Sidney Hounds Blog blah blah

Obama takes second place

2009-01-21T00:12:00.003Z

As I said in my last post, it was ten years since I was in hospital having my ear re-fitted. How prophetic, then, that Sunday morning sees me felled on the bedroom floor by kidney stones.
I’ve had kidney stones twice before so I knew instantly what was happening.
On the last occasion, I didn’t drag myself off to hospital. I just rolled around on the floor drinking gallons of water, crying and swearing at David.
This time, the onset was somewhat different. When I said felled, felled I was. Luckily, I live just across the road from the hospital so I [eventually] got dressed and dragged myself over there.
The good thing about kidney stones is that on the triage scale, you score third only to birth and heart-attack so you get seem PDQ.
After that, things slowed down a bit and it was decided that I should have them removed.
I’m not a fan of hospital stays and, not that I relish any of them, this one held the promise of few pleasures. Least of these was having some sixteen year old urologist explain to me that they poke a little hole in my side and “dig them out”.
This was borne out by the consent form [basically, a risk assessment] which explains how things are done. This, though, comes with a caveat. Should Dr Crippen so choose, once they get you on the table with your eyes taped shut, they can tinker around to their hearts content. And they did.
As an aside, my sixteen year old medico said that card up the sleeve was the Ureteroscopy.
This delightful process involves feeding a largish diameter tube up the urethra which has within it a tool fro breaking up the stones. Most of the tube is then removed leaving only the portion from the kidney through to the bladder. Because this portion is now wider, it’s easier for the crushed up pieces of stone to pass into the bladder and then out of the body.
In lay-mans terms, they shove a garden hose up your dick with a pair of pliers in the end, have a bit of a cruch about, then they leave the tube behind!
Because the pain of kidney stones derives from the stone passing from the kidney to the bladder, the nice wide tube negates this. I’m assured that the blood that I’m pissing is because of the “localised damage” to the inside of my dick and the “bruising of the urethra and kidney”
Now that I’m home, I can watch the inauguration [or a recording of it]. At least I can stop the program while I run to the loo for a piss and a scream!

Ten yEAR anniversary

2009-01-13T14:19:00.002Z

I’m crap with dates, birthdays and the like. I could always remember my Mother’s birthday. Never Dad’s. My brother, John, 13th of August, not that I’d ever send a card to him.
About the only other date of significance is the 13th of January. That was the day I had my ear bitten off.
It’s now exactly ten years ago and yet I can remember everything.
It wasn’t a fight, I was set upon. I can remember the sound, like crunching celery, and I can remember the junior doctor in A&E telling me that I shouldn’t have put the detached piece in ice. I’ll remember that for next time!
I can remember the pain I had to put up with overnight after being sent home with the ear stuck roughly to the side of my head and held in place with a bandage, and the trip over to Mount Vernon Hospital the following day.
Anyway, ten years on and the scars [which were inside and also around the back] have faded and it doesn’t look altogether bad.
Byron is a bit squeamish about touching it and having looked at the photo and seen the hairs growing from it, I’ve given it a miss myself.
I may treat it and buy it a pint this evening.
Any excuse!

Perfume

2008-09-21T19:44:00.003Z

I don't like perfume. To this end, I don't wear perfume. I don't even wear perfumed deodorant or use scented soap.

Actually, this isn't true. There are a very few perfumes that I do like the smell of.

New West, by Aramis, which is now discontinued, and 4711 Cologne.

Something in an Alan Bennett play had reminded me about 4711 and [this is about four years ago] David was going to New York. "Is there anything you want me to bring you back?" he asked.

"Get me a bottle of 4711", I said.

Now, prior to this, I'd only ever seen 4711 in the smallest of bottles. I could recall the scent of it, but, most of all, I could remember the label on the bottle. Turquoise and gold, very intricate, but the smallest of bottles. This giving it an air of exclusivity.

Anyway, David went off to New York and returned with a suitcase filled with crap.

Amongst the crap was the biggest bottle of 4711. Not only big but one whole litre in size. Something akin to the size of bottle that you tend to see in the window of a chemist!

To this end, I did use some of the scent but the rest of it "went off".

I should have kept the bottle but, stupidly, threw it away.

Ah, well. Never mind.

All of the above was brought about by an incident on Friday night when David came up to me in the pub. Before he had a chance to speak, I told him to fuck off as the smell of his perfume was 1. making me sick, 2. the smell of his perfume was affecting the taste of my beer.

Needless to say, David wasn't happy. In the whole pantheon of little Disney characters, I'm not sure which one he was, but Happy wasn't one of them!

Shabby Chic, Shabby Service.

2008-09-20T17:53:00.003Z

I'm not a fan of eating out on Saturday mornings. A roaring hangover isn't conducive to me being good company.

"Paul's recommended this place" [The Engineer in Primrose Hill], the food being "to die for". Well, I was on the verge of death before the food so this should have easy.

After suffering a bout of Byron's navigational skills, we found the place. Then the fun began.

"Do you have a reservation?" asked a very brusque foreign woman.

"Why, are you busy?" I countered. This was as 12.30 and with only six other punters in the place.

Not having any cash on me, I ordered drinks and gave the woman my card.

"Are you eating?" she asked.

"Yes".

"Do you have a reservation?" [here we go again].

So, having sorted out a reservation, which necessitates her having to go away and return with a scrappy bit of paper on which to write Byron's name, we opted to sit outside in the beer garden. "It's full" replied the clipboard Nazi. "OK, we'll sit inside".

"Fine. Come back when you're ready to eat and you can sit anywhere inside".

Nice to be given such a choice in such an empty pub.

Having "found" a seat, we were presented with the menu. It was then that I realised that this isn't a pub. It isn't even a gastro-pub, it's a restaurant masquerading as a pub.

From where we were sitting, I could see into the beer garden and thus the tattooed, pierced thing who seemed to be the matre'd jardin [tattoos seemingly a prerequisite of being a staff member].

The garden wasn't "full", it contained four people seated at to tables. The remaining eight + tables being empty. Set, but empty.

During the course of the meal, Mr tattoo / piercing turned away 22 people with the "Have you got a reservation" trick. Obviously, the David Furphy school of business management as the tables were still empty as we left, some ninety minutes later.

The service was snappy [meaning that the staff snapped [at us]] but it was fast too. Fast to the extent that I almost had to wrest the plate from the waitress, she wanting to clear it away while I was still eating.

My starter, Mackerel pate was fine, and the main course, Toad in the Hole, was just like mother used to make; burned and containing Wall's Pork and Beef sausages [89p per pack in Tesco]. At £12 odd, I thought it a bit [!] on the expensive side.

Next time we have to trek around the smarter establishments of North London, I want to go to Pizza Hut for the all you can eat buffet!

Light in the daftness

2008-09-12T23:47:00.004Z

The BBC has a lot t answer for.

Last Sunday, the beeb showed Joanna Lumley going to the far end of the world [Norway] to see the Northern Lights.

Byron was very taken with the idea of the Northern Lights.

"Have you ever seen the Aurora Borealis?" he asked.

Actually, I have. I'd seen them, many years ago, in Inverness.

"Yes" I replied.

Admittedly, from Inverness, they are not as brilliant as they are from the likes of,say, Tromso, but, seen them I have.

I don't think that I can recall a TV program having such an impact on somebody as this one did.

To that end, I came home from work on Tuesday to find that he'd booked flights from London to Tomso in February, the 14th, to be exact, to go and see the Northern Lights.

Average temperature [during the day] -4'

Average temperature [at night, when out looking at the Aurora Borealis] -20'

Sporting Stupidity

2008-08-25T18:17:00.002Z

I'm incensed! Soccer Aid indeed. The gist of this crap is that the England Football Team play a team from the "rest of the world". The "rest of the world" seems to mean some bunch of Z List celebrities culled from the payroll of ITV.

Doubtless, this will mean four hours of shite on TV covering a game that only lasts 90 minutes.

I can think of certain places that are already planning a charity nights in support of this old tosh.

I could take them by the throat and shake them!

Don't the people who attend [and thus, support] this kind of event, realise that if the persons involved in kicking the ball around were to donate a weeks "wages", the charity concerned [UNICEF] would gain more money than they otherwise would.

Harsh as it may seem, I'd rather see the same old kids shoving their distended bellies towards the camera than see the same old arseholes in football shirts shoving their beer bellies towards the camera while attempting to berate the rest of us for not donating to Soccer Aid 2008.

Swiming [For Doug]

2008-08-25T11:43:00.003Z

SEB & HM VB. So much Botox, so little tallent!

Our turn next!

BoJo's gotten his hot, sticky little paws on the flag and in about fourteen hundred odd days, London will host the Olympics.

I fully intend being somewhere warm and sunny and away from all the silly sods in Lycra and the even sillier sods who will come to watch them.

But, I may consider staying if Doug gets his wish and "Team GB" have Sophie Ellis-Bexter and Her Majesty Victoria Beckham as their synchronised swimming team.

Apparently, they're already in training!

Olympic Gold, Olympic Shite

2008-08-19T22:24:00.005Z

I'm not much for watching the Olympics. I like the Winter Olympics but all this running around etc, etc no.

This year, though, the UK or, Team GB, as they seem now to be known, are doing rather well.

There are though a few exceptions.

Yesterdays press was full of how well Team GB are doing. This amounted to a tiny panel for each medal winning participant.

On the following page [and this was actually half a page, as opposed to a few column inches] was a whole big write up apropos how Paula Radcliffe came 21st in some 100 yard dash and how her recent injury had made her shit.

No mention was made of how 20 people were better than she was.

No mention was made of how she was also crap in Athens in 2004. Nor was there word of he cocking up in the London Marathon either.

Ms Radcliffe is famous only for either shitting herself [Athens] or pissing on the street [London] or for being, seemingly, permanently injured when it comes to any international event.

The lack of such talk is a bit of a Brit tradition.

Looking back at recent history [the past 30-odd years] turns up Brendan Foster, David Bedford ET AL.

They were always the best athletes in the world until they came up against anybody else from any other country. They then fell into the same bin in which Ms Radcliffe now resides. "My leg hurt, I injured myself last decade, I was wearing new shoes" etc, etc.

Why, as the non-winning / never winning Brit contender, was this woman given so much coverage and will, ultimately, be better remembered for messing up than those who turned up the goods?

Back, with a vengance [and a wig, sort of]

2008-08-08T20:33:00.003Z

Not that I've been very far away, but I'm now back.
Not only am I back, but back with a new boy-friend and, sort of, a new life/ begining. A better explanation will follow shortly.

French Cunts

2008-05-01T21:29:00.002Z

I have just read a post on some french cunts blog.

I could put up with the opinion of this cheese eating surrender monkey if it wasn't for the fact that they [the whole nation of them] were not cheese eating surrender monkeys.

Although it was well before I had the opportunity to vote in the matter, this "horse eater's" government had already decided that they didn't want the Brits as a part of Europe. Well, if we were to have the same vote again, I think that most of us would agree with old big nose Charles de Gaulle that we shouldn't have anything to do with them, or them with us.

Different language, different culture, different everything. Leave them to it.

Sadly, now that the horse eating countries are only two hours away, the off-spring of the surrenderers seem to think that they can comment upon our internal politics. They cannot.

Hey, Francois, the Boche are coming, run away! [again].

Like the old saying goes, third time lucky! in this day and age, the Brits won't come and bail you out again.

"..and how old are you, little boy"?

2008-04-28T16:15:00.004Z

For many years a debate about the different ages of consent for different things has rumbled along.
Until recent years, you had to be 21 to have consensual gay sex [but only between men, there was never an age limit for sex between women]. Heterosexuals needed only to wait until 16 to start tinkering around. 17 to be able to learn to drive, recently raised to 18, no bad thing, and 18 to by drink in a pub / bar off-license.
Then, along came the Wine & Spirit Trade Association and their “Challenge 21” initiative. The gist of which is this;

All well and good, but there is another twist to this idea.
Friday night finds me running the pub while David is away in Blackpool and it’s bloody busy! Busy to the extent that we started to run out of wine.
Byron, my drinking companion, is a bit miffed that all the Pinot Grigio is gone and he’ll end up drinking the house wine shite. Harry Potter [David P] is dispatched to Tesco to get a couple of bottles. “I can’t go, they won’t serve me” he pleads.
He then explains that Tesco have gone one step further with their interpretation of the Challenge 21 campaign and raised the bar [no pun intended] to 30!
Thus Harry is considered to be under-age when buying wine.
He had to suffer the ignominy of me having to take him to Tesco to buy the wine, just so that I could see him squirm [and to see Tesco‘s refuse to serve him, and because I thought he wasn‘t telling me the whole and complete truth]. He is, in fact, 24 but looks about 16. Poor lamb.

Arty Farty

2008-04-26T22:02:00.005Z

Peace has finally descended on the house. David, complete with the troop of fools from downstairs in the pub, has gone away to Blackpool for the weekend.
After the events of the past few days I’m glad to see the back of him [I’m glad to see the back of him at almost any other time too]. After living in the place for nearly two years, Dave decided that he wanted to put up some of the pictures that we just never got around to putting up when we moved in. In the last flat, we had loads of room thus, lots of wall space. Here, it’s like living in a small box and the bookcases line most of the walls.
For some unaccountable reason, David decides that the staircase is a good place to hang pictures and he started with his favourite and my most hated picture, the Creation of Adam.

Never send one fool to do another fool’s job. Had I stuck to this tenet, we would never have ended up with this vile object of a picture.
I had wanted something to go across the end wall in the living room in the house and, foolishly, sent David out with the instruction as to which print to buy. I didn’t see the picture until we had taken it back to Ireland, had it framed and I went to collect it [it previously having been rolled up in a cardboard tube], needless to say, it wasn't the print that I wanted.
I don’t think that the woman in the shop was very impressed with my reaction. Not only to the picture itself but also to the size. It’s eight feet by four. When installed in the living room it looked like a fukin’ alter piece! After selling the house, we brought it back to London and it lived behind the door in the spare bedroom, never to be hung again, until Thursday.
Also seeing the light of day is my very own Mondrian.

above: Sidney, the art critic.

I actually made this picture to hang in the bathroom. The idea started out as a bit of a laugh. In the previous pub, we had a big roof terrace above the staff accommodation. At one end, actually the adjoining building, was a large blank wall. I painted a mural on it, after the style of Mondrian. I used the paint I had handy, two different shades of blue and silver. This caused no end of complaints from the BBC offices next door. Their offices overlooked our roof terrace and they didn’t like the fact that Mondrian had had his work plagiarised with such crap colours! They weren’t keen on the nude sunbathing either.
Following on from the mural came the smaller version for the bathroom. I’ve no idea where Dave intends putting the picture, it was made for a particular colour scheme which we don’t have anymore. At the moment, I dread to think….

Wogs

2008-04-21T22:39:00.004Z

I don’t think I’m a typical gay man. Actually, I know that I’m not a typical gay man.
One of the delightful staff here, Brooks, an American chap, was fine when he first started working her. Now, eighteen months later, he had become the embodyment of the “fifth form at Mallory Towers”, all screaming, hand waving faggoty type stereotype of a gay man.
Monday, is cheap drinks at the Black Cap night, and I’m rearing to go. What has stopped me is some other vile American who has latched onto Brooks. This one is an Asian-American. It’s not the fact hat he’s Asian that bothers me. Nor is it the fact that he’s added to his natural colouring with some crap that comes from a bottle, [orange / brown, like a1970’s table lamp] it’s the fact that he screams and giggles at everything, like a twelve year old girl.
I can’t go out on the piss with this prick because I’ll end up killing him! I spend all day [getting paid for being politically correct, ergo, I don't see why / and don't do it when I'm not being paid] Thus, I've already told Mowgli to "fuck off" and, straight away, he realised that I'm not a foil for his screaming girl act.
Grandma, from the Walton’s, was never like this!

The things that people say.

2008-04-18T19:16:00.003Z

The saying goes that you never overhear anything nice. As true as this may be, some of the things you do hear are bloody funny.

“Take it easy at work” [overheard on the bus]. Surely the complete and diametric opposite of what going to work is supposed to be?

“Liberty! Liberty! Bleeding get ‘ere and do as y’r told!” [Yelled by some yummy mummy [not] at her delightful offspring]. Liberty is obviously a name to be conferred on grubby kids as opposed to a right to be fought for.

Talking Shit.

2008-04-16T22:08:00.003Z

This morning, I had the displeasure of having to go to work in the tube [because I was pissed last night, and woke up late]. Morning Tube trips means I get to read the METRO, a freebie newspaper.

According to the METRO, behold, a new phenomenon, Fish & Chips!

Just outside Ramsgate is one of the best fish and chip shops in Britain, the Newington Fish Bar. It dishes up firm-fleshed, pearly fish that falls into fat flakes at the touch of a fork, encased in startlingly good batter that’s crisp and light, like British tempura. Fat is kept at just the right temperature so that fish steams to perfection inside its batter sarcophagus, while the exterior is all glorious crunch.
Chips are magnificent. Doused in vinegar and dunked into an improbably green swamp of mushy peas, they are an artery-hardening joy. Inside, the place is a mishmash of ugly seaside-alia, big metal counters and hefty chaps in mesh hats; outside, the streets are, frankly, hideous. But none of it matters: the food is the thing.
Yep, I love good fish and chips. So when it’s a Michelin-starred chef in charge of the chippie, I’m in a state of high excitement. If the Newington Fish Bar can do it, surely Tom Aikens can take the humble repast and turn it into a supper fit for the gods. Am I in for a disappointment? You bet.
Despite its cutesy Chelsea Village setting, I don’t like the look of the place. Portholes and fishy mosaics and striated metal add up to a sharp-edged, shouty atmosphere not softened by bottles of Sarson’s vinegar (hurrah) on the it-looks-like-Formica-but-it’s-recycled-plastic tables. There’s an LED board with prices and choices (no different to the paper menu) which should make a City boy clientele feel at home. Above the tables dangle attractive Perspex lampshades, which staff and customers alike bang heads into with rhythmic regularity.
Every decent fish’n’chipperie should have a telly in the corner. Here, we get a lovely big screen showing not ’Enders or Corrie but a loop of Mr Aikens himself, talking about fish. At least we assume he is: the sound is turned off. Mercifully.
The admirable bottom line here is sustainability and eco-consciousness. So our fish is line-caught not trawled, and instead of plaice and haddock we get megrim, pollock and gurnard. Cod is Pacific, Marine Stewardship Council-approved, which we’re allowed to eat without guilt. There are photos flanking All at sea: The eco ethic of Tom Aikens’s Chelsea Village fish’n’chipperie is commendable. Sadly, the fish and chips are not so praiseworthy the TV of fish heroes, weather-beaten chaps from Newlyn or Hastings or Plymouth who go out in all weathers to bring back the morally sound booty.
Which would be all genuinely fine were the food fabulous. But it’s not. Crucially, frying doesn’t appear to be a major skill: batter is clunky, solid and disappointing, the use of beer and fizzy water doing little to lighten the fatty density. Onion rings are leaden coils of greasy starch. Grey gurnard – an honourable fish – languishes limply inside its stodgy armour.
Less conventional choices work far better: fresh, full-flavoured mackerel grilled and served with excellent sweet-sour beetroot and a herbed potato salad; or bouillabaisse with big chunks of monkfish and mullet (but, sadly, no bread or toast).
I love the vivid, flavour-packed mushy peas. As I always do, I shower ’em in vinegar before using the stout, beef-dripping-fried Maris Piper chips to scoop the violently green mulch into my face. This is by far my favourite part of the meal. But the willowy creatures at the next table, nibbling at their pan-fried, line-caught sea bass, watch me with unalloyed horror.
The wine list is almost 100 per cent English, which verges on the contrary. Best of the bunch is a rosé. ‘Yih, that’s a good one,’ says our splendid Aussie waitress. ‘You’d never know it was English.’

Well, have you ever read such a load of shite written about fish & Chips? I get the impression that the prick who wrote this [Mariana O'Loughlin] either gets paid by the word or has never been in the place she's writing about.
Fish & chips [Haddock] sold wrapped in newspaper, taken home and eaten with a combination of salt, vinegar, brown sauce / ketchup and the plate washed up afterwards. What more can you say. Anything else is utter twaddle, as was the review by this bumptious, silly bitch.

Woe

2008-04-12T11:59:00.002Z

Just what a body needs. Saturday morning, a roaring hangover and some fool outside scraping away on a bloody fiddle!

This is how the prisoners must have felt on the way to the gas chamber and having Beethoven played at them.

The Beautiful Game

2008-04-12T01:25:00.002Z

above: a pair of football type arseholes.

I don’t like football. Not only do I not like the game itself, I don’t particularly like the twats who play it. Many years ago, I got kicked out of a nightclub because I didn’t recognise some prick footballer. I was desperately trying to get to the bar to get drinks and found myself in a queue. It turned out that the queue was to meet, and get and autograph from, a particular football player.
Upon being discovered to be a common or garden drinker and, worse still a common or garden drinker who didn’t recognise this demi-god, I was rudely slung out of the place.
Many years later, I had the pleasure of throwing this has-been [and his abused and badly operated upon wife] from my own nightclub.
Remind me again, Lee Chapman, who are you?
This wasn’t my last dealings with football players, and players for Leeds Utd at that [and another “Lee”].
Lee Bowyer, arch racist [allegedly] and all round bad-boy, trashed a pub in which I was the relief manager. Himself and his mate went on to trash the local McDonalds [no bad thing] but they managed to get away with both crimes. Revenge came for Mr Bowyer when, in the same nightclub from which Mr Chapman had been removed, he encountered my “Head Doorman” [which should read Headcase Doorman] Adrian taught Mr Bowyer that he himself could kick balls better than any footballer and in his demonstration, with any luck, spoiled any chance Mr Bowyer had of ever having children!
Most of the above, I hope, goes to prove that stardom is relative. Football stars are only stars to those whom follow football.
As I don’t follow the game, I don’t see them as being anything other than yobs who think they have a license to be yobs.
Should he ever read this, this is a little coded warning to a certain non-league, semi-pro player. Mind your balls, I’m apt to give them a bit of a kick.

Tobacco can seriously damage your health

2008-04-09T12:05:00.002Z

David has never been particularly open to new ideas, especially ones suggested by me. Quite some time ago we went out for dinner with friends. One of the friends is a member of the Savage Club, an old style London Gentleman’s Club. The food was nice, the surroundings very opulent and a nice time was had by all.
The thing that made the evening for me was the little container of snuff which sat on the bar and was available for all to “have a pinch” from.
This was before the smoking ban came into effect and I showed the snuff to David. “You need to think about keeping this stuff on the bar” Of course, this being suggested by me meant that the idea was consigned to the bin straight away.
Coming home from work last week, and finding the usual cluster of smokers outside the front of the door was nothing unusual. Brooks, one of the staff said “Here, Chris, I’ve got a present for you” and he handed me what is commonly known as a “K bottle”, a small plastic device used by clubbers to store and administer ketamine or cocaine. “Put the bloody thing away! I hissed at him, “it’s ok, it’s not what you think” he said.
On closer inspection, I could see that, while the container itself was similar to the one that I’ve used in the past, it had a small health warning sticker on it. It was snuff.
Finally, after eighteen months, David had gotten his finger out of his arse and started stocking the stuff.
It was prompted by a drastic fall in the sale of cigs from the cigarette machine. Anyway, the snuff is flying out, you get sixty “hits” out of each bottle and, because of the container that it’s in, there’s no of the old style sniffing it off of the back of your hand. Much cleaner.
It is, of course, still tobacco. Hence the health warning. That’s the down side. The up side is that, when empty, you can use the container to keep your coke in!

Now it can be told!

2008-04-06T23:06:00.004Z

Well, it was only a matter of time! First you find yourself as the boy wizard, next moment you're on stage in the nip [did you ever have that nightmare?]. From there, it's only a hop and a skip before you're biting the pillow with some other young chap grunting over your shoulder into your ear.

Over Weight, Over Charged!

2008-04-02T13:49:00.001Z

Gatwick Airport or, more precisely, some of the airlines flying from it, have been done by their local trading standards department for overcharging customers whose baggage is over weight or, as the airlines term it, “Excess Baggage”.
I’m well versed in the woes of overweight luggage. David, my ex, was the stereotypical gay man in as much as he would take every item from his extensive wardrobe [of overpriced tat] on holiday with him. To this end he bought a suitcase [ Dolce & Gabbana] the size of a large hotel and at the cost of a small war, into which he could almost fit everything he “needed”.
The first outing for this luggage behemoth was to the Dominican Republic about five years ago.
Having financed the suitcase, we had to travel with a shyster outfit for the holiday [MyTravel].
David, not being the tallest gay in the village, hauled this thing around the longest serpentine check-in queue in the airport only to reach a minion with a set of scales before he reached the minion at the check-in desk.
As we’d shuffled along in the queued towards this point, I could see that there was always some kind of commotion going on but could never quite hear what it was. This commotion also seemed to entail lots of disgruntled people either walking away arguing with their partners / kids / travel companions. Then I saw the scales.
“You’re in trouble, sunshine. They’re weighing the baggage!”
“No worries, I weighed it before we left and it was just under” he assured me.
True though this was, what we didn’t know was that this outfit of bastards had a baggage limit of 13kg, where every other airline tends to operate at around 22 -25kg. This information was actually printed on the flight tickets but hey, who reads flight tickets? Not me, certainly not David, and, by the look of almost every other passenger in the queue, nobody else!
The end result was that even my baggage was over weight by about 2kg; and I take virtually nothing with me on holiday. David’s was massively over weight, I forget by how much, but it cost him over £60 in excess payment.
When we got back, David wrote to MyTravel and complained. Their response was that the information was clearly printed on the tickets. Not much fukin’ good if you collect your ticket at the airport.
Anyway, seeing this on the news, today, I was somewhat surprised. I would have thought that such a public place, like an airport, would have been up to the mark with simple things like having their scales verified. Places such as Post Offices have to verify and record their scales at the beginning of every week, so to find that some airlines have been caught out makes me wonder what else they don’t do that the should?

Date with disaster

2008-03-31T20:31:00.004Z

I don’t do dating. In fact I haven’t done dating for lots and lots of years. Casual sex; fine, a quick shag with no strings attached suits me fine. Actually, if it involves strings, ropes, candles etc, etc, so much the better!
So, last week, being asked out on a date came as a bit of a shock. Not that I minded, at least the conversation was guaranteed to be better than anything I’d get in this house!
Normally, when I drink, I turn into Norman Wisdom. Even after a wee “tincture” I’m still amiable. But I thought that I’d better behave and give the medicine cabinet a miss because the date involved a meal and coke tends to knacker your appetite. Likewise, after a belly full of beer, I’m not inclined to eat much more than cock!
To spare you the dull details, the date was not going many places fast, so I thought fuck it, lets get to the food part, and then I can bunk [sex never being on the agenda].
It turned out that my date had this department covered.
As we headed towards China Town I began to get twitchy. I hate any form of Oriental food. The look, smell, taste, everything. Not only do I dislike it, it revolts me.
As we stopped outside the door to the restaurant, I had to hold my hands up and say why I couldn’t go in. Now we really weren’t going places and we decided to call it a draw.
Probably just as well, I’m to old for this dating lark.

Ladies Apparel II

2008-03-27T21:02:00.005Z

Over the years I’ve seen quite a few gruesome things. Thus, not much revolts me.
This morning I was booked I to attend a training course in south London. Getting to Lambeth from Hampstead is quite easy, no changes on the tube, on at one end, off at the other. The only cloud on the horizon being Wednesday night. Wednesday night is quiz night and usually entails having a few drinks [a euphemism for getting drunk] following on from this, Thursday mornings generally dawn with a glowing hangover.
I knew that I was going to feel like shit so I settled down to the journey with a comforting read of the Metro. Having dispatched that, I was left to undertake the perennial “underground stare”. Having stared for only a few seconds I noticed one of the over-window adverts.

An innovative alternative to tampons

"3 days after using my mooncup for the first time and I want to tell the world what they are missing out on! I keep forgetting I'm even on my period! I was dubious at first but now I love it and am never letting it go! thank you sooo much! I'm telling as many as possible, I have posted a thread on the forum I regularly visit, and am telling all my friends. More people should know about this, I want them to know it's possible to actually enjoy having a period!"
Now I’m not a prude, but when confronted by “feminine hygiene” at 7.30 in the morning, combined with the hang-over from hell…..
Pass the sick bag!
It seems to be my luck that on the occasions I watch the TV, I’m confronted by either things with wings / strings [and neither of them are anything to do with Paul McCartney] or else some kind of bodily fluid preventative.
Is there to be no end to this? How long will it be before we have Joanna Lumley smiling at us while disclosing that she’s actually having a dump?

Should your stomach permit, you can read more here; Things that gentlemen shouldn't see!

Ladies Apparel

2008-03-24T22:20:00.003Z

Let me say, from the start, that I am not a connoisseur of women’s clothing. Admittedly, I have worn frocks on the odd occasions, for New Years fancy dress parties, and such like. But other than that, that’s it.

What sparked this post was a conversation at work. Somebody mentioned Blustons, in Kentishtown, and how it was a shop that was on the verge of closing, it being the sort of shop that catered for ladies of a certain age, and had suddenly had a bit of an upturn in its fortunes.
Blustons is an olde-worlde emporium, how many shops these days advertise that they sell gowns or wrap the display garments in brown paper when it’s really sunny? Allegedly, the Saturday girl is over 70 and has been there since the early 60’s [although I think that that story may be apocryphal].

What had started the upturn in business was that the shop, because it sold larger sizes, began to be frequented by gentlemen who like to wear women’s clothes.
Being the token gay man in out section, I was asked for my opinion as to why transvestites would want to wear such dowdy clothing. Not being a transvestite, I couldn’t really answer. The two things that I could offer were that 1. Not every transvestite dresses like Lilly Savage, and 2. Why do people associate transvestism with homosexuality?

Male Grooming

2008-03-19T12:24:00.003Z

I don’t like getting shaved. I don’t even see it as a necessary evil. I see it as a way of nature robbing me of an extra five minutes in bed on a morning.
To thin end, I only tend to get shaved every couple of days.
I also dislike shaving because my fur is like fuse wire. Myself and my brothers are cursed by this, but it’s not really a family trait. My dad’s hair was very thin [in every sense of the word] while we, his sons, are all like baboons; at some point the whole troop of us sporting beards in some shape or form.
It doesn’t follow that because I don’t like shaving that I like to wear a beard, I don’t. Facial hair is only a repository for food and, because mine doesn’t grow a uniform colour, I always look as though I‘m wearing a comedy mask.
To this end, when it comes to shaving, I’m quite picky as regards shaving equipment. It took me years to find a razor that would shave me as opposed to scrape me.

For a long time I used a safety razor. This thing was made by Wilkinson Sword and only took their brand of blades. Wilkinson’s are renown for making sharp swords [for ceremonial purposes] but blunt razor blades. Then Gillette came up with the “Sensor” range and a decent shaving gel to go with it. Of course, things have moved on a bit since then and I now use a Gillette Mach 3 which is about to be phased out so the whole process of finding a decent razor starts over again.

I can’t use a razor like the contraption that David uses. Four blades fixed in a tiny little head that swivels all over the place.
The whole purpose of this post, basically, was to extol the virtue of Nivea Shaving Gel. I’ve been using it for about a month, a tin of gel lasting me about a month, and this stuff is the bollox! I always thought the ultimate had been reached by Gillette with their range but this stuff leaves their goo standing.

Having laid up a supply of Mach 3 blades in readiness for them stopping production, all I have to do is wait for the inevitable, the day I can no longer buy them and have used up all my store. Then, I think, it’s back to the face fur.

Last Resting Place

2008-03-10T22:03:00.012Z

The previous post lead me to this.

The first funeral I went to was my Dad's. I was not considered old enough to go to the funerals of my grandparents. That is with the exception of Grandma Phillips. The thing that messed that one up was that it was the day of my maths GSE exam. There was no way that Mam was going to let me miss that one so I didn't get to go to the funeral. Not only didn't I go to the funeral but I never went to the grave either. Well, not until the other weekend. I knew that her grave was in Killingbeck Cemetery, the catholic burial ground for Leeds, but I didn't know exactly where.

Granddad Phillips is also buried in Killingbeck, I'd been to his grave once, that would have been not long after he died. That was over thirty five years ago and I had only a rough idea where his grave was.

Never one to be thwarted by small things like that I took the opportunity to find and photograph their graves.

After quite a bit of trekking around in the rain I found Granddad's [Walter Philips] grave quite easily. It took me another hour to find Grandma's grave.

It wasn't the finding of it that surprised me, I would have found it had it taken me all day. The thing that surprised me was that I always thought her name was Kathleen [always shortened to Kitty]. It wasn't. Her name was Catherine.

I was glad that I been and seen their graves. I won't be able to do the same for the last resting places of my parents.

Dad never expressed a preference for where he wanted to end up. Well, if he did, he didn't do it to me. After he was cremated, Mam put his ashes on the back garden. "He spent most of his time out there, so that's where I'm putting him." she said "And his cat's out there, so that'll suit him" she added as an afterthought, but probably to justify the action. The only way I could "visit" him now would be to knock on the door of some poor unsuspecting householder. Not a visit I intend making.

Mam was more sure of her eventuality. Ever the staunch Yorkshire woman, she wanted her ashes to be scattered/ placed, or whatever you do with ashes, on the North Yorkshire Moors.

My eldest brother brought this to fruition for her. I don't know if he scattered or buried her ashes or even exactly where, all he said was that, from where ever it was, you could see the sea and the moors.

I know I'll never ask him for the exact location but, where ever it was, I'm sure it's just what she wanted, so that's good enough for me.

Albert Hirst Jagger

2008-03-10T20:35:00.011Z

I came by this plaque sometime around 1980 at a junk fair. I had no idea what it was but I’d seen its like before. A friend of mine, or, more precisely, his mother, had one mounted in a wooden block which lived on the mantelpiece.
I’d never troubled myself to find out what it was, it was just one of those things a friends mother keeps on her mantle piece.
Anyway, the one I was looking at cost £1, a bargain, I thought then. And so it is still.
As soon as I got it home my Dad clapped eyes on it. “Where did you get this?” he asked “Flea Market” I replied. “Don’t ever throw it away” he cautioned. And that was it. It was years before I discovered what the thing actually was.

Edward Carter Preston's prize-winning design (the Imperial War Museum holds an original model in plaster, catalogue reference MEDP/3) comprises the figure of Britannia, classically robed and helmeted, standing facing right, holding a modest laurel wreath crown in her extended left hand and supporting a trident by her right side with her right arm and hand. In the foreground a male lion stands facing right; the animal was originally described as 'striding forward in a menacing attitude' which may explain its unusually low profile.
The prize-winning designs were exhibited for a time during the spring and early summer of 1918 at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The large scale production of the plaques was delayed by a whole series of problems relating to the refinement and unsuccessful modification of Carter Preston's winning model. These difficulties formed the basis for extensive correspondence on points of technical detail between G F Hill and the artist through the months of October to December 1918. It is clear that at times both became exasperated by the conflicting demands of standardisation for mass production and the claims for artistic integrity of the original piece.
Production of the plaques began in December 1918 but difficulties continued to beset the project. A disused laundry in Acton (West London), grandly called 'The Memorial Plaque Factory' was the first centre of production. It was managed by an eccentric American engineer and entrepreneur, named Manning Pike, and staffed principally by women. Hill had been impressed by Pike's solution to the problem of incorporating the names of the deceased on the plaque in such a manner as to harmonise with Carter Preston's chosen script. Despite his technical expertise Pike's monopoly was later brusquely terminated by the War Office and work transferred to Woolwich Arsenal and, subsequently, other former munitions factories. After the relative excitement of the competition the whole process of mass production was a slow and 'weary business'. At Woolwich the project foundered and Manning Pike was recalled to save the situation. The work was completed but not without the decline in standards of output which Hill had predicted:
Hill originally postulated a total number of '800,000' plaques to be produced; later estimates have put the total figure at some 1,150,000 specimens. The plaques issued commemorated those men and women who died between 4 August 1914 and 10 January 1920, for Home Establishments, Western Europe and the Dominions. The final date for other theatres of war (including Russia) or for those who died subsequently from attributable causes was 30 April 1920.
To accompany the plaques was a commemorative scroll.
The scrolls started to be manufactured in January 1919 (the original total estimate for scrolls by the Central School was 'about 970,000') and were sent out in seven and a quarter inch long cardboard tubes, an example is shown below, this one would have accompanied the plaque sent to an Austrailian officer.

The plaques themselves were dispatched under separate cover in stiff card wrapping enclosed within white envelopes bearing the Royal Arms. Both memorials were accompanied by a letter from King George V which bore his facsimile signature and read as follows:

I join with my grateful people in sending you this

memorial of a brave life given for others in the Great War.

George R.I.

So now I knew what the plaque was, colloquially, a "Death Penny", it being made from the same metal as the, then, coins penny, ha'penny and farthing. The picture of the scroll, above, is culled from the Imperial War Museum website, as is the bulk of the text.

This post is dedicated to the memory of Private Albert Hirst Jagger, late of Dobcross, Lancashire, who enlisted in the 8Btn Duke of Wellington’s [West Riding] Regiment. He was killed on the 9th October 1917. Albert Hirst Jagger has no known grave but is commemorated on the Tyne Cot memorial.

Dolls

2008-03-06T21:19:00.003Z

In the background, the eponymous Sidney, having 40 winks.

Good old Russia, or whatever they call themselves this week. I’ve now got the excuse to buy another of the dolls for which they are famous. I like dolls, not in the Barbie style of things, Russian Dolls [and not the "big boned" type you find on the internet, who want a husband and a passport].
A couple of years ago, I picked this one up at a junk fair. I spotted it from a distance and was quite surprised to see a price tag of £5 on it.

It’s a big one, the outer “man” being about a foot tall. For a fiver, I thought, it must be missing some of its inner “men”. It wasn’t.

Ranging down, there’s Vladimir Putin, Boris Yeltsin, Mikhail Gorbachev, Leonid Brezhnev Nikita Khrushchev, Joseph Stalin Vladimir Lenin and then the last three are just three little female characters. Missing from the line-up are Georgy Malenkov, Yuri Andropov and Constantin Chernenko.
Of course, now that they’ve got a new president, Dimitry Medvedev, I’ll have to be on the hunt for an updated model.

Barnbow

2008-03-03T20:55:00.004Z

The main road entrance, Manston Lane, in those days known as Barnbow Lane.
The same view today. The foundations of the two buildings [permit office and police post] are still to be found on the right in the hedgerow.
The entrance from the railway station. This would have been how the majority of the workforce would have arrived.

I couldn't miss the opportunity to be in Leeds and not go and take some pics of Barnbow, the site of a WW1 shell filling factory. Barnbow holds a special place in the nations history, as the following story relates;

"It is often said that wars are either won at sea, in the air, or in the trenches; however this story relates to a ‘war of production’ – a war that was fought in the factories of Leeds by a brave band of Yorkshire women known as the The Barnbow Lasses.
The story also records the worst tragedy in the history of the City of Leeds - in terms of people killed – a story however that never made the news headlines of the day. It recalls a dreadful explosion that killed 35 Yorkshire women and girls at the Barnbow Munitions factory at Crossgates during the First World War.
The declaration of war with Germany in August 1914 created an unprecedented and urgent need for large volumes of arms and munitions. And although Leeds did not have much of an arms industry at that time, the canny City Fathers, together with established manufacturing companies, decided to build one from scratch and quickly created the Leeds Munitions Committee. Shells produced by the Leeds Forge Company at Armley would also be filled and armed within the boundaries of the city.
A governing board of directors comprising six local Leeds men was established and tasked with overseeing the construction of the First National Shell Filling Factory. They met in August 1915 and selected a site at Barnbow, between the Crossgates and Garforth areas of Leeds, to construct a factory the size of which was described as ‘a city within a city’.
Back in 1915 things were made to happen at a slightly faster rate than would happen in the England of today, as by August shell production had started in the new Armley factory, and within months this was producing more than 10,000 shells per week.
At the Barnbow site, railway workers laid tracks directly into the factory complex to transport raw materials into and finished goods out of the factory. Platforms over 800 feet long were added to the nearby railway station in order to bring the workers directly to the factory gates. Massive factory buildings were quickly constructed enabling shell filling operations to start in December 1915.
The frantic but well organised construction in the autumn of 1915 included the erection of overhead power lines to bring electricity to the site. This, together with a boiler house, provided power for the heating and lighting of the whole factory. A water main laid in just four weeks, would deliver 200,000 gallons of water daily. Rapid progress was also made on the infrastructure buildings including changing rooms, canteens, administration blocks, etc.
The Barnbow site would eventually extend to cover some 200 acres. There was however, a complete press blackout of the area due to security concerns.
In order to recruit the large work force required to operate such a facility, an employment bureau was opened at Wellesley Barracks in Leeds. With one third of the workforce eventually recruited from Leeds, other workers came from nearby Castleford, Wakefield, Harrogate and many from the outlying villages. A 24-hour three shift system was introduced that operated 6 days a week, and by October 1916 the work force numbered 16,000. As the war continued and the death rate on front increased, so the gradual replacement of male with female labour increased, until the Barnbow workforce comprised almost 93% women or girls.
At that time a typical munitions worker's earnings averaged £3.0s.0d, however when a bonus scheme was put into production, the output of shells trebled and the girls handling the explosives were often taking home between £10 – £12, very big money indeed.All aspects of the operation appear to have been efficiently run with the latest electric payroll systems including calculating machines being introduced. Thirty-eight trains per day, known as Barnbow Specials, transported the workforce to and from the site and employees were provided with free permits for home-to-work journeys.
Working conditions on the other hand were barely tolerable. Workers employed in handling explosives had to strip to their underwear and wear buttonless smocks and caps. All had to wear rubber soled shoes, and hairpins, combs, cigarettes and matches were all strictly forbidden. Hours were long, conditions poor and holidays simply did not exist!
Food rationing was severe but because of the nature of their work the employees were allowed to drink as much milk and barley water as they wanted. Barnbow even had its own farm, complete with 120 cows producing 300 gallons of milk a day. Working with cordite, a propellant for the shells, for long periods caused the skin of the operatives to turn yellow, the cure for which was to drink plenty of milk.
It was just after 10pm on Tuesday 5th December 1916, when several hundred women and girls had just begun their night shift. Their tasks that fateful evening consisted as they normally did, of filling, fusing, finishing off and packing 4½ inch shells. Room 42 was mainly used for the filling, and between 150 and 170 girls worked there. Shells were brought to the room already loaded with high explosive and all that remained was the insertion of the fuse and the screwing down of the cap. A girl inserted the fuse by hand, screwed it down and then it was taken and placed into a machine that revolved the shell and screwed the fuse down tightly.
At 10.27pm a violent explosion rocked the very foundations of Room 42 killing 35 women outright, maiming and injuring dozens more. In some cases identification was only possible by the identity disks worn around the necks of the workers. The machine where the explosion had occurred was completely destroyed. Steam pipes had burst open and covered the floor with a cocktail of blood and water.
Despite the danger from further explosions other workers hurried into room 42 in order to help to bring the injured to safety. William Parker, a mechanic at the factory, was one particular hero of the hour and he was later presented with an inscribed silver watch for his bravery in bringing out about a dozen girls.
Within a few hours of the explosion, bodies having been taken out, other girls were volunteering to work in room 42. Production was stopped only briefly. Many of the injured girls were later taken for a period of convalescence to Weetwood Grange, which had been leased by Barnbow from the works Comfort Fund.
Due to the censorship of that time, no account of the accident was made public; however in a special order of the day issued from the British HQ in France, Field Marshall Sir Douglas Haigh paid tribute to the devotion and sacrifice of the munitions workers. The only clue to a tragedy having happened was in the many death notices in the Yorkshire Evening Post that stated, “killed by accident”.
It was not until six years after the war that the public were told the facts for the first time.
There were two further explosions at Barnbow, one in March 1917, killing two girl workers and another in May 1918, killing three men. A Roll of Honour of war dead, in the Colton Methodist Church, includes the name of the only Colton girl who died in the accident, a certain Ethel Jackson.
Barnbow was Britain’s premier shell factory between 1914 and 1918 and at the end of hostilities on 11 November 1918, production stopped for the first time. By that time a total of 566,000 tons of finished ammunition had been dispatched overseas.

The area that encompassed the factory was subsequently mined for coal but remains, largely, untouched.

As a kid, I spent lost of time, doing what boys do, all over the area. I never knew what it had been, only that it was teeming with rabbits and was a great place to play. Only in later years did I discover its history and it has fascinated me ever since.

But, the march of time and, more pointedly, development, means that the site is ripe for development. Much of what remained after the demolition of the buildings remains still. Since the last time I had a good wander around the area it had become quite overgrown with Birch and Hawthorne. Also large areas are fenced off and posted with warning notices about "Toxic Chemicals" After ninety years or so, it's still polluted.

Food of the Gods

2008-03-02T23:27:00.003Z

Fresh back from Leeds and full to the brim with beer and fish & chips. It was only while satisfying my craving for fish & chips that I realised how rootless I really am. Having bought the bloody things I realised that I had nowhere to eat them. Furthermore, I had nothing to eat them with. To heap sacrilege on top of blasphemy, I also lacked brown sauce to put onto them!

So I bought a bottle of HP and sat in the car eating them with the smallest plastic fork in the world [and they were in a polystyrene box too].

Lovely, they were, bloody lovely!

Mucky Leeds

2008-02-25T22:57:00.004Z

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

2008-02-25T21:46:00.005Z

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

2008-02-19T21:55:00.004Z

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

2008-02-15T22:03:00.003Z

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]

2008-02-04T23:11:00.000Z

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.

Fog in the eyes

2008-01-31T22:43:00.000Z

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

2008-01-31T21:38:00.000Z

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

2008-01-28T21:26:00.000Z

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

2008-01-24T17:21:00.001Z

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

2008-01-21T23:38:00.000Z

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!

2008-01-20T04:38:00.000Z

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....

2008-01-14T22:29:00.000Z

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.

2008-01-11T23:25:00.000Z

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.

2008-01-10T17:54:00.000Z

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.

2008-01-10T14:34:00.000Z

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.

2008-01-09T22:35:00.000Z

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

2008-01-09T20:53:00.000Z

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.

2008-01-09T02:01:00.000Z

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.

2008-01-08T18:53:00.000Z

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....

2008-01-08T00:40:00.000Z

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.

2008-01-08T00:17:00.000Z

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]

2008-01-05T00:57:00.000Z

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].

#And now, the end is near....

2007-12-28T18:10:00.000Z

I posted a version of this a few days ago [while I was pissed] but took the post down after reading it again when sober. The gist of the original post was that David, my partner of fourteen years, and I, have split up. It wasn't a mutual decision, it was my choice. Based, I must admit, on David's actions but, my choice non the less.

All of this happened in December last year [2006] the 10th, to be exact, so I've now had the luxury of two Christmas's that I've not had to buy the bastard a present. That sounds a bit acrimonious, damn right! There was a bit of a truce back in May when we went on holiday together but that had been pre-booked, but other than that we keep up a sort of facade of amity when on public view in the pub. Outside of that, we don't speak much.

I think that most people know, although neither David nor myself run around telling everybody. There are some people [whom I won't name because Karl reads this and it will cause trouble] who, because they are a friend of David, think that they know more than they do. He doesn't. He also thinks he's being protective. He's not. Although there is some amount of animosity between David and I, it's nobody else's business and I'm not likely to start hacking him to death with an axe in the shower.....well, maybe! [joke]. I warned him yesterday that he needs to keep his thoughts to himself and today, overheard a little snipe as a walked past. Every dog has his day and I see mine trotting over the horizon.

Anyway, back to the matter in hand. David and I, or rather I, decided that we should split thing in a sort of 50/50 manner. He could keep the pub and I'd sell the house and keep the proceeds from the sale. It's a fine idea in principle but in practice, the housing market is very slow. This means that I still have to live here while the house is up for sale. The longer it goes on, the more acrimonious things become. It's now been over a year.

I'm due a pay rise in February [quite a substantial on too] this will mean that I can afford to move out of here and rent a place of my own even though the house may not be sold and I'll still have to pay the mortgage.

I'm counting the days!

Christmas Present

2007-12-22T14:22:00.000Z

My mother worked in tailoring most of her life. There was a short hiatus during the war when she worked for AVRO, making aeroplanes, but then it was back to Montague Burton's, making jackets. She could sew most things but she could never put zips in jeans. "wait 'till your Aunt Nell comes, she can do zips". Nelly also worked at Burton's but she made trousers and, as a consequence, could put zips in trousers. None of this home sewing would have been possible without having a sewing machine.

Mam's machine squatted in the corner of the back room. A polished brown thing with a black cast iron frame, it fascinated me as a kid a because it had in its frame a large wheel, also cast iron. "You'll lop your fingers off on that thing, get away!" counseled Mam on finding me whizzing the wheel around.

This table is identical to the one Mam had.

This machine, a Singer, had had, at some point in its life, an electric motor fitted. This meant that to operate the machine, the treadle still had to be pressed [but not treadled] but had thus rendered the wheel redundant.

For some unknown reason, Mam decided that she wanted a more modern machine and got rid of the Singer in favour of a Japanese job. She rued the day and vilified this new machine every time she used it.

After she died, I inherited this machine.

Mam having taught me to sew, by this time I already had my own sewing machine, a 1908 Singer hand cranked, table top machine. It's a great machine and will sew anything. The Japanese job by comparison, is rubbish. I've only used it once and gave up half way through, going back to the Singer.

Last week, an acquaintance, knowing that I could sew, asked me if I wanted a sewing machine "It's very old" she warned. Having agreed to have a look I found that1. it wasn't very old but it was a Singer. It was made in 1949, just after Singer returned to making sewing machines having spent the war making machine guns. What was remarkable was that it was "brand new", never having been used. The bobbin case has no fluff inside it and it still bears traces of light machine oil on its other parts.

So, much to David's disgust, as a Christmas present to myself, I'm attempting to buy a Singer table, just like the one that Mam had to keep it in. The "Japanese job" can then go to a more appreciative home.

Here are some pics of my new toy.

above: the bobbin winder, still showing the moulding

marks on the rubber wheel.

above: The working end, with Singer's trade mark decoration.

above: the worked end.

above: this was inside the outer case. The Sylko box contained the

various feet, the Oxo tins, spare shuttles.

Christmas is coming [but not for some]

2007-11-24T15:23:00.000Z

I'm not sure who is the more fukin' stupid, people who believe what they read in the press or the fuckwits who write what people read.

Shock horror! The no-mark husband of Amy Winehouse has been remanded in custody and won't be home for Christmas.

I don't know if anybody noticed this, but he's Jewish [as is she].

Way back in the mists of time, during my nominally catholic education, one of the things we were taught as a basic difference between us [catholics] and those of the Jewish faith was that the left footers believed that the messiah had come amongst us / been born and that the four by twos were still waiting.

Hence we celebrated Christmas, the birth of Christ, they don't celebrate but get a few extra days holiday anyway.

I doubt that Blake and Amy are going to lose any sleep over not having cold turkey [joke] towards the back end of December.

Regrets, I've had a few....

2007-11-16T00:31:00.000Z

Recently, there's been a series on the TV about Royal Marine Commandos. I watch anything military that's on the telly. I suppose that it's because, even after all these years, I still regret not signing up. I did though, do what I thought was the next best thing and work for the military as a civvy [civilian].

The reason I never signed on the dotted line was that I always knew that I was gay / queer and, at the time that I left school and jobs were hard to find and loads of my mate were going into the army, RAF, navy, I didn't have the courage of my convictions when it came to saying "No" when asked if I was a practicing homosexual.

So, I never joined up.

I did, though, work, and for lots of years , for the MOD as a civilian, working alongside the forces. But watching these things on the TV, combined with the deregulation against gays in the military, makes me yearn for what I knew I could [then] never have done. Only because of what I did in bed.

Relatives being relative

2007-11-15T23:43:00.000Z

Oooops, I've gotten out of the habit of taking the piss out of people for the way they look but there can, and have been, exceptions. When we still lived in the pub on Euston Rd I would often see this brogdinagian creature pushing a trolley filled with black plastic bags.

I saw this woman again, the first time for a long while, the other day. It transpires that she is the sister of the former husband of an acquaintance. I don't think she was best pleased that I said that "I can see why you divorced him". Friends you can pick, family, you can't!

Christmas is coming

2007-11-14T14:21:00.000Z

As the nursery rhyme goes.....

Christmas is coming

the goose is getting fat......

and that's where the whole thing goes tits. The current outbreak of "Bird Flu" may mean a shortage of turkeys, geese and ducks this Christmas. So the old bird won't be getting fat, it'll be getting incinarated.

I'm not particularly worried by this as we never have turkey at Christmas anyway. Last year, two of my friends bought a goose for Christmas [to eat, you understand, not as a pet]. £60 they paid for this damnable bird and by the time it was cooked and all the fat drained off of it, it was about the size of a small canary. We were invited for tea on boxing day with the promise of goose remnants. Not the most tempting offer in the world, but the company promised to be good, and I'd never had goose before so, off we went. Well, the goose was fine but I wouldn't rush off to pay sixty quid for one.

Generally, for Christmas dinner we have beef. With the impending slaughter of millions of poultry in the run-up to Christmas, I can see beef being expensive. Christmas shopping may start early for me this year.

He / it's back

2007-11-14T00:16:00.000Z

I don't watch much TV. I can't just sit and watch whatever shit is shown, I have to scan through the listings and select what I'm going to watch, then record my selections and I'll generally spend Sunday afternoon watching them.
One thing I won't be watching is How To Look Good Naked.

Apart from the fact that it's some shite about fat old birds letting their tits fall to the deck, it's presented by Gok Wan.

The only way he'd look good is when covered in tyres, doused in petrol and then lit. Wanker.

Picture Post Birthday Picture

2007-11-11T23:28:00.001Z

Nigel and Phill's birthday finds me dressing up again. In an attempt to recreate the famous picture post pic, I grabbed Jim and here is the result. The other pics can be found here.

Coming to things late in life

2007-11-09T22:21:00.000Z

One of my favorite sites is Secret Leeds. It's a whole mish-mash of things about Leeds. One of the current forum topics is about dialects. I suppose that what follows isn't really dialect but it seems to be a real Leeds saying. It was normally directed at me by my mother when I was on the scrounge for something, more chocolate, generally.

"Here, what the cobbler thew at his wife. The bloody last!"

Some things, as a child you never understand. Well I never understood this as a child or, until recently, as an adult. I knew that it meant that there was to be no more, but where the cobbler and his wife came into the whole scheme of things, that was the puzzle.

A last, it transpires, is the big metal thing that a cobbler mends shoes on.

above; A Cobblers Last

The saying about the last, for me, goes hand in hand in the darkness of non-understanding, with the joke about the nuns in the shower and one saying to the other "where's the soap"? and the other replies "Yes, but isn't it fun"! I put my incomprehension of this down to my being gay and not having an interest, or understanding, of the female anatomy or its sexual satisfaction. Well, that's my excuse anyway. Being from Leeds playing on words was akin to playing on the railway lines. It just never happened. Where's, as it's stated in the joke means where is. In Leeds, if you wear something, you do so in the manner of an article of clothing. To wear something, as in the manner of the joke would never happen in Leeds. To wear away, sure. But that would never just wear; singular.

So, back to the dialect bit and here is a little youtube clip from that Yorkshire classic Kes, with the redoubtable Brian Glover. Enjoy.

Doom, gloom and Cottingley

2007-11-02T23:09:00.001Z

above; Cottingley Grange

I went up to Leeds on Thursday for a funeral. The funeral was actually today, Friday, but it gave me the excuse to go and see my eldest brother and have a few drinks. I didn't anticipate that it would take me four and a half hours to drive up there.

The funeral was for an aunt, Ellen [always known as Nelly] my mothers younger sister.

Every other funeral Ive been to has been at Lawnswood Crematorium but Nelly's was at Cottingley. Christ, it was grim.

Cottingley is in south Leeds and is overlooked by two huge great tower blocks, renown as being the dumping ground for all the shit that Leeds City Council can't house anywhere else.

Poor old Nell didn't get the best send off but at least the priest was good [if that's the correct way of terming it].

I was glad to come home. Mucky Leeds.

Back, after a little prod to remind me.

2007-10-29T21:07:00.000Z

Well, it's not as if I've been anywhere but I've let the blog slip, sort of. It was only a little reminder from Karl - with a K- who had been reading my blog that jolted me back into adding to this damned thing. So, here we are, again.

Climate Camp - Heathrow Airport

2007-08-13T21:31:00.000Z

1. Get a wash. 2. Get a job.

Labour Madness, Tory fuck-up

2007-08-09T22:28:00.000Z

Good old Mail on Sunday, my fave read. Most things in the MoS pass me by. My drink / coke indulgence on Saturdays tends to mean that Sunday's pass in a blurry, thudding haze.

An article last week jolted me out of my stupor. The gist of it was this....

The "Middle England - Blue Rinse" brigade are, apparently, up in arms about the reclassification of cannabis [from B to C] and that in doing so, the failing Labour government was condemning a whole generation of Britain's youth to potentially spending the rest of their days in an institution, suffering from some form of psychosis, and staring blankly at the walls.

Now I don't smoke this horrid stuff but I do think that it should be reclassified back to B if not even A. What I do disagree with is the bit about staring at the wall in an institution.

The Tories closed all the institutions and let the bloody loonies loose onto the streets. Care in the community. 1, there is no care. 2, the community does not want these sort of people wandering around.

Yorkshire Day

2007-08-01T13:01:00.000Z

The White Rose of Yorkshire.

Camden Town, parody people.

2007-07-29T13:13:00.000Z

Do you remember the "Airport" films? Remember how every one had either a nun or a priest on the flight? I know that this was parodied in the Leslie Nielson films bit similar such things happen in real life too.

For those who live in London, if you've ever been silly enough to go to Camden Town by tube, have you ever noticed that there is always some prick with a guitar on the escalator?

Camden is perceived as being a musical place. I don't know why, any pub that you go into only ever has either a juke box or pre-recorded "musak" playing. I've only ever seen one person busking, so, what the hell is it with all the guitars?

It's an affectation, it has to be.

So, plea from a poor sod who wants to get home and can't get past you on the escalator,

Oi, Segovia, leave the banjo at home!

Film 4

2007-07-26T22:13:00.000Z

I like Film 4, I'd like it a lot more if they would cut out the adverts, but still..., anyway, it's now gone down slightly in my estimation. Tonight, they're screening A Clockwork Orange. This is the shittiest film ever made. I think that Mr Kubrick [who couldn't have made a decent film, even had he lived forever] dropped a real clanger in attempting to turn such a shite book into any kind of film at all. For those who think it's a good film, maybe I missed something. Please, tell me what it is that makes this a "classic".

"Emergency, which service do you require?"

2007-07-21T12:22:00.000Z

The headline in today's Daily Mail was

THREE MONTHS' RAINFALL IN HOURS - 999NETWORK GRINDS TO A HALT

This melt-down, wash-out, call it what you will is caused by well meaning but stupid people with mobile phones.

In the past couple of weeks I've attended incidents where people, complete with a mobile phone, phone 999 when they can see that the emergency services are already in attendance. One of my colleagues was elbowed out of the way by some silly bitch who wanted to get a closer look at the 85 year old pensioner laying on the floor and all of this while she was phoning 999! Public spirited it may be, helpful, it is not. How did the country cope before the advent of the mobile? It did.

I propose that calls to the emergency services be barred from mobile phones. And before anybody complains that BT call boxes don't work, when was the last time you used one? They do work.

Un-PC Parents

2007-07-17T18:59:00.001Z

When I think of some of the "terminology" my parents used when talking to each other I have a quiet giggle to myself. Some of this phraseology, in the context in which they used it, was harmless enough. [Mam telling aunt Nell about some material she was thinking of buying to make a dress] "Well, I'll need to take the belt to make sure they'll go together"

"why couldn't you just tell him [the man on the market stall]"

"how do you explain nigger brown to a bloody Pakistani?"

Nigger brown, as far as my mother was concerned, was in the same colour palate as pillar box red, bus green [Leeds buses were, then, dark green] or salmon pink. When it came to the question of race, she would never dream of using the N word. They were wogs. All Asians were Pakistani, even if they may have come from India, and orientals were all Chinese [though at the time, they probably were].

When it came to a persons creed, that too was open season for Mam and Dad, especially Dad, who was completely un-religious himself.

"A right Jewess faced looking woman" [though never, a Jew. He never seemed to denominate "Jewish" looking men]. "Irish looking" or even "Foxy faced Irish bugger" was another. At the height of the troubles in Northern Ireland, the TV news often showed funerals followed by hundreds of mourners. They would be "Catholic faced sods" [regardless of the fact that they may have been protestants!] This never upset Mam, who was a staunch Catholic, [as opposed to Dad who was, nominally, C of E] but was a big hitter when it came to loathing the Irish. "No bloody Irish in our family" so I guess, somewhere way back, the Philips' must be converts.

Dad would have had a field-day with one of our latest celebs, Ms Winehouse. Her pic was in the Evening [sub] Standard today. Boy does she have a "Jewess face". Unsurprisingly enough, she is Jewish. When planning this post I looked for a pic of the gobby chanteuse and found a stunner...

On the left is a recent pic of Ms Winehouse, and a right Jewess she looks too! On the right, a pre-fame pic where, I'm sorry to say this, she looks like a Jewish princess [my terminology] and hopefully, less offensive but no less true. Looks like the apple realy never does fall far from the tree after all.

Doom, Gloom & Dispondancy

2007-07-13T21:20:00.000Z

I don't know what it is with me lately, I just can't be bothered. I can't be bothered to do most things. Blog, respond to blogs, finish the kitchen, socialise with friends, being "nice" to arseholes who think that they are friends but aren't etc, etc. Hence, my posts have been a bit few and far between. The one uplifting moment was finding that tonight was the First Night of the Proms and the second piece being Elgar's cello concerto. I needed a good cry.

A Racist Post

2007-07-07T22:20:00.000Z

At heart, we're all bigoted in some way or other. I'm not a fan of certain oriental people. Three oriental persons I hate with particular venom. The little cunt who comes in the pub selling crappy DVD's, Lucy Lui and Gok Wan.

I've never met Ms Lui and I'm sure that she is quite a nice person but she looks like a bad drawing done by a child. The Bride of Wildenstien is mocked for the way her eyes look [and rightly so] but Ms Lui is considered to be a beauty. Figure that!

My next object of hatred is Gok Wan. I've had the dubious pleasure of being in the same room as this talentless prick and I'm still amazed at my self control. I'm not a fan of prissy, faggy, Dolce & Gabbana type queers. I hate little glasses with thick frames and this cunt ticked both boxes.

Oh, and another thing....... every time he's on the TV [which is tooooo fuckin' often] he's always pulling this stupid face, it's the look adopted by all such "how FABULOUS am I?" crowd. I rejoyce in the knowledge that orientals all have small dicks. Next time, self control can go back in its box....

Pride Parade

2007-07-05T21:50:00.000Z

Saturday 30th June saw the Pride London parade. I must be getting old because I can remember when it was called Gay Pride. Of course, "Gay" doesn't encompas all the other sexual deviants so I guess that's why the name was changed.

Anyway, we [in terms of the pub] had a float in the parade. Here are some photos of the event.

[back row l-r] Thy, David, Jim, Sheila Bliege, Paul, Wade

[front row] Brooks, Ben

Fools Dancing. This is at the turn from Regent St into Picadilly Circus.

Jim & Paul. Paul's feet were bleeding by the end of the day.

Sheila Bliege, the baddest fairy in Hampstead.

There are lots more photos, I'll put the rest on Flickr.

Sound advice!

2007-07-04T23:41:00.000Z

Here is some advice from the recently cobbled together association of the RSPCA and the Pan-London Lesbian Alliance....

Save more mice, eat more Pussy!

Trashed!

2007-07-02T17:37:00.000Z

Post Gay Pride, or Pride London as it is now called, I'm feeling a tad fragile.

When my hangover subsides I'll post some pics. Meanwhile I found a pic of one of our flyers discarded somewhere in Soho.

If you can't stand the heat....

2007-06-16T19:56:00.000Z

The Fatalist has posted on a subject which is close to my heart, noise. Or, to be more precise, silly old cunts complaining about noise. His post relates to some prick moving into an area where there is noise from aircraft flying into and out of Heathrow airport. For your information, no new airport has been built in this country since 1944. Nearly every civil airport in the UK is formed on former RAF air bases. True, many of them have been expanded and redeveloped over the years but, that is where they [almost all] derived from. Some are expansions of the few pre-war civil airfields / aerodromes [Croydon, Yeadon [Leeds /Bradford], Prestwick]. Yeadon, now called Leeds / Bradford International was a fog-bound gras strip on top of a hill. It was in the middle of nowhere. Then came WW2 and A. V Roe, or AVRO, as it came to be known, built a huge big factory making Lancaster Bombers. For obvious reasons, the factory was sited out in the middle of nowhere. Almost immediately after the war, the place reverted to a civilian airport. Simultaneously, apparently, some silly twat started developing the land around it and, as the saying goes, "if you build it, the people will come". As with all airports, silly cunts who live next to them, complain about the noise of the aircraft. Didn't they notice this when they bought the house? It's not exactly like buying a Wimpey house with a countryside view from the kitchen window only to wake up one morning and find that Wimpey have built another 500 houses on the other side of your fence.

Drag Queens for a Birthday

2007-06-13T19:21:00.000Z

Yesterday was the Black Widow's birthday. David had laid on a cabaret. The line-up was not quite as planned. Our resident drag queen, Sheila Bleige, was there as usual. Good old Sheila.

The next....artiest, Fi Fi la Chateau [below]. Apparently, a winner in a drag queen contest. Hmm.
Last up, Mrs Moor, a stalwart of the Black Cap.

By a long way, it wasn't the best cabaret ever in the "Willy". Anyway, Paul was happy.

This is Paul, the Black Widow and hos new boyfriend. Death for breakfast as David calls it. By the time this pic was taken I was well pissed, hence the pic is blurred. Or maybe it was the fact that drag shows rot your brain quicker than heroin.

You Looking At Me?

2007-06-13T18:49:00.000Z

This is what Sidney looks like when disturbed in his sunbathing.

Pride

2007-06-10T12:23:00.000Z

Four weeks and counting.

This will be the first year that the KW4 has had a float in the pride parade and, according to lots of people [silly cunts in the pub], it's going to be "fabulous, darling". Well, of course it is, I'm building it!

So far, the whole exercise has been akin to burning £50 notes.

Library Thing

2007-06-06T23:02:00.000Z

Posts may be a bit fewer and further between while I use "Library Thing" to catalogue my books online. I've been at it for a few days and have only done about 250 books. Dull, I know, but I enjoy things like that. For those who may care to look, my catalogue can be viewed here...

Library Thing

We Shall Not Be Moved

2007-06-04T21:44:00.000Z

Oh my God! I've just had a "Road to Damascus" type realisation. I'm watching a thing on BBC4 about Vietnam and it is showing a clip of protesters in some US university and they were singing We Shall Not Be Moved.

Something, somewhere in the depths of my mind, such as it is, bubbled to the surface and it was a recollection of one of my brothers teaching me that song.

Along with it was the recollection of my mother giving me a bollocking for singing it. Now I know why. She wasn't a protest song type person.

Going to the chapel [Town Hall]......

2007-06-02T15:41:00.000Z

Today's the day. The "Wedding Reception" I wrote about back in March is this afternoon. I've just arrived home from work to be told by David to go and get myself clean and sweet smelling [a gargantuan task in itself!] because he needs he to work the bar. Ah well, time to shower and attach my "I love punters" smile.

Green Fair - Pink Hair

2007-06-02T15:32:00.000Z

Oh dear, it's that time of year again. Camden Green Fair. Lots of GROLIES [Guardian Readers of Limited Intelligence in Ethnic Skirts] and knob heads with cancer of the hair [dreadlocks].

God must favour them because it never rains on Green Fair day [though I can imagine that if it did, most of the punters would get their first wash since the midwife got them wet].

Last year was hotter then hell and I was sweating like a rapist. Looks like the same is set for tomorrow. Still, the over-time pays the mortgage.

Ooops!

2007-05-31T23:01:00.000Z

Arriving home from work yesterday find one of our regular punters sitting at the bar in a collar and tie. "All dressed up and nowhere to go?" I quipped.

"Sort of" replied Paul aka "the Black Widow".

"What's with the tie, you look as though you've been in court".

"I have".

Reading the Camden New Journal today [our weekly local rag] explained all.

Linda Jolly and Marion Lyon at St Pancras Coroner’s courtMothers’ anguish over double death mysteryInquest hears how two men die in the same Hampstead flatTWO grieving mothers discovered on Tuesday that their young sons died in the same Hampstead flat in mysteriously similar circumstances within six months.St Pancras Coroners heard how Terence Jolly, 18, died of a massive morphine and sleeping pill overdose at a flat in the sheltered Monro House block in Fitzjohn’s Avenue last January.Just six months later, aspiring racing driver Lawrence Lyon, 23, died in the same bunk bed in July.Both men had been befriended by Paul Mingo, a live-in carer at Monro House, shortly before their deaths.Mr Mingo claimed that both Mr Jolly and Mr Lyon had been his lovers and had brought them to the flat to help them deal with drug problems. But their families say neither man was gay and are calling for police to expand an investigation which has so far failed to answer all of their questions.Mr Jolly’s adoptive mother, Linda, said she was thrown by the similarity of the deaths: “We were almost coming to terms with it and the (coroner’s inquest) threw it all up in the air again. It’s left us with unanswered questions.”Mr Lyon’s mother Marion said: “It’s going to take a long time to get over this. We’ve both lost sons. We’ve a very strong family, he knew he had a problem, we were in the process of sorting it. It’s destroyed the whole family.” Mr Mingo has received a police caution for giving Mr Lyon three sleeping tablets, which formed part of the lethal drugs cocktail that led to his death.He told the inquest: “Foolishly I gave him some sleeping pills and I should have known better and I’m deeply sorry for what happened. Unfortunately my past has not been good. Most of my lovers have been drug addicts and have been young. That’s my mistake. I’ve been this way all my life. I didn’t do anything intentionally. I’m just sorry for what’s happened. I’m living with it in my own way and it’s not easy to deal with.”Mr Mingo said he met Mr Jolly, from Kent, when out clubbing, adding: “The time coming up to his death we got to arguing about the drugs. I had a previous partner and it didn’t go too well. I’d been beaten, stabbed a few times and held hostage in my own home.”Mr Lyon’s family, including sisters Jane and Dawn and father Michael, who all live in Somers Town, said they had devoted their lives to his ambition to become a Formula 1 racer. Through competitive kart racing he had got to know Jensen Button, raced against British champ Lewis Hamilton and was ultimately buried with his crash helmet.He temporarily gave up racing to work as a scaffolder to support his new son, but had to give up work to look after his mother after she was diagnosed with throat cancer.Mr Lyon’s sister Jane said after the inquest: “His four-year-old son Blaine has got to grow up not knowing what he was like. There’s no end to the grief.”Detective Inspector Carol Andrews told the coroner that Mr Mingo was questioned after both deaths but said that no charges had been brought. She added: “If information leads us to reopen the investigation to an allegation of manslaughter or homicide it will be reopened.”Verdict in both cases: Open.

Not for nothing is he called the Black Widow!

Oi, No!

2007-05-31T20:30:00.000Z

A little snippet in the Daily Mail the other day about a gay bar in Australia, Sidney I think, that has banned straight people.

What a good idea!

I'm on the horns of a Dali Lama with this one. As a pub owner, I need every penny that comes in the door. Problem being it's a gay pub so a balance has to be struck. Moonlighting as a doorman at a gay bar / club [which describes itself as "polysexual"] I go with the flow of what the owner wants [which is every penny that comes in the door]. As a punter in gay pubs, bars and clubs, I HATE to go into places that are full of women. What I hate more, and this is predominantly found in clubs, is when they are filled with "hen parties". Some sad youngold receptionist and her receptionist mates wearing the [new] traditional garb of hen party "hens" [broiling fowl [foul]], this being the hen wearing a bridal veil and a set of "L" plates. Her co-horts wearing devils horns and carrying little devil tridents. Why they feel they have to inflict themselves on poor Innocent fags who only want to go out, do drugs, get their knees damp in the lavs and fight with their boyfriends, puzzles me. And, I swear, the next time one of these brogdinagian creatures prods me in the bum with a plastic trident, she'll get an impromptu hysterectomy!

On the bedside table....

2007-05-30T21:13:00.000Z

Currently reading Wicked Beyond Belief. The story of the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper. Or how the West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police cocked it up. I'm actually re-reading it for the third consecutive time, there's so much detail in it.

It holds an interest for me because I was growing up in Leeds while this nutter was going around killing women. I know it sounds like a tabloid cliche but, at the time, there was a tangible feeling of fear. Also, one of his victims, Wilma McCann was murdered about fifty yards from my grandmothers house, one of the weapons that he used [not the screwdriver] was found in her garden.

Just finished; Vulcan 607, the biography of Fred Dibnah and Remains of the Day.

I thought Fred was one of the best things since sliced bread. The original BBC series about his steeplejack's life was probably the only thing I've seen on TV that made it worth while having the bloody thing in the house. I bought this to take on holiday but it became "Tube reading" IE what I read while on the way to / from work. The description of him working while dieing from cancer reduced me to floods of tears. Well, it's one way of getting a bit of space on the tube.

I bought this after reading the review in one of the Sunday papers. Although it wasn't a bad read, it could had had a bit more detail. I loved the Vulcan. When I was at school I would see then every day on their way to and from the east coast bombing ranges. An awesome aircraft.

Remains of the day was read [the first time around] as the result of seeing the film. I love the film to bits but the book was the biggest load of old rubbish. I re-read after reading something about the author. I was correct in my initial assessment. This book is crap. Avoid like the plague.

Next on the list is Britain BC. Ive read some of Francis Pryor's work before and it's really well written, not to technical.

Britain BC will be read concurrently with The Complete McAuslan. I've read this before and it is riotously funny. This one will have to be toilet reading [the only place in the world where it is possible to escape the rigors of life and enjoy yourself on two different levels].

Food of the Gods

2007-05-30T14:09:00.000Z

I'm having withdrawal symptoms. I've not had fish and chips for over a year. It's not that they're difficult to find, it's just that I'm picky when it comes to fish'n chips [to give them their real name].

There is, just down the road in Belsize Park, a chippy which is one of the best in London... apparently. Not good enough. It's not the quality of the fish [doubtless, it's fine] it's the fact that they fry them in oil.

Real, northern, fish'n chips are fried in beef dripping [fat]. Also, real northern chippies do not sell shite like sausages, saveloy's, "southern" fried chicken etc, etc which, here in London, tends to be fried in the same oil as the fish'n chips thus rendering everything with the same oily chickeny / sausagy / fishy taste. Not being in the north, I don't expect to find a chippy cooking in anything other then oil.

David sells fish'n chips in the pub [cooked in oil], and the silly tourists love them. Fish'n chips they are, real fish'n chips they are not. Also following the faux British tradition, they are served with mushy peas and a wedge of lemon.

Fish'n chips do not come with mushy peas. Another urban myth concerns newspaper. Yes, it's true that fish'n chips were at one time wrapped in newspaper. Not directly in newspaper. Beneath the fish'n chips was a layer of greaseproof paper, then a sheet of plain paper and finally, the newspaper.

False: the fish'n chips were never placed directly onto the newspaper [and what is this shit with wedges of lime?].

True: they had a sheet of greaseproof paper and plain paper wrapped around them.

Good viewing, crap reading.

2007-05-24T19:20:00.000Z

Hmmmm, I was stuck for something to read so, in desperation, I re-read Remains of the Day again.

I had read the "book" many years ago and thought that it was the biggest load of rubbish in print.

I still hold that opinion.

I had originally seen the film on New Years Day on channel 4 and thought it was superb. Then I read the book.

Whoever wrote the screenplay must have been very talented and had a vivid imagination because how such a great film was concocted out of such thin material defies belief.

At the second reading, it puts me in mind of some of the Booker / Whitbread / Orange prizewinning tosh that I've tried to read. Pseudo high brow / high art rubbish.

A load of old tosh [which, incidently, never mentions butlers, English or otherwise]. Reviews of the [un-readable] book tend to be reviews of the film.

The real McCoy.

Libraries

2007-05-23T18:58:00.000Z

It seems to be that some of the blogs that I read and some of the people who read my blogs have a connection with libraries. Doug's blog mentioned that the library he works in is being refurbished / enlarged and that he's happy with the change. Good for him, he has to work in the place.

I don't use a library in London. Camden [Council] libraries are not very good, I've been in two of them, and was not impressed.

I was not concerned with the selection or range of books, I didn't even get that far. I was put of straight away by the fact that they have a children's play area. This didn't have any books in it but a wide selection of toys. Do they lend toys? Perhaps it was to keep the little loves quiet [fat chance!].

Anyway, my mind went back to the library in Crossgates. There is a website called the Leodis Database which has thousands of pictures of old Leeds. Amongst them are some pics of the library at Crossgates. I always remember that it was opened on the 14th December, my birthday, but in 1936 [as opposed to 1964, when I was born]. It was a marvelous 1930's style place, not art-deco, and is exactly the same today as it is in the following pics [or it was, the last time I was in there, about a year ago].

The Library Lobby

The central area of the childrens library

The childrens library again

The main [adult] library.

The view, taken from just inside the main entrance loby, looking into the main library.

The reference library, I never remember seeing this many books in it!

The "reading room". ultimatly taken over by social services.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr #2

2007-05-20T15:18:00.000Z

Birds? You can't say that!

Not as good as the first but still funny.

Holiday Guff

2007-05-20T12:51:00.000Z

Home sweet home, finally! [more about that later].

I don't have anything to do with booking the holidays, David does all of that, I just go where I'm told to go. Crete, OK, I would have preferred Cuba again but, sadly, no chance.

I'm not such a connoisseur that I can tell one Greek island from another. Crete looks just like Rhodes which looks like Mykonos, except that Mykonos had lots of cute men, so, in theory, we could have been anywhere.

The hotel was one of these "All Inclusive" jobbies which, with the amount that both us us can eat and drink, is ideal. I've posted previously about the problems in the hotel with the Poles so I won't cover that again. I thought I was on to a bit of a winner with the internet connection though. Sadly, It was a bit problematic...

Only in Greece could a man come to fix a computer and bring with him a 2lbs lump hammer to do it!This was above somebody's front door, god only knows how old it was.

In the room above this shop is where Alcoholics Anonymous

hold their meetings [every Monday, 7.30pm].

Gorgeous colour

A mixture of Paris and London. It was actually a clothes shop.

Again, just like London. Apparently it was where somebody

on a scooter hit a lamp post, Ouch!

The essence of a good holiday, drink, cigs and a good read.

A "good read" does not apply to some of the crap that David reads.

But, all good things come to an end and then it was time to come home [which requires a post all of its own].

Personal Secretary

2007-05-17T16:00:00.000Z

I've never been very good with days and dates etc. That's probably why I was under the impression that we came on holiday on the 19th. I normally know what day it is, despite what my colleagues say, but this not having to get up on a morning or having any fixed timetable has thrown me more than normal.

David and I sat this morning trying to figure out if it was Wednesday or Thursday [it's Thursday, apparently]. I guess it's nice to be able to have those sort of arguments.

The down side of not knowing what / when sort of fell out of the sky on me this afternoon. Because we came away a week earlier than I had expected [I came home from work and Dave asked me why I hadn't started packing my suitcase...] I was more thrown than usual. It resulted in me having to ring work and explain that, although I did have leave booked, due to my stupidity, I was having to bring it forward a week and that, beg, beg, grovel, grovel, I would be on the plane in a little over six hours and thus, wouldn't be back to work for a week.

Anyway, back to the Chicken Little type realisation. There I was, gazing into a clear blue sky when the black clouds of work crossed my view. What shift am I working next week? Oh, shit!

Well after a quick phone call, to the tune of approximately E20 I discover that Ive got "Field shifts". This means that I'll be like "shit in a field"; all over the fukin place.

Table Manners

2007-05-17T09:30:00.000Z

While sitting in the airport the other day, I was reading in the Daily Mail, an article about people sending their offspring to etiquette classes.

The gist off it was that the little loves were failing miserably at recruitment days because in the lunch interval, when they thought that they were not being assessed, and of course, you still are, it was discovered that a huge chunk of them lacked the basic know how of how to use a knife and fork and other such skills.

Sitting in the restaurant yesterday, if you look around at some of the Brits and their table manners, I can see why some folk would need instruction.

Normally, when it comes to being fed, I'm the first one with my feet in the trough. Some of my co-holiday-makers were not only in the trough up to their elbows but were wielding their eating irons as though they were about to take part in a knife throwing act!

I was always lead to understand that there was only one way to hold a knife and fork and, really there are not that many possibilities to doing so. Think again! I goes to show how many people either normally eat with their hands or doing things "Sidney style" just lick food straight from the plate.

Poles apart / too close for comfort.

2007-05-16T17:51:00.000Z

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, it was the case that if you went on holiday in Europe, the Brits did most of their complaining about the Germans. Well, I'm sad to announce that things have changed.
This hotel and, seemingly the whole of the Med [according to one of the holiday reps I spoke to] is full to the brim with Polish persons.
At least with the Germans you knew what you were getting. They were loudish, wore speedos that were two sizes to small and had huge moustaches [ not to mention the sunbed thing] but at least you knew where you were with them.
The Poles, on the other hand........ This will be my last holiday in Europe. Loud, over or under dressed; never just right, and for a nation who had absolutely fukin nothing in the shops, have failed to grasp / remember the art of queuing.
This must be the first time in the history of the two nations that the Brits and the Bosch have sided together.
I get the impression that Stalin spent all the years that the Poles were subjugated, breeding them to look like Popeye; huge big fukin elbows! When it comes to "pushing in" the Poles act like they're breaking a barricade and their table manners [there will be another post about table manners tomorrow] are the worst!
If any of you have read A Short History of Tractors in Ukraine, it paints a perfect picture of the way Eastern European women dress and why. To say that it looks like a prostitutes convention would be a bit of an understatement.
Then there is the dentistry..........

Wrong Date

2007-05-16T17:49:00.000Z

It's a good job that I have David to keep me on the straight and narrow! I thought that we were going on holiday on the 19Th of May. We actually went on the twelfth so, this comes to you courtesy of the Hotel Creta Panorama.

good News - Bad News

2007-05-10T21:39:00.000Z

Goodbye [and good riddance] to Tony Blair.

Well, that was the good news. The bad news is that he's going to be replaced by another fuckwit out of the same stable.

There is an old adage that "it doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets in". Well I didn't vote for any of this crew and the buggers still got in! I want a recount.

Hair or no hair?

2007-05-08T21:09:00.000Z

I was reading something about hair, or the lack of same, on Dr Sparkys blog. Sadly, although I can empathise with his plight, I can't sympathise with him. In many respects, I envy him. I don't like hair, it traps dirt, changes colour and needs cropping frequently. If mine fell out tomorrow I would count myself well rid.

I suppose that some would consider that I'm lucky in that I'm like a baboon when it comes to hair. I don't know where it comes from, my Dad had a classic Bobby Charlton "comb-over".

This is Gregor Fisher by the way, not my Dad.

My very own dog fur grows such that I have to clip it every other week. My brothers [Mathew, Mark, and Luke, and that's not a joke by the way, there is also Frank, and me, Chris] are all like me, hirsute. John [known by the rest of us as Judas] has inherited my Dad's trait, IE. the DNA of a billiard ball.

David, my beloved, started to lose his hair when he was 22. It finally reached the "Islands in the sun" stage when he shaved the lot [little?] off.

It seems to be a bit of a gay trait that those who are "good with colours" don't piss around when it comes to going bald. Damn right too.

With that tenet in mind, here's hoping that Patric Stewart is one of the "boys". Toooooo sexy!

TOOOOO SEXY [This isn't my Dad either [that would be illegal!]].

Me [in the pushchair] my Dad pushing me and Judas tagging along.

Judas would have been about 12 at the time and I think I can detect that

hairline heading towards the nape of his neck!

Family Values # 6

2007-05-08T19:22:00.000Z

Monday morning finds me a bit under the weather [and also under the influence] still from the weekend. It being a public holiday and me, for once, not having to work, I thought I would spend a portion of the day sleeping off the excesses of the weekend. Some hope!

9 o'clock on the dot and the doorbell starts ringing. I elbow David in the ribs and tell him to go see who it is [well, it is his fuking pub!]. Five minutes later and he treks back upstairs with his delightful brother [father of Fat Bird].

Some conversation ensues and then he's gone, thank God.

When I eventually crawl out of bed I ask Dave what he wanted.

"to borrow the car"

"I hope you told him to fuck off!"

"no"

To say that I was annoyed would be a wee tad understatement.

I didn't even know he was in the country. Had I known, then I would have been prepared for.... well, anything really.

Eamon is a complete fuckin sponger. He's a big, fat, lazy, Irish cunt who's never done an honest days work in his life. He lived in the US for a lot of years and it was the best place for him. He should be a Nigerian, being just the type who thinks he can make a quid from anything or anybody. Problem is that all he can make is a quid, nothing more.

Many moons ago he joined one of these "happy clappy" religions but, and these are his words, he keeps losing his religion, needs to keep it on a bit of string, in my opinion.

At our first meeting, and this was just after David had come out as being gay, and would be shacking up with another bloke, Eamon said that he would pray for us. I told him he'd better pray for a good surgeon because if he came out with any more cracks like that one, he'd fuking need one!

He thinks he knows the worth / value of everything [but doesn't] and he could always have gotten what ever it is you have bought cheaper for you, if you'd only bothered to asked him.

Anyway, back to the car. I let my tourettes syndrome out of the bag and had yell at Dave, but the deed was done.

Around 7 o'clock and he arrives back saying that he's left the car outside. Outside the front of the pub is "pay & display" parking. We have a residents parking permit, but the residents parking is in the surrounding streets, not on the high street. If the car was left there it means that from 8am the following morning it would be liable for a parking ticket [and the Traffic Taliban in Camden don't mess around].

"Where was the car this morning?" I asked him,

"Oh, Prince thingy Road".

"Well in that case, put the bloody thing back there! If you can pick it up from there, you can bloody well take it back there"

With that he pissed off to move it and didn't even bring the keys back upstairs, leaving them behind the bar.

With any luck, he won't be back for a while, cheeky cunt.

XXL

2007-05-07T03:54:00.000Z

Vodka Dave came up with the idea of going to XXL. For all that he is a complete drunk, show-off etc, he is very lacking in self confidence. He's heading towards fifty, quite camp, shaved head to hide the fact that he is balding and quite over weight.

I wasn't keen to go, I don't go clubbing much because I don't like places filled with women, 16 year old prissy queens in Prada tee shirts or hoards of foreign [Spanish, mostly] tourists.

David [my David, not Vodka Dave] then pulled his usual stunt of inviting every fucking half wit in the pub. I managed to un-invite most of them and the end result was that five of us went.

I cannot remember the last time I went clubbing and enjoyed it so much. All the stuff on their website is completely true. No females, no "how fabulous am I?" prissy / hissy queens, no foreign tourists.

The whole concept is aimed at the "larger" gay person. While it wasn't quite a bear-fest, there was absolutely no attitude. Vodka Dave likened it to weight watchers with a bar, drugs and music [and a dark room].

I think I know where I'm going to be spending my Saturday nights.

No hair, no shirts, no 6-packs, no attitude, no women!

The end of the world!

2007-05-03T23:02:00.000Z

It's the end of the world. Hundreds of people staggering around King's Cross gasping, coughing and rubbing their eyes, and I'm one of them.

Ive never suffered with hay fever or anything like that but this yellow fluff that's falling off of the trees is killing me!

I now have sympathy for all of those who have always suffered.

But why now? I'm 42 for Christ's sake!

Good books - good films. Bad books......

2007-05-03T21:16:00.000Z

One of the first works of fiction that I read was Red Dragon by Thomas Harris. Straight after I read Silence of the Lambs. Then I saw the film [Silence of the Lambs]. I thought that both were very good stories and the films were good too. The I read Black September and thought that it was so-so.

Then came Hannibal. I read the book before I saw the film and didn't recon much to either.

Just as the book came out, there was an article by Mr Harris in the Mail on Sunday. I've read some shite but that was a real load of cod psychology / pseudo babble about how and why writers do what they do and where they get their inspiration from. He was definitely paid to write it, or he was drunk.

Ignore the fact that there was a re-make of Red Dragon, although it wasn't bad.....

Now comes Hannibal Rising. I've not read the book and having gotten half way through the film, doubt that I will. I'll be lucky if the film goes the distance without me hitting the "off" button.

I also doubt that at £20, I'll be buying the book.