If you want to get ahead, get a hat

[Apologies for the delay in posting this, it's about ten days old]
I don't like hats. I'm very non discriminatory about them, I hate them all, baseball caps, beanies, etc, etc. David Beckham has just added weight to my argument by wearing his latest bit of headgear [while being pissed].

I don't have anything against him being pissed, he's over 18 but what the fuck has he got on his head? It looks like an old bag re-modeled from an old jumper. How the Mekon sorry, Victoria, let him go out of the house with that on his head is beyond me!

This leads me on nicely to the indisputable fact the Beckham is a prick. I don't like him for lots of reasons eg. squeaky voice, footballer, tattooed fool and he wears hats.

It seems that wearing a hat goes hand in hand with being a prick. A few other notables spring to mind. Jay Kay who is some kind of singer who dances a bit and thinks he's a black man. Craig David, who also is supposedly some kind of singer, also dances around a bit and is a black man.

He is responsible for the fashion of ugly, cheap pricks, wearing woolly hats indoors. Now, if it were to be snowing, I could understand the need to wear a woolly hat but if it's 18 degrees with the sun splitting the trees, why would you want to advertise the fact that you have stick-out ears, cheap sunglasses, and that your hair will smell like a dog, by wearing a skin tight woolly hat?

I think we should be told

Why aren't the teletubbies on any more?

Wedding Bells

I have nothing against gay marriage per se, but don't you think that all those poor fools who get hitched are just a tad over lovey-dovey?
I got home from work today to find that Dave had two fine examples of loves-young-dream enquiring about their post-nuptial knees up [no pun intended]. I swear to god that it was these two, but with Ben Sherman shirts.
I give it three months.

More Swiming Pools

Again, following on from my last post about a swimming pool. Why is it that swimming pools are always wrong in some way or other? A few spring to mind.

Leeds "International" Pool was designed and built by the architect John Poulson who turned out to be a complete crook and the Olympic size pool that Leeds Cit Council were paying for was about three feet toooooooooooo short of being "Olympic" size and so was ever after called Leeds International Pool.

Another one close to home [Leeds] was Temple Moor High School. A local secondary school, built in the 1960's complete with a swimming pool. Built on the side of a big, fuck off, steep hill with its swimming pool rapidly sliding down the hill towards the city centre.

Swiss Cottage "Leisure Centre", wrong size pool in an area that the local [tax paying] residents didn't want or need.

Think of your local cess, sorry, swimming pool. What controversy surrounded its planning / building and subsequent use.

Old Buildings

Kentish Town baths, I hope it falls on all the c**ts who swim in it

Following on from one of my previous posts about old buildings.... Camden Council is now run by an alliance of the Lib-Dems and the Conservatives, a recipe for a fuck up if ever there was one. Our delightful council [the Lib-Dem part of it was voted in on the back of the fact that they would spend a silly amount of money refurbishing a Victorian swimming pool. This is forecast to cost £18 million pounds and, to garner this cash [along with the council's "Better & Cheaper" tenet] approximately 500 jobs. It is my honest belief, after eight pints of Kronenbourg, that all of those silly old sods who voted Lib-Dem on the back of the promise of a few new tiles at the Kentish Town pool, should be made to go swimming all day every day for the rest of their, hopefully, very short lives.

Underground Camden

Camden Town, apparently, is a vibrant, hip - happening place. You could have fooled me. What is hip - happening about a street filled with shoe shops? So, maybe it's the people who make it hip - happening. I doubt that thousands of European students, mooching around like dazed cattle, create such an atmosphere. Anyway, they're mooching around looking for this elusive hip-ness so don't count as a part of "it". Could it be the dozy bitch with the big New Rock boots and the bits of coloured string woven into her hair. No, it's not her either. She's only there to fumble in her impossibly small bag as she clumps through the ticket barrier on the tube. Could the hip-ness be the fruity language shouted at her as she stands on the left hand side of the escalator? No it's not that either. Perhaps, then, it's the fact that she stumbles as she negotiates the last step of the escalator then falls slat on her face thus screwing up her blue & black striped tights and tripping up another eight people. Yup, that's it, that's what makes Camden a Hip [replacement] place to be.

I dress like this because I want to be seen as an individual, just like my mates who also dress like this.

Living in the 21st Century

Stanley Buildings, des-res?

King's Cross, that shit house that you fall into when you get off the train from the dark satanic mill laden "North" is having a bit of a face lift. Actually, it's not. St Pancras Station is having a face lift. The rest of the place is still a hole [more so since Thames Water started digging to the earth's core]. Right beside the new St Pancras station are a couple of blocks of 19th century tenement blocks called Stanley Buildings. I doubt that when they were new they were worth living in. Over a hundred years later they should have been long gone. Had the developers of the area, Argent, had their way, they would have been. Thanks to a bunch of "Old Is Good, Leave it as It Is" campaigners, Stanley Buildings is set to remain. I would hazard a guess that if any of these "campaigners" were living in these ancient hovels, their campaign would be to get them listed as unfit for human habitation and running a raffle to be the one to press the button to blow them up.

Look a little closer

Well, here it is. what loads of people have been waiting for, a pic of Harry P in the nip. Actually, it's not. If you look at the pre-publicity pics from about an inch below the belly button and upwards, it's the boy wizard himself. From there downwards, it's somebody else. Ah, the marvels of photo shop. Expect to see more of this one around!

Life is cheap enough

Albert Pierpoint

I like Richard, we have similar interests. I can always guarantee that if I sit in the pub and talk to him I will end up 1. being pissed, 2. not in any kine of disagreement. I don't need disagreement, I get a full working day of it every working day.

Today was the exception.

I don't recall how we ended up on the subject of capital punishment, but we did. I am opposed to capital punishment and I'm beginning to think that I'm one of few who are. I was quite surprised that Richard is very, very pro-death penalty.

I guess that it was one of those "don't judge a book by its cover" type situations. Just because I'm a dyed in the wool Tory / racist / bigoted bastard, he obviously thought that I was going to be one of the "hang 'em high" brigade. Well, I'm not.

I'm also not one of those who doesn't believe in it because of the "what if you hang the wrong man" argument. Un-bloody-lucky.

It's just wrong. Judicial murder is revenge. Imprisonment is not the same. It's not a deterrent, but it's not revenge either.

I've never been a believer in capital punishment and this was re enforced by my reading of Executioner Pierpoint, the autobiography of Albert Pierpoint, the UK's most prolific hang-man. He followed his Father and his uncle into the "craft" and became super efficient.

In the end, after he had resigned, he came to the belief that for all of the hangings he had carried out, he, or the punishment that he carried out, had served as no deterrent [read it, it's a good book that expresses no moral standpoint, only giving the facts as he saw them].

The one point on which I admired Mr Pierpoint was that he was honest enough to own up if he made a mistake. Our cousins across the water gas, fry, poison and maim their bad-boys and fuck it up on a regular basis but they never admit that they were in the wrong. The first time some yank soldier puts a dog lead around the neck of a goat eater then he / she is branded as a torturer. Hey, uncle Sam, look along your death rows.

Bigger may not be better, apparently

Why do people hate things that are good at what they do? Today I was talking to somebody about how he could go about finding a particular website. "Oh, I couldn't possibly use Google" he said in a most offended manner. Now I never mentioned Google, I only said "search RareTV". Search meant type it into whatever search engine he used and see what the result was. All of a sudden I find myself on the receiving end of a political diatribe on how Google helps oppression of the masses in China. Who the fuck cares?

It's the same with Starbucks and McDonald's. Ok the service in Starbucks is poo but the coffee is fine. McDog have shite food but millions of lowlife vote for it with their feet. I doubt that good old Ronald McDonald sits wringing his hands because some Guardian reading prick thinks his employment policy and animal welfare ethics are a bit iffy.

So how come some sixty year old, otherwise sensibly thinking, middle class guy suddenly develops a social conscience about four billion peasants, most of whom don't have any Internet access to be oppressed by anyway? What is the world coming to?

Old TV

I bought a few things from RareTV.com this week. Funny how you remember things as being great when you watched them [years ago] then when you see them again, they're crap. Here is what I bought;

The Tripods [series 2]. Now I remember the tripods, it was shown early evening Saturdays. I don't remember a second series. Probably because it was so crap, and boy, is it crap.

The Clifton House Mystery. One of those Sunday tea-time series for which the BBC was justly famous. Not a bad watch but not quite top notch. [I thought It had Dominick Taylor in it, It didn't]

A Day Out. Alan Bennett's first TV outing. very good.

Our Day Out. A Willy Russell "Play For Today" Good, but not quite as good as I remember.

I think that considering that each disc was only £7, it wasn't as bad as it could have been. I'm still waiting on one series, Johnny Jarvis. It was shown in 1982 and was shown in the early days of Channel 4. It's never been repeated. It never did much when first shown because it was shown in the same slot that BBC2 was showing The Young Ones.

The next Brian Glover

Kes

I had a bit of a shock this morning. Lately, I've been involved in a project with kids which has involved them making a film. The film [video, actually] is made up stories culled from older people and mostly acted, directed filmed etc by kids. It's been quite enjoyable and seems to have been worthwhile.

My short bask in the reflected glory of this project was suddenly put in the Shadow when my copy of the film arrived in the post this morning.

I had a couple of small parts [art really does imitate life] in some of the scenes. Loud and aggressive adult, shouter at kids, evil copper, that sort of thing. What I never realised until I watched it was how awful my accent is.

I always knew that I had quite a strong Yorkshire accent but I never realised that it was such a strong Leeds accent. Hailing from Leeds this shouldn't be much of a shock for me. But it was. I'd thought that I'd managed to knock the sharp edges off of it but the opposite seems to have been the case.

Being assailed by a good strong Yorkshire accent, such as the one wielded by the late Brian Glover [in the pic above, from the film Kes] is like being cuffed around the head with rolled up newspaper. Having heard my dulcet northern tones, it was like opening the boot cupboard door and having all the clogs fall out on you.....

You can always tell somebody from Leeds [but you can't tell them much!] by their awful clanging twang. Think of the character of Vera Duckworth in Coronation Street. Liz Dawn, herself from Leeds, is the epitomy of the Leeds twang. Another Corrie veteran Gail Tilsdly [Hellen Worth] is also a "Loiner". The difference between them is vast. Liz Dawn comes from Torre Road. All back-to-back, two up-two down houses of the sort inhabited by her alter ego on the TV. Ms Worth, by contrast, was born in West Park. You don't walk into town from West Park. In fact, if your postcode is LS25, you don't walk.

The difference between LS4 and LS25 is Crossgates [LS15] where I did my growing up. This probably accounts for my accent not being as "smooth" as one but fails to account for it being considerably rougher than the other!

Revenge on TV

Earlier in the week I seem to remember seeing a pic of Michael Winner in a wheel chair. Being ill, I thought he may need cheering up. Mike, if you're reading, watch this.

Relieved of Comedy

I'm sure I remember a time when Comic Relief was at least worth watching. What I don't recall is it being worth watching right the way through. It seemed to start at around the same time, just after the Six o'clock news and finish at around midnight. In between times there would be some of the tired old faithfuls. Dads Army, Only Fools and Horses, The Good Life. All of these interspersed with Lenny Henry urging us to give, give, give. It was all in a good cause. Who or what we were supposed to be relieving by laughing I can't remember. Nor do I recall seeing anything as being "paid for by you mugs via Comic Relief" type banners / placards on anything.

I'm sure it was just an excuse for the BBC to repeat some old tat and not have to put any thought into that nights scheduling.

Things, as they say, aint what they used to be. Today IS comic relief day. Looking at tonights program listing and all I can see is 19.00 COMIC RELIEF, THE BIG ONE. No other indication of what to expect.

But today is Ground Hog Day. It seems like every night since New Years Day, the TV has been filled with Comic Relief Does....... The only thing they don't seem to have done is the evening news. At least all of this week the telly has been full of Comic Relief things.

In years past I would never have dreamed of giving anything [money] to such an entrpries. As the years go on and such events become self promoting guff I only dream of one of the major participants being caught with his / her fingers in the till so that we'll never have to suffer the bloody thing again.

Antiques Roadshow

Sidney, the dog with the Queen Ann legs.

This is how he was described by one of the customers. The quote was actually "He's like a coffee table with Queen Ann legs." Poor old Sid. Looking at the pic below, you can see what he meant!

Who

Having a read through the "Standard Lite" freebie paper today I saw a most uninteresting piece about a most uninteresting "celeb". I think the article is called 60 second interview and today's interviewee was Rhona Cameron. Ms Cameron is one of those stars in the invisible part of the celeb spectrum. With the exception of "I'm a Celebrity, get me out of here!", something of an oxymoron of a show, I don't recall what it was she was celebrated for. Actually, I lie, she was famous for being a lesbian.

The interview asks the usual dull sort of questions like Beatles or Rolling Stones, staying in or going out, that sort of guff.

It seems that Ms Cameron likes staying in, hates people and doesn't like to be recognised [fat chance]. Wow! she sounds like my type of lesbian. Small wonder she doesn't gawp at you out of the pages of Hello Magazine or appear as a panelist / judge on Saturday night TV pap. Could it be possible in my hope of hopes that she could infect all other lesbians into "staying in" and not inflicting their elbows on the rest of us as they shove to the bar to get eight pints of Guinness and a Bacardi and coke. Fingers crossed.

I'm not sure if the number in the corner is the BBFC classification or the number of people who know who she is.

Little person on board

Doom, gloom and despondency. I’m working early turn from tomorrow. This is a bit of a mixed blessing. It means that I get home while the shops are still open [because David does bugger all around the house, claiming to be toooo busy]. It also means that I have to run the gauntlet of using the 46 bus service early in the morning.
At that time of the day the 46 is a bit of a baggage van for staff from the Royal Free [Hospital] on their way to work. Because the Royal Free is quite a forward thinking place, they provide a crèche. This means that quite a few, well, seemingly the same four people, go to work and take their off-spring. All well and good in theory but the problem is that they take them in prams [strollers / buggies]. I could live with this if they would take the brat out of the pram, fold the thing, and then get on the bus. That, though, would be far to easy.
The Americans got man on the moon with very little mishap. The Brits can't get woman on the bus without loads of frigging around, bumped ankles and much rummaging, in sundry different bags, for the Oyster card.
Because this is “Hampstead, don’t you know”, prams have to be the big, three wheeled, designer type things [designed by people who were never going to use them].

I do recall, and not so many years ago too, that the bus driver would not let prams on unless they were folded and could be stored in the luggage thingy.

Because our glorious leader [Mayor, Ken Livingstone] has made provision on the buses for people in wheelchairs, silly sods with prams think that this space is for them and their brogdinaggian size prams.

London buses are not the biggest in the world and the 46 is no exception. It's the same as the one below.

Now you see what I mean. Two of these fools with prams get on at the same stop as I do. They then get off at the Royal Free, 800 yards away. What amazes me is that they will stand and wait for a bus when in the time that they have waited plus the time they spend struggling with the pram getting onto and off of the bus, they could have walked the distance.

Jobs Worth +Technology = Trouble

Oh the joy of technology. Because when we re-furbed the pub, we were working to a tight budget, some of the equipment was "previously enjoyed". The EPOS till system will run as a stand alone system but if you hook it up to a PC, you can tinker with the till screen layout without having to keep swapping backwards and forwards etc, you can adjust the prices [very handy!] and you can cash up all the tills in one fell swoop without loads of frigging around. Well, our till system was new but the PC was one I cadged from a friend. The monitor has always been a bit iffy and it finally went phut last night. This morning sees me trotting down to PC World.

Laying hands to the cheapest monitor, £99.99, I then stood in the queue for fifteen minutes while some 12 year old boy arsed around with the till.

Finally, my turn came. He wafted his security tag de-activator thing over the box, then zapped it with a bar code reader thingy, then typed the Gettysburg Address into the till and asked me my first initial.

"C"

"and your surname?"

"why?"

"it's for the till"

"but the monitor is not for me"

"who is it for?"

"none of your business!"

"but I need it for the till" he pleaded.

"I just want to pay for it"

Unbeknown to me he had pressed the button for help.

Some other 12 year old appears and, I guess, asks [in a language other than English] what's going on. He then turns to me and says "you have to give your name".

"Why?"

"It's for the till"

"But the damn thing's not for me"

"But you're buying it"

"I came with somebody else's money and will take the monitor back to them"

"why couldn't they come and get it?"

"None of your business. I'll tell you what, forget it." and I gave him the damn thing back.

Now I wasn't buying anything, I followed him as he walked away with what was going to be my monitor.

"Why do I have to give you my details?"

"It's for the guarantee"

"But I didn't want a guarantee"

"Well if it breaks you wouldn't be able to bring it back"

"have you ever heard of the Sale of Good & Services Act?"

"Yeah"

"So if it broke, I could bring it back, guarantee or otherwise"

"But it's the law, we have to ask"

"Which law?"

"The law"

At which point I showed him my ID and told him to return to the till, take the monitor with him, and that that was where I intended to pay [cash] for the monitor, and that I wasn't going to give him any details, personal or otherwise.

The morals of this story are [many];

If you don't like something, complain / stand your ground/ refuse etc.

Don't shop at PC World.

Don't run errands while your lazy Irish boyfriend festers in bed.

The only person to whom you are obliged to give your name, address, date and place of birth, is a police officer who may ask you in the course carrying out his duties. Everybody else can kiss for it.

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