I learned how to make it talk
And my car's out back
If you're ready to take that long walk
>From your front porch to my front seat
The door's open but the ride it ain't free
And I know you're lonely
For words that I ain't spoken
But tonight we'll be free
All the promises'll be broken
There were ghosts in the eyes
Of all the boys you sent away
They haunt this dusty beach road
In the skeleton frames of burned out Chevrolets
They scream your name at night in the street
Your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet
And in the lonely cool before dawn
You hear their engines roaring on
But when you get to the porch they're gone
On the wind, so Mary climb in
It's a town full of losers
And I'm pulling out of here to win.
Copyright © Bruce Springsteen
Thunder Road - Bruce Springsteen
Now isn't that just the sweetest poetry you've ever read ?
Its even better when its set to a tune
Look for it in a record store (online or otherwise) near you, listen and learn.
But do it when you've left your teenage years behind so that you appreciate The Boss properly.
Nearly forgot,
When I could sleep last night I had a dream that I remembered in the morning.
I was driving an estate car down a motorway, my estate car had yellow flashing lights on top of it and a "motorway maintenance" sign too and I was wearing a big flourescent overcoat - I was a motorway maintenance man in my dream.
I drove into a section of roadworks where the left hand lane was cordoned off and the speed limit enforced by speed cameras and when I approached the first of the speed cameras I put the flashing lights on and stopped the car, got out, took out some tools from the back of the car and strated to unbolt the camera from its post.
It came off really easily because it was only held on with one bolt and I put it in the back of the car and then set off for the next camera.
After a short while I had uncoupled and stored six speed cameras in the back of my car when a police car stopped behind me and asked what I thought I was doing, I was a bit uppity and pointed to the big flourescent coat and the "motorway maintenance" sign on top of the car, then showed the police woman my worksheet for the day which clearly showed that I was to remove all the cameras on this stretch of motorway, she argued that the cameras were police property and that I had no right to take them, I told her that my company were sick and tired of its road rollers getting flashed every time they passed one of the cameras, one of our road rollers had picked up forty seven speeding tickets in one day and we'd had to take the number plate off the tarmacadam laying machine because we couldn't keep up with the fines.
She wasn't impressed.
The dream ended with me being sent back to the first camera and she stood and watched while I fitted it back to its post and then told me she was going to watch me put all six back.
I woke up in a bad mood.
So it probably wasn't the owls fault.
eeeeh, its hot.
7pm and its hot.
One week and three more days and it will be even hotter.
In Menorca.
When you're sitting huddled around the fireplace with the central heating turned up in the middle of January you look forward to the long summer days and especially the long summer evenings when you can sit outside until the sun sets at 10pm and slurp long cold slurps of lager.
And you forget how hot the nights can be.
So you lie awake on top of the bed all night and you try to sleep but you catnap really, and the lager you've been drinking all night doesn't help that much because lager gives you a headache and you should have known that.
And then you do finally drift off to sleep eventually.
Until a bleedin owl takes up residence in a tree near your open bedroom window, and hoots.
Now I know that barn owls screech and barn owls are actually an endangered species which is shocking to me as they were two a penny round here when I was a kid, so I think this one was a tawny owl because it was doing that cartoon too-whit-too-whoo sort of hoot, and it was nice to lie there in the semi-dawn at around 4am and listen to it, I'm a soft sod for wildlife stuff like that.
But after an hour of hooting it was getting a little tiresome, however I have a secret weapon, the hearing in my right ear is now very poor, I'd say its around 10% of the left one, a residue of a childhood spent listening to extremely loud rock music with headphones which resulted in a perforated eardrum at one point, which then led to an infection and me poking around in the ear with pointy things, which led to a torn eardrum that never healed.
Anyway, the good news is that it means that I can lie on my good ear and hear fook-hall of what goes on in the night, so I did, and the owl noise disappeared, until I rolled over in my sleep and the good ear came into play again.
I left for work at 8am, it had been light for three hours and it was already very warm, but the bloody owl was still in a tree somewhere in the garden, hooting every five minutes or so, my theory is that its a young owl who was left there by a parent and it was calling for them, nice to listen to but a right royal pain when you're trying to sleep on a hot night.
And theres another thing - pigeon man who lives next door but one and (obviously) keeps about 40 homing pigeons in his garden has also invested in some ducks and chickens - and a fuckin rooster.
The rooster has to be locked in a darkened shed through the summer otherwise he starts crowing at first light at around 4am - last night someone forgot to draw the blackout curtains and the rooster woke up when the first rays burst the horizon.
So when the owl wasn't hooting the rooster was crowing.
I'm glad that the UK gun laws are so stringent because a shotgun would have found gainfull employment last night.
Phew what a scorcher
(copyright the tabloid headline databank corp ltd)
Been sat outside all day reading Island Songs by Alex Wheatle, the story of a Jamaican family who emigrate to the UK after a family tragedy, only 100 pages in but its superb and written in the mountain patois, hence the clumsy title, the strange thing is that while its a difficult read, or rather its difficult to read, the patois makes you slow down and actually read and understand each sentence and you can hear the richness of the voices in the dialogue which is a remarkable achievement for an author.
When I say I've been sat outside I should elaborate - I've been sat outside under an awning. Put the awning up on the gazebo yesterday and I'm glad we did. Set up base camp under it this morning with my easel and pastels and have finished off a commission for a friends 50th birthday today as well as reading the book.
Its been hot this afternoon.
I mean its been very hot, as hot as I have known it in this country. I sat out in the sun for 15 minutes with the book at 3pm and I burnt my legs, thats how hot its been, its dangerously hot, not that I'm complaining, love sitting under the canopy painting and a-reading all day and I've opened the first tin of beer now so am going out there again for a warm evenings drinky-poo soon.
Getting into the Jamaican book and burning myself in record time has also got me reminiscing of my time in Barbados a few years ago, its the chapter that I'm also working on at the moment in the classic tale of JerryChicken - What the Hell Kind of Dog Did That. I loved Barbados and its people and the friends that I made there on my five annual working trips, its an island that was granted its independance from the UK sometime in the 70's but it still clings to its Brtishness even more than we do here in Britain, its like visiting a pre-war Britain where everyone greets each other in the streets and old men raise their hats when you pass them, a lovely island and lovely people but with an increasing influx of British holiday makers since I was last there in '98 I hope that we do not dilute their colonial Britishness with what we have in this country now - fukkwit drunk Britishness.
The other thing that has had me thinking this afternoon is the speed at which I burnned me white leg skin in the sun and the way in which we complain when its too hot for one day of the year. The last time that I visited Barbados was in August '98 and in the middle of what they call their "wet season" when every day you can guarantee a couple of hours rain in the afternoon, except that it wasn't raining.
Sonia, the payroll clerk that I worked with at the hotel was complaining to me one afternoon that the heat was simply overwhelming and it was, but I was enjoying it and came out with the typical British response to a fine weather complaint, "don't complain Sonia, its lovely today, it might rain tomorrow".
She replied that it hadn't rained since April and that if it didn't rain soon then the island would have water problems in the coming "fine season" from October onwards, it sort of reminded me that some other countries can't rely on rain as much as we do in this country and that constant sunshine isn't always a blessing.
She also complained to me that the endless days of record sunshine that they were experiencing that year had led to a big increase in sunstroke and sunburn among the indigenous population and that was probably the first time that I realised that black skin burns just the same as white skin and that heat exhaustion also disregards race - I learned a lot about my subterranean whitey views during my visits there, stuff thats normally buried deep within a persons genes, mainly based on ignorance, they were very enlightening visits and I'd love to go back there one day in the hope that things are still the same and not tarnished by the British holidaymaker invasion.
Ho-hum, back to the painting - donkeys on Scarborough beach this time, its raining in the painting, people would never believe it if I showed the sun in a painting of Scarborough.
Its all done, shes booked on the 18.50 Leeds/Mahon flight in two weeks time.
And Jake is booked in a nearby kennels for the same week, and he's had all of his innoculations today too, what a busy lad I've been.
Of course as soon as I confirmed the flight she started moaning that she had no new clothes to go with and somehow parted with £50 so she could go into Leeds to buy something.
There's one bit of bad news I'm saving for later for her - her baggage allowance is only 18kg or for those who prefer it in imperial measurements, thats just a tad under 40lbs.
If that doesn't sound much then you have to consider that last year when the four of us went to Menorca we had a 20kg allowance each, 80kg in total.
I packed my few tee shirts, a couple of pairs of trolleys and some shaving stuff and then left the three females to pack their own suitcases.
Two days later and on the evening before we were due to depart I went to bring one of their suitcases downstairs, picked it up and the handle fell off, it was the one with the hair dryer, straighteners and an iron in, as well as 40 pairs of shoes a whole professional make up kit, 20 or so bottles of nail polish and lots, and lots, lets say an awful lot, of perfume.
After lots of tears and tantrums I finally got them to empty some of the baggage and having caught them trying to sneak some stuff back in I put the suitcases in the car where they couldn't get at them - at check-in our four suitcases weighed a grand total of 80.5 kilos, 177 lbs of luggage for a two week vacation.
She is going to struggle to keep below 18kg this year.
Sometime between now and the week after next I have to take her to the airport and show her where to check in and then what the procedure is after that, she's 17 years old and has been to dozens of airports with us but I doubt very much whether she has ever paid attention to how it is that you actually manage to get on the right aircraft and then eventually collect your luggage at the other end.
I'll be sat in Son Bou two weeks today waiting for the phone call that says "Dad, I'm at Leeds Airport and the man at the desk says I have to pay £134 excess baggage, its just some shoes thats all and I can't come without them..."
I had nothing to do on this hot afternoon
but to settle down and write you a line
I have to finish off the job I started doing yesterday and get Mandy on a filght to Menorca in two weeks time.
And get Jake into a kennels in two weeks time.
Item one is fairly easy, Jet2.com have started a three times a week route to Mahon from Leeds and the bleedin annoying thing is that its cheaper than what we've all paid ten months ago.
Let me explain,
Every second year we journey to the fair Spanish paradise isle of Menorca with some good friends of ours, first two weeks in August every second year, our family and theirs, our kids are exactly the same age, its spooky, we have a great time.
But its not cheap.
OK its not expensive either, about £2500 per family.
The apartments we book direct with the spanish owners, the flights are more difficult.
Leeds/Bradford airport serves the fourth largest connurbation in the UK and yet it is still not over-served by flights and the vast majority of our holidays have always commenced at Manchester Airport, but at least there is a weekly flight to Menorca from Leeds, operated by Airtours, at £275 a seat, for that sort of money I could fly to New York (seriously), but if we want the convenience of journeying from an airport that is only one mile from our home (as the crow flies across fields) then we have to pay the premium.
So last September we booked eight seats on the Airtours Leeds/Mahon flight (four per family) and left it at that.
A few months later Mandy decides she didn't want to go with us this year, she's 17 and doesn't want family holidays anymore, etc etc teenage whines etc etc..... so I cancelled her ticket in May after giving her several last chances to change her mind, she didn't, I cancelled.
Last week she changed her mind.
It was my fault, I gave her another very, very last chance when I told her that Jake would need his kennel cough medicine at least two weeks before we left, if she was staying at home then Jake wouldn't go in kennels, if she was coming then Jake would need his kennel cough certificate, it was decision time yesterday.
She wanted to come, but just for a week.
Luckily for her Jet2.com have launched their new route, so I could get her a return flight for one week for £177, almost £100 cheaper (times three) than what we had paid to Airtours - bas'tads.
I have to book it this morning, its a late night flight which means that for two nights of my holiday I can't have a drink at all as I've got to collect/deliver her to Mahon airport, but hey, what are dads for ?
So the problem now is Jake.
I rang three local kennels yesterday, two are fully booked (hardly suprising) and one can only keep him sunday to sunday, we need saturday to sunday.
My brother offered to look after him for one day and deliver him to the kennels on the sunday so we are running with that plan and Mandy is all excited now - I only hope that the place is still open today when I ring to confirm.
I'm dead if it isn't.
This can't be right, the bloody spam catcher's caught nothing in it.
Which is bloody useless in terms of visitor hits, the meter is moving slower than a line of pensioners outside the post office an hour before it opens.
Good people, this is a blatant attempt to get more hits on the hit counter, its embarrassing having to ring people up and ask them to visit my site just so the the number will move up one.
Theres only one way to attract lots of hit - go fishing for spam.
So here is the list of words that I'm using as bait today...
Insurance
Money
Cash
Loans
Artificial limbs
Viagra
Erectile Disfunction
Corn plasters
There, lets see what hits that lot will bring in.
And just as a PS for the companies who do the spamming, just on the off chance that you might actually read some of the sites before you post your crap, you'd be advised to not post your crap here, if you do we are all going to point at you and laugh at how small your penis's are.
Actually, I'll add that word to the list as well.
Penis enlargement
Off we go then, 24 hours of super-hits ...
Yes.
I've added a visitor counter to this site.
Today.
Its pathetic right now.
Because its stuck at four.
I'm going to have to visit as many pc's as I can and log myself in to get the number up a bit.
I could have told it to start at 1,000,353 to look good,
But its more honest this way
And as Stan Laurel said one day, "Honesty is the best politics"
But if its still at four next week
I'll nudge it along a bit.
North winds have made my face a little older
and my back is bent through trying too hard
My vest is torn so I make no perfect picture
to place upon your white-washed wall
I'd like to stay but you have not asked me
Still I don't really expect you to
Dusty boots would shame you now Lady Day
Are we really that far apart
I wish the world could see you now Lady Day
laughing down at your oldest friend
The one who shared just about all he had
in a one-sided love affair
I get scared when I remember too much
Wasted time I suppose you could say that
Strange it don't seem that way to me
But wait a minute
I don't even think you're listening
Just let me tell you how I really feel
I've seen the inside of your heart Lady Day
when you wanted to be shown the way
I loved you then as I love ya now girl
Lady Day, lyrics by Rod Stewart
Not sure why I wanted to put those lyrics on here, I just like the song, have done since I first heard it in 1970, can remember first hearing it and its bookend partner "Jo's Lament", I just like it and its playing on the iPod now.
So where did it all go wrong for Rod Stewart ?
When I first start buying his few scarce albums 36 years ago they were full of self-penned lyrics like that one, Bob Dylan was a big influence on him and all of his early albums have at least one Dylan cover on them, beautiful ballads such as "Tomorrow is such a long time", "Only a hobo", and the gorgeous "Mama you've been on my mind" where the arrangement is (unbelievably) better than Dylans.
I'll tell you where it all went wrong.
When he moved to LA.
And the disco crap took over.
And again when he'd run out of steam and started recording "the old favourites" in that awful "American songbook" series.
My recommendation - don't listen to anything he's done since 1976, but listen to everything he did from 1970 to 76.
Lesson 2 of your musical education will follow at some point in the far distant future.
Socks and sandals.
