Fog in the eyes

Of the few blogs that I read, one of them [Girl on a train] lists losts of music. Another blog, KAZ, had referenced this and also posted about music.

Music is much on my mind at the moment.

In March, Jean-Michelle Jarre is playing at the Albert Hall and, come hell or highwater, I'm going. I missed the chance to see him the last time he was in London, about 1990. While it won't be a stomping, clapping affair, I'm really looking forward to it. Music for the soul.

Music, for me, tends to be the stuff that I download from Limewire, high energy dance / trance type of thing. I don't often buy music but I did yesterday. Britten's "Peter Grimes". Not only is it opera, it's [semi] modern opers. As with most albums, they tend to be bought for just the one track. I bought Peter Grimes for one piece of music. Don't ask me what it's called but I've known it for years. It tends to accompany scenes of the sea [which is the setting / theme of Peter Grimes]. It's the most sublime piece of music I can remember hearing in years. More music for the soul.

Benjamin Britten

Third and last part; the best band in the world, ever, was Lindisfarne.
In times past, I would travel all over the country to see Lindisfarne. Times change and while I still like the music, I stopped going to see them lots of years ago.

It saddened me to discover recently that Alan Hull, lead singer and founder of Lindisfarne had died.

Sadly, Lindisfarne are remembered for a re-hash of their most famous track "Fog on the Tyne" [with Paul Gasgoine, proffessional football player and fat bastard]. What they should be remembered for is having Gennesiss as their support act and selling out Newcastle City Hall every December for years on end.

God bless you Alan, Fog on your Tyne, fog in my eyes.

Alan Hull

For Doug

I saw this pic in the London Lite on the way home today;

It's a picture of Sophie Ellis Bextor, sometime chantuse and oft-time baby doll voiced plastic face.

Ms E B [no hyphon] is the new public face of the Childrens Society. As laudable an organisation as this may be, I'm not entirly convinced that it had fallen so far from favour that it needs the likes of S E B to promote it. I would have thought that she was even less well known than they are. Makes you wonder who is clutching at straws the most?

While I don't particularly dislike Ms E B, I dont think I'd rush to stop anybody who wanted to club her to death with my freely available pickaxe handle [no appointment neccessary].

What puzzles me is this, what was the idea behind using hundreds & thousands? If you look closly you can see that that's what she's sitting in. But a cursory glance looks as though the plastic from which her face is constructed , has melted and she is desolving back into her constituent parts.

Here's hoping.

[something is wrong with Blogger and I can't check my spelling so.......sori]

Notable Dates

For those of you who use Google as your search engine, you probably know that today is the fiftieth anniversary of LEGO. LEGO is a good thing. As a child, it was the only toy I ever had or ever wanted. Actually, that's not true, I did have the odd few cars and board games but I had hoards and hoards of LEGO. Some of it I had inherited from my older brothers but most of it was mine. Thinking about it, some of those bricks which were handed down to me must have been some of the first ones produced.

In turn, I passed it on to my nephew who has since given it to his daughter. Good old LEGO.

To show the versatility of the stuff, somebody has even made a Sidney out of it!

The second "notable" of the day is that it's the saints day of St Thomas Aquinas. Tommy Akkers, the patron saint of novel readers and dart players. Despite going to a school named after him, I have absolutely no idea what he is actually the patron saint of.

Go on Tommy, eighteen, seven, double three to finish.

Secret Leeds

I've just been getting my daily fix of "Secret Leeds", a forum dedicated to my home town.

One of the posts mentioned a local band who were around in the late 70's called GYGAFO. It then, very briefly, told how they came by the name. Apparently, they were called something else but changed it. It was what they were told to do by the management of the first few venues in which they played.

Being a bit thick and fresh home from work, I didn't get this for a few minutes.

[For those of you who still don't get it, it means "Get Your Gear And Fuck Off". I'm still laughing].

Reprises and Surprises

It's official, Christmas is canceled. To be more accurate, our Christmas "Do" was cancelled.

I won't say that I'm sorry but it only means that I will have to suffer it at a later date.

That was the good news.

The bad news was that, having been laid in bed for about an hour and finally managing to get off to sleep, the whole building started to shake to the accompaniment of loud bangs.

Knowing that Brooks is a hand-less, heedless twat and can't come through a door without slamming it, I thought it was him. But then that thing in the back of your mind takes over and you think nope, it's not, something is wrong.

I jumped out of bed and looked at the cameras [I have a remove viewer facility for the CCTV on my laptop].

Outside, on the "Lane door" was a large, well dressed but very drunk gentleman doing a good job of shouldering the door.

Instinct takes over at this point and I simultaneously kicked David out of his bed, grabbed my night-stick and phoned the police.

The end result of all of this was that the chap who was doing his damnedest to get into the pub was trying to get into the wrong pub.

On closer inspection, he turned out to be the manager of the pub around the corner.

He arrived this evening to red facedly apologise. I didn't have the heart to tell him how close he came to being severely damaged by my baton wielding skills.

Oh dear!

Tomorrow [actually today] is our Christmas party. We, meaning the boss, has arranged to meet at the Weatherspoons pub in Leicester Square, and then on to China Town for a "big slap-up meal". I hate Chinese food. Even just the smell of it makes me ill. Oh dear....

I found this pic today. It embodies two of the things I hate most. Football and tattoos.

I'd poke my eyes out with a pointed stick before I'd have a tattoo done but to have a tattoo related to football AND have it on your face...... Madness!

I can believe that some burk would have an England team tattoo but a Leeds United one?

Wankers.

Friends reunited was one of the first websites I subscribed to when I first got internet access [all those years ago in 2000]. Apparently it was at the time run by a husband and wife team from their spare bedroom. A few years ago they sold it for a six figure sum.
Now, every page you open comes with a pop-up. If you increase your security level, their cookies don't enable so you cant open the site.

Wankers

All wrapped up in football.

I must apologise in advance for the lurid colour, but there is a reason.

I hate football. Almost every time I turn on the TV, which isn't often, it's generally football or, more recently, Poker. Did you ever think that you'd see the day when you could watch people playing cards on live TV?

Anyway, back to the football. One of my few regular blog reads, The Fatalist, was having a whinge about somebody slagging him off on another blog / message board. This was or is a football centered topic. I posted a reply in which I mentioned the Green Final.

The Green Final was the late Saturday afternoon sports rag for Leeds. It generally comprised just a couple of broad sheet pages.

Being the youngest of a whole troop of older, football mad brothers [and a father], it always fell to me to go out and get the Green Final. Although there were more than a few newsagents in Crossgates, only one, Marsden's, stocked this dam thing and me being sent to get it coincided with them, brothers and Dad, coming home from Elland Road, tea being ready and the start of Dr Who.

Marsden's was a fairish trek away. I could never figure out why I had to go and get this damn thing when 1. I was never going to read it. 2. One of my brothers could have stayed on the bus an extra stop and gone and gotten it. But, every week, [I had to go get it if Leeds were playing home or away] get it I did. It was sort of a tradition.

Tradition in our house meant that we had fish & chips on Friday. Going for the fish & chips was my job too. For some reason, which I don't recall, I was sent to get fish & chips on a Monday.

We always went to Wood's chippy. Dutifully I traipsed to Woods and it was closed. Using my own initiative, I went to Coe's. Now Coe's fish and chips were not a favourite of Mam's. "They use frozen fish" the fact that all fish has been frozen at some point passed Mam by, but, Coe's it had to be.

Home I trudged lugging "Six times, wi' scraps".

"What the bloody hell is this?" growled Mam

"Fish & chips"

"Why the hell did you get them gift wrapped?" as she stared at the parcels with a mild incredulity.

This puzzled me. It turned out that what she meant was that they were wrapped in the Green Final. I'd never even noticed. They were wrapped [in newspaper] and that was all that mattered. The colour of the wrapping never even being noticed by me.

It never occurred to me, although I did know it, that the Green Final had the worst reputation for having the ink come off on your hands and also that the colour came out of the paper when it got damp / wet. Every Saturday had seen me sitting down to tea with hands like Connemara marble, mottled green and black.

Although the fish and chips were never put directly onto the newspaper, a sheet of grease-proof paper separated them, some of the colour had tinted a few of the chips. These chips became mine. I won't recount the bollocking I got for getting the fish & chips from Coe's.

This is why I've always been safe in the knowledge that whatever football touches, it taints. Basically, the taint amounts to nothing but some people take it far too seriously.

As the saying goes.

I'm back to language again. I have just barked at some dumb 22 year old kid who made the mistake of describing an event that happened to him the year before last. Actually, he didn't get around to describing the event because he opened with "Back in the day". I hate "back in the day". I hate it all the more coming from somebody who was five years away from being born when I left school. That, would have been back in the fuckin day!

... and that leads me on to; Cameras.

I realised that while doing the last post, I still have the cameras that those pictures were taken with.

Both of the cameras were, although nominally, family cameras, it was mostly Dad who used them. Very occasionally, Mam would be entrusted with taking a photo if it was required that Dad was in the picture.

I can remember the first time I was allowed to take a picture. It would have been 1976 and we were on holiday in London. The obligatory trip to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guard saw me shoved to the front of the crown and a disembodied arm followed me, This arm shoved the camera into my hand and I took a photo of the approaching Welsh Guards.

I don't have the actual photograph but I do recall scanning it but can't now find the scanned pic.

It may have been for my birthday that year, or maybe the following year, that Mark, my brother, bought me a camera for my birthday. It was a Polaroid Land Camera.

This huge big thing used film which came in a box like cartridge and only took nine pictures. Once taken, the picture had to be pulled out of the side of the camera then left for a few minutes before removing the covering film. If you hesitated even slightly in pulling, you would be left with a white line down the middle of your photo. Likewise if you left the backing film on to long the photo would be black or if taken off to quickly, the photo would be white. I never got the opportunity to spoil many photo's as my pocket money didn't often stretch to buying the film.

This camera always languished in the bottom of my wardrobe and it was not until recent years that I took it out of it's box to discover that I'd left the batteries in that last time I'd used it and the whole thing had turned into a green chemical smelling lump.

It was many years before I owned another camera and I had this one stolen in a burglary.

I now swap and change between three different cameras, depending upon where I am or what I'm doing. My skill at photography is still crap, but I try.

Like me, my Dad kept his first camera, a Kodak Box Brownie. It was made some time around 1947 and he came by it because he swapped it for 2lbs of sugar.

I don't know if he bought his next, and final camera, a Kodak Brownie 127, but he kept it too. I have them both.

Apparently, it is still possible to get films for these two cameras so I must give them a go. I suppose that if I do, I will be in the same boat as my Dad. When he used the camera, picture taking was an event in its own right, film being expensive and not to be wasted. This is diametrically opposed to digital photography. My Olympus, on which the photo below is taken on has a 4gig memory card. I can blast away with impunity. That wouldn't have done for Dad.

My Dad's cameras in the middle.

# Holidays are coming, Holidays are coming

Holidays are coming but I'm not thinking in terms of the Coke advertisement. I'm thinking of somewhere warm and sunny with lots of cute little Hispanic boys. Cuba, for instance. Cuba was good last time, it could be better this because I don't have to drag David along.

Holidays weren't always like that though. There was a time when it was very much like the Coke ads.
Most of our family holidays were spent at Bridlington or Scarborough. I remember them fondly but, some years ago I thought I'd scan the family snaps [I knew that my oldest brother would snaffle them away and they would be lost forever]. Looking at the pics, and they range over quite a lot of years, the one outstanding feature is of how cold it must have been. There isn't one shot of anybody looking remotely sunburned or even comfortably warm. Jumpers abounded.
The chill was generally offset by a huge steaming pot jug of tea, purchased from a stall on the promenade. Tea, the strength of which, would be enough to bring the glaze off of the inside of the jug. Mam would always have made up a parcel of sandwiches the chief ingredient of which would be sand. I don't ever recall her keeping much sand in the pantry at home so it must have made its way into the parcels while on the beach.
Anyway, while scanning through my photo's, I thought I'd post a few of them here.

Paternal grandparents with me in the middle. Hats, coats and jumpers much in evidence.

Evidence of sunshine on the east coast!. It must be slightly warmer than the norm because both grandads have taken their jackets off. This is the only pic I have of all of my grandparents together.

Dad and Aunts Nell & Dot. Nelly looks frozen, Dot had the foresight to put a thick jumper on.

John, Frank, Mark, Mam & Dad. Despite being on the "beach", it must have been cold enough even to have kept shoes on!

Taken, apparently, at Brid [so it said on the back of the photo] and possibly the only photograph in existence of my brother John with a smile on his face. It must be because he is in the presence of one of his own species. Notice that they are all wearing their school uniform. Good old St Theresa's.

.... and that brings me on to... the Alan Bennett moment.

I like Alan Bennett. He's become a bit of a "National Treasure"recently but his writing hasn't suffered for that. My Mam liked Alan Bennett too. On one of my periodic visits, I had in the car one of the Talking Heads series of monologues, the one that includes A Lady of Letters, performed by Patricia Routledge.
The gist of it is, she's a frustrated spinster who gets her kicks by writing poison pen letters. Anyway, she's come home after having gone out to post another letter and had just finished reading the newspaper; "I've read the Evening Post," and before the next line came out my Mam followed it up with "There's nowt in it". Low and behold this is the next line in the speech.
Now I knew this, having heard the play before. Mam had never heard it. But, Mr Bennett, being a Leeds lad and writing about what he knows, voices his characters with the idiom with which he grew up.
"There's nowt in it" must be uttered in thousands of homes across Leeds every evening. It's even said in this house and I read the bloody thing on line!

Packing away family history.

I should have posted this the other day but got into doing something else instead.

One of the few things I inherited from my Mum was the box of Christmas decorations. They're nothing special, just common or garden wassailing balls. I think I'd better explain the difference. Christmas decorations were things like tinsel, holly and strings of Christmas cards. The decorations hanging on the tree were always known as wassailing balls.

Anyway, they lived in a tin which, itself, lived on top of the wardrobe in the spare room [and the wardrobe was called the "Tallboy" and the spare room was "the box room". The tallboy was a very small short wardrobe and the only box that the box room contained was the box of wassailing balls. All very confusing, I know]. I'd never thought about it until recently, but the contents of the box and the box itself were quite a chunk of family history.

All the balls in the tin are exactly the same as I always remember them. I don't recall any new ones ever being bought to replace the occasional broken ones. Bearing in mind that they are glass, and very delicate, and that fact that there are so many of them, is a bit of a miracle [the picture shows only a very few of them]. There are lots of different shapes, bells [that actually tinkle] trumpets, horns, fruits and many other shapes. The box also contains a couple of rolls of ribbon on which the Christmas cards were hung and a matchbox [itself very old, and bearing a design which I don't ever recall seeing, other than in the tin] which holds the minute clothes peg type things for fastening the Christmas cards to the ribbons.

Typical of Mam, the bottom of the box is lined with a folded sheet of newspaper. Now, I'm sure that I've seen this piece of paper lots of times, well, since I was old enough to decorate the Christmas tree, but I'd never taken it out of the tin until last Sunday night.

It's a page from the Yorkshire Evening Post, January 5th 1966. That's about a year and three weeks after I was born.

So, the sheet of paper is the only thing that I can date with any certainty. My eldest brother says that he can only ever remember the same wassailing balls in the same tin and he's well into his fifties. Mam and Dad aren't here anymore so I cant ask them. I'm beginning to wonder if they did buy the wassailing balls new or if the got them from somewhere else [grandma Phillips had very similar one's but had very few of them, so possibly, Mam got them from her mother]. I know that they didn't get the tin from new. Mam & Dad were never very big on potato crisps and there is no way they would have bought them in bulk, and before bags of crisps came in [cardboard] boxes of 48, they seem to have come in tins of 18. Now, I'll never know anything about the contents of the tin other than that when they were packed away in the new year of 1966, Mam, and it would have been Mam, lined, or maybe even relined, the tin with a page from the evening paper. I can be certain though that in 1966, the Yorkshire Evening Post still printed the same rubbish that it does to this very day.

Addendum; In a break with tradition,I've added something new to the box. The Santa Claus Russian doll. I bought it in a junk fair [I collect Russian dolls] and this one will, from now on, live in the tin with the wassailing balls. As it's not new, and it's not a replacement, it's not that much of a break with any tradition.

...and while I'm on the subject....

While I'm on the subject of revisionists, I don't believe in all this shit that "oh, the poor old Germans, they never gassed all those nasty lying Jews" shit. They did it, no mistake.

What I don't believe is all this crap, always trotted out by some French prick, along the lines of "my grandparents, zey were in ze resistance". This seems to be true of every horse eater I've ever met.

Working on that principle, France, at the time, must have had about 180 million men and women under arms. How come then that as soon as somebody arrives at their border in a tank, the whole country comes out with it's collective hands up?

Racist, realist, revisionist, historical.

I'm no more of a racist than your average white Anglo-Saxon supremacist. I'm patriotic to the point of being jingoistic, and I hate apologists.

I've just been looking for something about the Dambusters, and almost the first thing I found was from some cockhead passing comment on the name that Wing Commander Guy Gibson VC gave to his dog.

The dog's name was NIGGER. He called it Nigger because it was black. Now, every time the film is shown on the TV, it's edited so that the dog's name is never mentioned. Nigger was also the codeword which Gibson would radio back to bomber command to let them know that the dams had been destroyed. That now edited out too.

I'm now beginning to wonder when all the cowboy / western films that were churned out by Hollywood will be revised to remove all reference to Red Indian's or Indian's and you will find the likes of John Wayne's voice overdubbed to say "The hell I will, I'm gonna go shoot me some native North Americans / indigenous population", in the way the Will Smith saying motherfucker is overdubbed with mellon farmer on the BBC.

Come to that, how long will it be before Nigger's grave has its headstone removed and replaced with something more politically correctLife is supposed to imitate art. Film making being an art [allegedly] can we fully expect to be running around calling people nigger, in the near future? I think not. It's more likely to imitate art in the way of literature, especially in the guise of George Orwell's 1984 where millions of people are employed in constantly re-writing history to erase what actually happened and replacing it with a new updated version.

English [as she should be spoken]

I don't pretend to be the most perfect when it comes to using the "English" language.

Recently, I've been using Flickr and "Secret Leeds" [a website that pertains specifically to Leeds]. The use, or miss-use, of out language is astounding.

Their ,instead of they're, buts as opposed to but's, plus loads of other gaffs.

I don't pretend to be that clever, or that I never make any mistakes [because I post when I'm pissed drunk, more often than not] but some of the mistakes that I've read make me cringe!

Here are some examples......

They're, there, their.

But, butts, But's.

Through, threw.

By, buy, bye.

So, sew, soe.

Red, Read.

Reed, read.

Plus many, many more [or, ore moor].