Mucky Leeds

Some pictures of Leeds. It's changed a bit since these photo's were taken in the mid 70's, but not much!

above: The Leeds "Pub Quiz" dog. It's got the sort of look that asks

questions like "What are you looking at?" and "Do you

want some?" Questions to which every possible answer is wrong.

above: "Eat it all up or you won't grow up big
and strong, like me".

above: A [then] typical Leeds Scene, washing strung across the street.

above: Leeds kids, all eating chips. They must be posh kids

because the chips aren't wrapped in newspaper.

above: "Hey, Mam. Some bugger's called an ambulance". This is the

Rosebanks area of Leeds and was used in the original opening

shots of Coronation Street [set in Manchester].

above: This could have been taken outside my aunt's back door, so similar.

above: Yokshire Evening Post [there's nowt in it].

above: "come on dad", "aye, a'reet mam, I'm comin'"

above: I doubt that this is a Dalmation, these little horrors

probably drew on the dog with a pen!

above: Today, in any city in the country, this poster would be meaningless.

The whole Kingdom being populated by bastard offspring.

Computer problems

I’ve spent the weekend in a bit of a muck-sweat. Somehow or other, my trusty laptop [as opposed to this piece of shit that I’m using] picked up a virus.
As the minutes ticked by, the virus got worse.
As I’m going to the bad-lands of the north [Leeds] this weekend, I wanted to take the laptop with me [it’s a photographic type thing / piss up] and needed it to deal with my camera. With this in mind and combined with my panic, I’d phoned a friend from the IT section at work to see if he could help me out.
This is a man who thinks Lord of the Rings was a documentary and whose internet connection comes through “middle Earth”. “Yeah, no probs, dude, come see me Monday”.
Being the clever sod that I am, the only reason I needed to go and see him was to explain the error of his way in calling me “Dude”. Dude, indeed!
Anyway, the upshot was that I ended up having to “recover” the bloody thing. This means that the machine reverts back to it’s factory settings. All my links have gone as has quite a lot of music. The pics I managed to save to disc.
So with things now resolved, everything now looks Tetley Bitter coloured and fish and chip shaped [as opposed to shit coloured and pear shaped]. Leeds, here I come!

Taking out the trash

Not that I'm going anywhere just yet, but, being at a bit of a lose end, I thought I'd start having a sort out of some of the crap that I've got.

The books are sorted. When we left the West End to come up here, I had a massive cull of books. I think that that was one of the hardest things that I've ever done.

Books are a comfort. But, realism takes over and, moving from a large three bedroom flat with a huge living room and a long hallway, to a rabbit hutch sized flat without room to swing a kitten, meant that a swingeing cull was necessary.

Anyway, having gotten over that hill, I don't have to weed the books again.

Tat of other kinds, though, lurks in every draw and cupboard. Just looking at the crap that I keep on my bedside table exemplifies this. Watches that I don't wear [one of which doesn't work], tie pins and clips for the ties that I also don't wear, cuflinks, likewise. Cigarette lighters that only need evil smelling petrol to bring them back to life and sundry bits of surgical steel jewelry for piercings long healed up.

With the exception of the car key, junk, the lot.

Good Riddance to Bad Shit

An article in this weeks Camden New Journal lightened my heart.A piece of graffiti that has blighted the area, not that it takes a lot of blighting, has been almost removed.

This was culled from the blog of some burk.

While everyone was busy watching last night's fire, an act of destruction was taking place at the other end of Chalk Farm Road.
The famous maid stencil by Banksy is in a parlous state. Someone has painted over most of the image, and stenciled the words 'all the best' over the top.
Small groups keep pausing in front of the defaced mural, possibly on their way back from looking at the fire damage. Throw in the Stables Market, currently being reimagined by developers, and Camden Town is looking like one big epicentre of lost heritage right now.
Apocalypse NW1.

Am I missing something? I think not. What I have noticed is that all the morons who are mourning this piece of shit are those who wear their trousers halfway down their arse.

School things [Cardinal Heenan]

For those few regular readers, this will make no sense. It's the result of a post on Secret Leeds and is for anybody from that forum to whom it may mean something.

I don’t know if you’ve seen the new building that is Cardinal Heenan. It’s built in the “New Millennium, Brutal Rotunda” style.
Not that things have gone down in the world since its predecessor. If I were a betting man, I’d bet my last ciggie that the teaching staff [or are they now called the “Faculty”] are just as damaged a bunch oddities that they were in my time.
I went to Cardinal Heenan when it changed from being St John Bosco and St Thomas Aquinas. Two of my brothers had previously been at Tommy Akkers when it first opened so the precedent was already set.
Some of the staff who had taught my brothers were still there when I attended. Mr McCormack, the headmaster had taught my brothers Latin and, I think, English. Mr Crossen had taught them chemistry and taught me the same twenty years later. Fr Creasy ministered to our spiritual needs, well, not mine exactly, because I never had any. More recently he was the hospital chaplain at Jimmy’s and ministered to my day, a non-Catholic, when he was dying, also doing his funeral service. As my brothers noted, he hadn’t changed a bit. And he hadn’t!
Some of the others who attempted to teach me were Mr Brockwell, French. And in keeping with the habits of that nation, he didn’t use deodorant. Mr Hopley, Physics. Bulging eyes and a manic demeanour. Mr Gibbons, English, had been a pupil at Tommy Akkers with my brothers. The apple really doesn’t fall far from the tree [now, I believe, the Deputy Head]. Mr Jones, Art. Aging hippy with a silver Datsun ZX sports car. Never taught me much art, spending most of his time making toys for his daughter. Mr Firth, PE. The un-fittest PE teacher in the world. Mr Tomlinson, Computer Studies. Doubtless called something else now, an aficionado of combed hair and pink ties. Mr Donovan. English. Famed for wearing pyjama jackets in lieu of shirts. He smelled like a pole cat and when we left, was bought a present of a bar of soap and a box of paper hankies by some wag, who’s name I forget. I saw him many years after, in the New Penny. I didn’t introduce myself because 1. He wouldn’t have remembered me. 2. I didn’t want it to seem like a chat-up line. I don’t mind a bit of rough but Ted Donovan was well below even my horizon! Ms Wilmott, History. History for me was not as it’s portrayed in Alan Bennett’s “History Boys”. Wilmott being a vile, bitter woman who in a class of mostly boys, had the smallest breasts of all then present. [Miss, Miss, you’re a real treasure. A proper sunken chest!]. Butch, who’s name I cant recall. He was just and always Butch. He taught PE and I think Chemistry. He took us for rugby occasionally and I attribute this to never understanding the rules of that game.
There are others but they are too insignificant to mention, not that any of the above are significant.
Some of my co-conspirators in being educated were; Pavlo Andrusiac, Peter Cook, Paul Durkin, James Connel [dead], Kevin Caufield [somebody told me he murdered somebody], David Greene [murdered his Father]. Paul Miller [I worked with his Dad at Barnbow], Mark Keane [cute], Tom Nutgens [ginger & bullied], Barry Holdsworth, Paul Midgley, Brendan Davey, Jeremy Wood. There are more but that’s for a later post.