Coming To Things Late In Life.

This post refers to things on TV. I tend not to watch much TV. I was a captive audience for it for years when I was in NI and grew to hate the bloody thing. Thinking about my tastes in TV shows now, I can see how things sort of grow on you.
I'm thinking particularly of Bo' Sellecta. The first time I saw it it was just the briefest of glimpses because I hated it instantly.
"Who's this tallentless cunt with the "Leeds" face? Turn it off!"
Little did I know that he is from Leeds. David.... somthing his name [the other bit, Merrion, is named after the Merrion Centre in Leeds, a real concrete 1970's horror]. Not only from Leeds but from the Halton Moor area. It's not only rough but fukin' DOG ROUGH. The bits you see in the Touch of Frost series' when they portray the "East Deane Estate" are filmed around the Halton Moor area.
Anyway, I've taken to watching this of late, and quite good it is too! I especial like the piss takes of Craig David. A REAL tallentless cunt!
Thinking about it I was the same with The Young Ones. When it first kicked off, around 1982, I never watched it. It was on BBC2 at 9.00pm but on ITV was a series called Johnny Jarvis. It was the bollox where as, I thought The Young Ones was the biggest load of shite....
Well, Johnny Jarvis has never been repeated and I now own The Young Ones on DVD.
It was the same with Blackadder. I hated Rowan Atkinson [and still do] but as with The Young Ones, own it on DVD too.
For a trip down memory lane, try this link to http://tv.cream.org. It keeps me amused for hours..... "OOOH, I remember that!!!"
I wonder how long it will be before I start wanting to buy back copies of Eastenders?

Up-dates

Fabiano has given me the pics of David's and my birthday and our disasterous Christmas dinner. Few of them were fit for publication. The ones which were have been added to "# Happy birthday" and "Doom, Gloom & Christmas Dinner".

Human Rights [and Wrongs]

Kate Burton was working with a Human

Rights group in Gazzawhen she was kidnapped.

What she should have been doing was working

with somthing like Age Concern in the UK!

Picture the scene, those charming people whom we all love to hate, the French, have set up an office in London and with the collaboration of some misguided natives are trying to tell our government how the country should be run. [This started off as a skit but thinking about it, it sounds a bit like the EU]. Well, were this to happen, they would be lynched from the nearest lamp post.
Why then is the country [with the exception, possibly, of myself] outraged when a "human rights activist" is kidnapped?
Beats me. Let the bitch die. It'll serve her right for sticking her nose in where it don't belong. Cast your indignation, sorry, mind, back to those News of the Screws articles about the EU [the artist formally known as the EEC] banning "Cornish" pasties, "Yorkshire" pudding and most recently "Melton Mowbry" pies. "What fukin' business is it of theirs?" I hear you yelling above the sound of breaking Stella glasses. Same business as it is for the goat-eaters to whip off with our human rights activists.

Doom, Gloom and Christmas Dinner!

Above: The four of us trying to create a bit of atmosphere.

Above: Fabiano and me, pissed.

Above: Dave and his lesbian cook, Marianne, messing with the intricacies of

a Christmas Cracker.

Did you ever have one of those moments when you wish you hadn't rocked the boat? Well, last Christmas we had 28 guests for Christmas dinner. [it's easy, the secret is that you just use the pub kitchen] Now I don't mind cooking. I don't even mind cooking for people that I don't know [I was a pub manager for a lot of years] what I object to is cooking for a bunch of cunts, pissed cunts at that, who are friends of friends [and both liks being very, very, tenuous]. So, since around Easter, any time that Christmas has been mentioned, I've always added the rider of "This year, I'm not cooking, we're going out for dinner".
David knew that I wasn't joking and so booked us into the Fitzroy Grange Hotel. I couldn't have cared if we'd cone to Pizza Hut but Dave assured me that it was a posh place so, no sneaking bottles of Newcastle Brown in in my coat pocket.
Well, posh it was. Posh to the point of being Exclusive. Exclusive to the point of there being only the four of us for Christmas Dinner!
All the tables in the restaurant were set but only one was laid up with crackers, party poppers etc. I could have cried.
The service was good, quick too!
The atmosphere was a bit.....Well, you make your own entertainment.....
Fabiano asked the waitress why there were no other guests.
"Oh this is the first year we've ever opened on Christmas Day"
Needles to say, we had to leave a tip, it wasn't busy enough to sneak out unnoticed.

Mine, all Mine!

Opening presents early...

Dogs enjoy Christmas too! Well, they enjoy the bits of it that involve food! Sidney, greedy hound that he is, has been eyeing up the presents for the past couple of days. Anyway, last night [Christmas Eve] he’d figured out which present was his, it wasn’t hard, even I could smell it, so he grabbed it and ran off into the bedroom with it. The canine version of Christmas obviously doesn’t involve sharing!

Eyes Down [Under] For A Full House

Boy, do I get conned into doing some crap jobs. Today was helping out at an old dears luncheon club Christmas party. That in itself was fine. Being asked to do the bingo calling after was, well, questionable.

Having done the business so to speak, one old dear came up to me and said

"Oooh, hansome, you're a smashing caller, I love Australians"

"So do I" [but I didn't elaborate any further]

"Which part are you from?"

"Leeds, originaly"

"Is that in New South Wales?"

"No, old West Yorkshire"

"Eh? Not Australia?"

"No love, sorry"

and off she went. I've been called a few things in my time but never and Aussie. I wonder if I should feel insulted?

Ouch! that hurt!

Surgeons at Morriston spent three hours on the boy
A toddler from south Wales underwent a three-hour operation to re-attach his nose after it was bitten off by a dog.
Surgeons said the 20-month-old child from Bridgend was expected to make a full recovery following the delicate procedure.
The boy was taken to the Princess of Wales Hospital in Bridgend after being attacked by what was believe to be a bull terrier.
He was given life-saving First Aid and his nose was packed in ice, before he was transferred to the specialist burns and plastic surgery unit at Morriston Hospital in Swansea.
Surgeons there used intricate micro-surgery to reattach blood vessels and nerves in the boy's nose, and repair damage to his face.
Their task was complicated by the fact that the blood vessels were so small and had been very badly damaged.
Nevertheless, the operation was said to be a complete success, and the boy was expected to be discharged in the next few days.
I had to have a bit of a giggle when I read the above but I know exactly how he feels.

I had my ear bitten off about six years ago and it was a nightmare. It was a completely unprovoked attack [as they tend to be] so caught me off guard. Anyway, my left lug ended up on the floor. A bit of quick thinking, of so he thought, by one of my staff and he shoved it in a glass of ice, and off we went to A&E at Northwick Park [one of my door-staff, who had been whacked in the face with a motorbike helmet came along for the ride].

All I can really remember about it is the nurses in A&E wanting to know why the beer in my pub was so expensive [it was their local], why we didn't have live bands etc, etc and there's me sitting with my ear in a pint fukin glass of red slush puppy.

Well, waking up the next morning, with 148 micro stitches and the biggest bandage on my head, I was told by some sixteen year old doctor that it's not wise to pack the smaller off-cuts of a body in ice as they tend to freeze solid and they don't always re-attach well once thawed out.

I can see what he means. My ear now looks like a stuck-on afterthought and has a big chunk missing from it. I have no feeling in it but it serves as a constant source of fascination to small children.

# Happy birthday to You, Happy birthday to you...

Above: France, one of our bestist mates.

Above: David in full fag mode

Above: Me, pissed, explaining some hyper-important point to Dave's boss.

Above: Me, still pissed, with Fabiano, Dave's assistant manager.

Above: some bit of meat with half of its kit off in Too 2 Much.

It's that time of the year again. Birthdays, mine and Davids, Christmas, and silly season.

Today is Dave's birthday, mine is on Wednesday. Having a birthday so close to Christmas is crap. When I was a kid if I wanted anything decent for Chrismas [which was rare, I only ever wanted Lego] it always came with the tag-line of "well, it will be for both birthday and Christmas so you know you won't get anything on your birthday..." Now, I can treat myself to whatever I want. Hence I've just bought myself a 250G hard-drive for my laptop so I can keep all my music, porn etc on it.

Seeing as it's Daves birthday on a Saturday we're combining it with mine and we're going on the lash. Henrys [managed by a friend], then Too, 2 Much [where the Raymond Review Bar used to be] my favorite bar, then on to Beyond. It may take me a few days to recover.

Donnie Darko

When it comes to films I would have to stand in the conservative queue. That's conservative with a big C. I suppose that I should have known better than to buy a "cult" film. Well, apparently, Donnie Darko is a cult film. [It also means it was £4.99 in HMV]

What the fuck is this film all about????? I bought it because of the cute Jake Gyllenhaal who I'd previously seen in October Sky [nothing at all to do with the price, by the way].

Well I've now watched it twice and STILL can't figure it out.

Good music though.

Singing # "I'm getting married in the morning....." Yeah, right!

Well, I've been asked some dumb-arsed questions in my time but Fat-Bird, Dave's niece, has topped the lot.

"Are you going to get married now that it's legal"?

coughing and spluttering from me,

"Why the fuck would we want to get married"?

"So that I can be a bridesmaid".

Well, two things sprang to mind. The first was the old addage of "Always a bridesmaid, never a bride". The second was the tradition of throwing the bouquet. I can just see it now.... me throwing it over my shoulder and her catching it. Then her eating it......

Ermintrude style!!!!!!

Here is a pic of her which i took moments after she came out with this little blinder. I was tempted to have a bit of a practice run with the Tesco £5 flowers we have on the table.

The Crying Game

Oh to be a florist! Watching all this stuff on the news about the two pram faces above who were hit by a train was, well, whatever it was. The bit that made me puke was all the other pram faces standing hugging each other and crying ot placing bunches of flowers.

Two things here, one, the thing with the flowers. Why, and where did this shite with placing flowers come from? The first time I rememeber it was when Princess Di[ed with everybody knowing she was an old slut] did the crash test dummy stunt. Of course, things have dummed down a bit since then. How much longer will it be before people start laying flowers at the site of every rear end shunt or wing-mirror-clip?

The other thing that makes me cringe is this thing with people hugging each other and crying. I've seen this stunt pulled in real life and people do it for the cameras. A TV crew has only to pop it's head over the parapets at the scene of a bit of blood on the floor and the Sky Sports 35 / Burberry wearing brigade start the hugging and crying thing. Load of old crap.

The Airport Game

It has to be said that I hate tattoos. When we go on holiday we play "The Arport Game". The rules are as follows.

• Each player has to guess the number of 1. Visible tattoos, 2. Football / Team shirts being worn, 3. Beach boogie boxes [portable CD / music contraptions] being carried on as hand luggage.
• The game begins upon having taken ones seats in the departure lounge.
• It is the duty of each player to declare the sighting of each of the above 1, 2 or 3.
• The game ends when the aircraft begins boarding.
• The winner is the player whos guess for two or more catagories was the closest to the recorded sightings.
• The loser buys a bottle of champaign on arrival at the hotel.

Below are a sellection of my pet hates. The first pic is typical of the thick cunt who has had New Zealand lamb for sunday dinner twice and hence feels the need to have a Maori design inscribed on his / her body.

If your husband / boyfriend and child was as ugly as this, would you have their mugs permanatly imprinted on your shoulder?

Why the fuck would anybody want an dragon-fly painted on the top of their arse? Probably indicated that below, there may be insects.

Again another mindles design.

Something I didn't manage to get a pic of was anybody with Chinese characters tattooed on them [there were pleanty but I was taking the pics on the sly]. Many years ago we had a Dutch guy working for us and he was covered in fukin tattoos. Down the middle of his back he had a line of Chinese characters. We also had a couple of Chinese guys working for us and he was showing them his tattoos one day. They were in hysterics. He was under the impression that they meant "tall, strong and brave". Apparently they read "big hotel, fierce dog".

More holiday stories

As I'm sure you know, this is the Canadian flag. The hotel we stayed in, the Occidental Allegro [never stay in a hotel named after a crap car] was full of Canadians.

Worse still, amongst their number were quite a few "French" Canadians [this is their flag below]

Well, the cannucs were a complete fukin' pain in the arse. Just like Americans, loud and inconcequential and with the females all thinking they are in a live episode of "The OC", their conversation peppered with "...but she's so,well like, such a bitch. It's, well, like...." etc, etc. all of this at such a volume that the whole beach could hear.

The frog cannucs were worse, far worse. Loud, in the same way but in french, obviously, but drunk. It didn't matter what time of the day you saw them, they were pissed. God only knows how they did it because the bars didn't open until 10am but they would be pissed from dawn till, er, dawn.

We found out from our rep that the Dominican Republic is to Canadians what Benidorm is to the Brits. Enough said.

Silly Old Bastard

Another peace campaigner. Thats another way of saying another silly bastard. How this poor, deluded silly old sod can honestly believe that 1. anything he could do by way of his own intervention could do anything for the people of Iraq. 2. The "people" of Iraq would even care a toss. Well, talk about biting the hand that feeds...... I had a good laugh when I read that this prick had been kidnapped. I would call it being taken into custody for being a cunt more like! I hope you're sharpening those swords boys.

Some holiday pics

All at sea. It looks, and was cloudy, but just after the pics were taken the sun came out. Typical. We spent the day in the company of a bunch of French Canadians.

David trying to catch the sun but being "shadowed" by one of the boat crew.

Another one of David.

David sporting the safari look.


Looks a bit Jurassic Park. Sadly, the pic doesn't do the view credit.

The real thing..... or not!

You know hoe you can instinctively tell when somebody is “the real Mc coy”? One of the other delightful Brit guests in the hotel, named “Surfs Up” by David, was one of those who just didn’t fall into that category.
This prick, his wife and kid sat holding court, in the loudest possible way, around the pool area every day. Nothing unusual in that except that, for his part, it was done in the most appalling fake Australian accent. To enhance his beach bum credentials he had the [badly] bleached hair and pony tail, surf board and guitar.
Now the Dominican Republic is not known to be one of the world hotspots for surfing [I checked]. So “Surfs Up” sitting waxing / cleaning his board all day while doing his “act” for the benefit of all the other pool users was a tad incongruous.
We didn’t spend much time around the pool area but had seen this when going back and forth to the bar from the beach. I hate sitting around pool areas for the reason that there is always somebody like this who manages to monopolise the whole set-up.
Anyway, after a couple of days of watching this I began to wonder why he never went anywhere with this damn surf board, like into the sea for instance….
Well, one afternoon, we had de-camped from the beach and were having a quick drink at the bar before going for a snooze when “Surfs Up” came running past us togged up in a wet-suit and with his surf board under his arm and hading for the beach.
Now I couldn’t believe that he was going off to surf in the same sea in which I’d been swimming not ten minutes before, the same sea that had been not unlike a millpond.
Well he was.
“This I must see” said Dave.
So he went and stood on the edge of the terrace and watched our very own David Hasselhoff trot off down the beach.
And trot he did. He headed down the beach about five or six hundred yards gradually slowing down to a gentle stroll [still carrying the surf board] and eventually sauntering up from the waters edge to sit, on the board, under the trees that fringed the beach.
Hoots of laughter from Dave.
Not that we had ever taken this guy seriously but of course, all credibility was now gone.
Later that evening while chatting somebody in the bar Dave mentioned this and we got a bit more info.
It turned out that “Surfs Up” was called Leslie and came from Leicester.
Well having watched Neighbours twice and had New Zealand lamb for dinner don’t turn you into an antipodean overnight….. or even at all, in some cases it seems.

Home again, home again, jigerty jig

Ah, it’s nice to be back. No, really, it is! I must admit that the cold was a bit of a shock while we waited on the platform for the Gatwick express but, other than that, nice.Not so nice was having to get off of the plane, zip home, get my bits together and go straight to work. I was like a fukin zombie! No change there then…