Goat Food

Cheese shop

2011-12-20T13:36:00.000Z

I love the Co-Op but this morning it has annoyed me immensely. Not half an hour ago I saw some smoked cheese in there with a reduced label on. Lovely. We both like smoked cheese and this was very cheap. It lasts for ages, too. This is presumably on account of it a) being cheese and really, it's already off isn't it. And b) it's smoked, which in my book, apart from making the cheese taste rather nice, is another way of preserving it.

"Can't sell you that, love".

"Why not?"

"It's a day over. If we got caught."

"But it's cheese. By its very nature, it's already gone bad. It is off milk riddled with smelly bacteria to the point of being rancid and then it's left in a shed for several months, occasionally being prodded by men in coats before someone lights a bonfire underneath it. What difference is a day in vacuum wrapping in a fridge going to make? I'll take the risk. You should see that stilton I bought in West St a couple of months ago. Lovely sauce."

"I know, love. It annoys us, too."

"So it's going to be thrown away. What if if I, you know, like er...stole it? Surely I can't be done for nicking something you were going to chuck out?. That would be a right old irony, wouldn't it; you'd prosecute me for thieving something that you would have got done for should you have sold it. I'd like to hear that summing up."

"Er...ha ha..."

In which I get a bit uppity.

2011-11-26T14:15:00.001Z

Your host apologises for the fact that he's never made a study of all European unemployment benefit systems.

Did you know for instance that if you're claiming JSA you can go abroad and still claim for 3 months? Providing it's contributions based, which effectively restricts it to the first 6 months of your unemployment. Neither did I. It's never been explained to me in all the time I've been unemployed so why would I know? On the front page of the Direct Gov website it says you can only claim if you're in the UK, so why look further? Apparently unemployed Belgians can come here and can prolong their own claim for four months. Damn, I should have known that but . But the only Belgian I know can't explain their system and my French is shit so HTF would I have known?

Because I'm repeatedly told by the Daily Mail that this place is Eldorado for benefit scroungers, especially foreign ones and despite my own experience proving the contrary, I've kind of assumed that other countries aren't as generous. Our rules must be slack then, even the one about being in the the UK. In other countries you probably can't even leave your town. In fact it is Belgium where everyone should be heading. Apparently they don't means test or even check up that you're looking for work and freely pay for you to live abroad regardless of how long you've been claiming and regardless of any disparity in the benefits eligibility rules between the two countries. No it doesn't particularly make sense to me either, which is one of the reasons I didn't know.

It should not be incumbent upon the person in the street to know these things. There is too much to know. It is why countries have costly bureaucracies, in order to point this stuff out to us because, believe it or not, there are other things in life worth knowing more than the intricacies of the social security system and spending half your life chasing around behind the arse who couldn't be bothered to tell you in the first place.

This call may be recorded

2011-08-11T21:28:00.002Z

I think I may have inadvertently hit upon the malaise that is currently affecting the country and causing disaffected hordes of university lecturers and other so-called "professionals" to take to the streets in order to trash the local Body Shop for a lifetime's supply of jojoba and hemp arse butter. The Harridan and I have suffered a repeated and relentless attack of this over the past few weeks and it is quite obviously a sickness eating deep into society's very heart and everyone who has ever bought anything has been affected by it to the point where they almost certainly never want to actually buy anything again. Ever. So...

A) You have recently suffered some civil disturbance. On a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 is Very Inconvenient and 5 is I hardly notice the bruises, can you rate your experience of your local riot?

B) Where 1 is No damage and 5 is Razed to the ground how do you rate the damage to your property?

C) Have you been financially affected by the troubles? 1) No 2) My shoes were damaged by petrol from a Molotov cocktail and I have had to replace them C) The insurance on my business ran out yesterday and I've just about been struggling by in the recession. I have enough left for a half bottle of Spar whisky and box of generic paracetomols.

D) How was your trip to and from work affected? A) No problems B) Slight diversion C) My office was burned down so I didn't bother D) I am in hospital because my car was overturned by hoodies

D) You are in receipt of some stolen goods but the remote control is missing. Do you A) complain to Currys? B) Go to a boot market on Sunday and hope to pick one up from the bloke with the dodgy copies of Office 2010 and the adult DVDs? C) Hope there's another riot so you can complete your purchase

We will shortly be in touch with you to assess your views on our customer services department and a further survey about this survey. Have a nice day.

This Charming Man.

2011-06-24T00:18:00.004Z

It has long been mentioned by others, others who should often know better, that I am due more exercise. My recent flirtation with my mortality at the Leighton house of pain resulted in a leaner me to the tune of almost two of Her Majesty's imperial stones and I know this, and the concomitant rise in my level of general physical fitness, has been appreciated in certain quarters but there is still room for improvement. So I have sought to remedy the situation in a drastic fashion; I have entered a World Championship and I compete this coming Saturday.

The nearby village of Willaston has played host for the last three decades to the World Worm Charming Championships. It is a prestigious event covered by the world's most renowned media operators, although Sky haven't yet sullied it with huge cash injections and an insistence on it being held at a convenient for advertisers slot or formulated a short snappy version to be played in pyjamas, so wherever you are in the world you should be able to view my fellow combatants and me in competition, probably in the "And finally..." bit.

How does it work? Simple; you have half an hour to get as many worms out of a 3m square plot of primary school playing field (yes, there IS actually one left without a housing estate on it) as possible without digging a hole or using water or other forms of chemical inducement. The favoured method seems to be to somehow mimic the sound of rainfall falling on the earth and indeed, watch gulls and other birds in your own garden and you will often see them waddling about on the spot doing just that. A brand new large garden fork has been purchased and I have sawn notches into a piece of 1" x 1" timber batten I had kept (I just KNEW it would come in useful. SEE? That's what sheds are for) to draw along the handle of the fork while it is stuck in the ground, a practice known as "fiddling". So far my training sessions have yielded precisely this many worms: 0. I'm hoping it's going to chuck it down and save me the bother. I have done this before, though, much more successfully. Many years ago while on holiday in Denmark, my then father-in-law and I were discussing obtaining worms for fishing bait with our hosts. Our hosts' daughter's certifiable boyfriend, Per, had the answer, which he swore blind worked: two garden forks, stuck in the lawn several feet apart and several yards of electrical cable. With a plug on the end. Health and safety be damned. We naturally stood off the lawn and made sure it wasn't raining when he flicked the switch but it took about 30 seconds until the poor buggers came flying out. I'm sure this method isn't allowed on Saturday.

Apparently the worms respond well to music but not, as one would assume, the calming strains of something pastoral or soothing. No, apparently they prefer the driving rhythms of rock and roll. Splendid. I couldn't find anything with forks in it and there's no way I'm playing that load of old dreary from The Smiths. Another garden implement then...

Football theory.

2011-06-04T21:48:00.003Z

I watched the football match between the England and the Switzerland earlier. Favourites England very soon went behind 2 - 0 and were being outplayed and out-cheated (first goal, he never touched him, ref) by the wily Alpine also rans. After 30 minutes, Sig Capello replaced the crocked left back, Ashley Cole, with Everton's Leighton Baines (above) and parity was very soon restored, with Baines, to my mind, being the stand-out player for England.

Why was this? It was for no other reason than because he looks like a proper footballer. Busy and stocky. Wide forehead. Proper haircut. The way footballers used to look back when the Daily Express was very nearly a newspaper. Let's face it, when I was a kid nobody ever wanted to look like a footballer, even though some of them were reported to earn about £100 a week. I bet he even has an old Ford Granada Ghia and wants to run a pub in Cheshire when he hangs up his boots. This is the way it should be.

Some proper footballers, not nancy boy overpaid whingeing poofs (except maybe the long-haired lady-boy in the Arsenal shirt). Huge prizes for correct guesses.

Silly count.

2011-06-03T20:49:00.001Z

I have been annoying people with my pickiness. Or is that pickyness? Neither, at least according to Blogger's spell-check. Do I care? Well, yes. What is the point in having a language if one does not appreciate its general rules? But I will accept that misunderstandings occur when basic common sense deserts in favour of slavish interpretation of what the eye sees.

Yesterday, in ASDA, we purchased the above box of fungi. It clearly states a price of £1 as it was a special offer. There was no bar code, just a product number. If you are familiar with the self-service tills at supermarkets, you will understand this. The highly trained operatives in ASDA, one would think, would be similarly familiar. Ours, on inputting the number into the machinery, received a prompt: "Enter amount" the screen said, which she repeated audibly. She stopped, thought for a second and, notwithstanding the fact that she was about to charge us £1 for every item, proceeded to count every mushroom in the box. Oh.

TL;DR

2011-05-20T23:36:00.002Z

It's been a crap week for The Man in Crewe, for I have been sticking it to him, good and hard. As you know, people wearing ties are the bane of my life, especially those incapable of the simplest and most menial of tasks; the ones that they are presumably hired, at vast public expense, to do. Many things about them, apart from their patronising tone and their ridiculous inefficiency, irk me. The worst being that they expect me to call them on low cost or free-phone numbers, none of which are free or even low-cost from my mobile, my only source of telephonic communication.

Yesterday morning I was expecting to receive my dole scum allowance as usual but my early morning text from my bank indicated it hadn't been paid. I checked my bank account on line and it still wasn't there. We walked in to town and paid the job centre a visit, where I was told to sit in front of Carole while she hit a few buttons and looked a bit glum. "You'd better phone Chester. Use that phone". I phoned Chester on that phone. They said there was a problem on the method of payment and they would call me back. I said I had an appointment at 3.30 so would be busy. At 5 I checked my phone to find they'd tried to call at 3.30. I **facepalmed**. I checked my voice mail. "This is Cheshire Payments Centre. Returning your call". Oh, thanks. Don't leave a message, that's just cost me 10p. This morning I checked my bank account; paid sometime yesterday. Insert your four-letter descriptive of choice here ****.

This afternoon I received a letter from Cheshire East Council to say that my housing benefit (I am on full scrounge) was being suspended under Regulation 11 (which I had to look up on the interwebs) as they had been informed that I was no longer receiving JSA as of 30th April. There was a long form I was required to fill in. I tsked. And tsked again, this time with added profanity. I ain't gunna fill in no form. I tried to call the low-cost number, I got Vivaldi. I resorted to email, written in one hit with no mistakes. I was on a roll:

My name is Richard, I live in a house in Crewe. I have just received a letter, ref 500522974, informing me that my housing benefits have been suspended because my JSA finished on 30th April. This has come as a bit of a surprise to me as I am still unemployed, a fact evidenced by my attendance at the Crewe Jobcentre on Monday 16th to sign on. I was paid yesterday, albeit slightly later in the day than usual and only after I'd been into the Crewe office to whinge because my regular Thursday text from my bank contained no mention of my JSA payment as it usually does. I guess they didn't tell you but I can't see why that should be my particular problem. Apparently there had been some confusion but this is pretty much par for the course as many of the staff can barely read in my experience. They certainly can't spell my name correctly and many of the job descriptions on the DirectGov website concerning Crewe are written in a language I'm not familiar with.

The fact is, Crewe jobcentre press-ganged me into attending a work-experience course that started on 31st January and ended on 29th April. I have had experience of work, rather a lot of it actually, during my 50 years on this planet but I went along with it. As it happened, on account of being able to read and spell my own name, I spent most of the time there helping the staff deal with the witless and disaffected dregs of the Thatcher generation who seem to think they are owed a living but still think it's ok to live in a haze of Frosty Jack fumes and Skunk smoke. But I digress. On the 7th of April, I succumbed to acute appendicitis and had to be admitted to Leighton to have the foetid and gangrenous organ removed. Obviously I did not attend the WE course again. I suspect the fact that the course ended on the glorious occasion of the Royal Wedding has, for some reason, caused the system to go, for the want of a better phrase, tits-up, even though on my return from hospital I filled out all the relevant forms explaining my absence and everyone who needed to be informed, was. I re-signed on 2nd May, as instructed. I've been paid twice, why you haven't been informed is not my problem and I suggest you take it up with JSP. I have not been informed by them that there is a problem

I am fed up chasing around after faceless bureaucrats, especially ones who can't do their simple jobs properly. It rankles, especially after being out of work so long. I don't own a landline and I am sick to the back teeth of listening to Vivaldi pumped through my mobile on a premium rate number because someone can't use their head and take a simple message to call me back. Hence this email and its rather weary tone.

Please don't ask me to call you, please call me.

Yours,

It worked. An hour later I got a voice mail from The Man to say he'd called Job Centre and everything was back to normal. But somebody, somewhere is responsible for wasting time I'll never get back. And they will wish their world will have really ended tomorrow.

Sickening, isn't it.

2011-05-09T19:17:00.003Z

"Isn't it about time you did another blog post?"

"Got nothing to write about."

"Moan about something. I like reading your blog when you're moaning. You were moaning all the time in the car yesterday. All the way back from Southport."

"I only ever write my blog when I'm whingeing about something. Moaning about other drivers doesn't count because that's just normal. I've got nothing else to whine about."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing."

"Not even me?"

"Not even you. I've never been more content. Honest. I've absolutely nothing to complain about at all. Anyway, other people moan about you and that's more entertaining."

(Bail out now, it's not getting any better)

"But when you say you want a packet of crisps, I tell you not to."

"You're correct to. I'm overweight. Thank you for your concern and for caring about me. I don't even go in the fridge after you've gone to bed, even if I fancy something with cheese on. Even lots and lots of cheese. And on a Digestive biscuit. There have been two packets of crisps in the pantry for over a month now. You have taught me discipline and a renewed respect for my body. I've lost a stone and a half since you've been here."

"What's that in kilos? I failed maths O level and I lived in Belgium."

"32, at least, my love."

Smiling As The Shit Comes Down*

2011-04-16T01:00:00.000Z

A month since my last post so I may as well do another. Coming thick and fast, hope you keep up. So, what's been happening?

I'm still unemployed. I still theoretically attend the course for the long-term unemployed that is curiously called a work-experience course. There were some very silly people attending and I don't think they really took it very seriously. There is a very definite class of gentlemen, possessing as they invariably do a combination of a capacity for a phenomenal intake of alcohol with casual racism, misogyny, a devotion beyond the call of duty to football and an ability to blame absolutely everyone bar themselves for their plight, to whom even the merest concept of work, let alone the tiniest amount of effort expended in the pursuit of its attainment, is anathema. I have been accused before of being somewhat aloof; forgive me, but I would rather be considered that than to be alongside one of these peer examples. I therefore made good use of the facilities and applied for lots of jobs. Didn't get any though so, in that phrase beloved of those trying to make their vox pop sound considered and thoughtful, at the end of the day, Brian, I'm still on a par with the knuckle-dragging finger-readers as far as society at large is concerned.

There was one attendee called Chris (almost everyone, even the women, were called Chris) who spent all day staring at the middle room, breaking off only to go outside and have a fag or to make a brew. Going for a smoke entailed walking down two flights of stairs. On his return he was invariably out of breath, gasping. Sometimes he would blame this on his previous evening's exertions, which invariably consisted of the consumption of several cans of Frosty Jack, "a great drink", the kind of cider whose genesis involves not a single apple and is the focus of the oft-mooted tramp tax. Myself and Glynn from Middlewich made repeated childish references to the wonderful 8 Ace but this injection of culture proved to be way off Chris' radar so we were left laughing at our own genius. Another Chris loved the sound of his own voice so much that he felt everyone else ought to be afforded the same pleasure of which he was in constant receipt. This would have been fine had he actually had anything funny or, indeed, interesting to say. As it was his conversation consisted almost entirely of references to Wookies and misquotes from Monty Python. This man was in his mid to late 20s. I have been listening to mis-quotes from Monty Python since his mother was a teenager and repeating "Ni" ad infinitum rather exposes your limited social skills, believe me. In the belief that their constant quoting imbued him with the air of some kind of contemporary aesthete he was a deep mine of every stupid and vacuous cliché imaginable; the kind of cliché whose use for most is pejorative. The sound of my head repeatedly crashing into the keyboard in front of me as he uttered, with the most sincerity he could muster that, "my mind has no safety catch" must have been audible well beyond the screens erected halfway along the room. I really could go on and on and on...

But I was saved. A couple of weekends ago I felt a little twinge in my abdomen which I thought was the old sitcom standby of my operation scar reacting to the dodgy weather as we'd just experienced four seasons in one day. Come Wednesday evening and my belly was feeling distinctly uncomfortable although I wasn't in any pain. Being a grown-up, I did consider that maybe there was something afoot and as a result I decided to stop eating and drinking and pack an overnight bag, just in case. Sharon very kindly offered to run me in to A & E on Thursday morning. The duty doctor had a prod, I twitched, he said "appendix" and I'd be admitted. Bobbins, I thought to myself, that's going to be a slight annoyance. I was prodded and poked further throughout Thursday and told that it may also be a kidney stone. The world isn't ready for two people blogging about kidney stones so this diagnosis had better be wrong. The following day I had a CT scan, during which was found to have an allergy to the contrast medium that's injected in order to make the pretty pictures. But appendicitis was duly confirmed and I was booked into theatre. Thankfully I'd be asleep, the last thing I saw at the theatre was Robinson Crusoe with Billy Dainty in a frock and I didn't want it to lose its magic. When I came round I was told that my appendix had been gangrenous, was leaking something noxious into my abdominal cavity and that had I not been given precautionary antibiotics when I was admitted, it may have been a lot worse. They had, it seemed, "caught me just in time". Moreover, everyone in the ward seemed to know of someone who'd died within 24 hours of developing peritionitis and even my neighbour told me she'd received the last rights as a child while suffering same. They let me out on Tuesday, I'm recovering well, thanks.

Still, it was a rum do as all this rather buggered up the "arrangements". My close followers will know that lately I have been walking out with a lovely spirited young lady but that she lives in that there Forrin. Rather amazingly (although there were some other compelling reasons), she had chosen to leave Forrin and relocate to the sandy shores and balmy skies of the Gateway to the North. To be with me. Blimey, how did I manage that? It was to be this weekend that I had planned to hire a large van, drive to the seaside, get on a boat to Forrin and fetch her. Obviously this was going to be out of the question as I can barely sit down for longer than half an hour, let alone drive a van for 8 hours, load it, drive it again and unload it. We were at a bit of a loss as well, it had, for rather a lot of reasons, had to happen this weekend. Families are good in these situations, especially families that live 250 miles nearer Forrin than I do. As I write this, my brother-in-law is hopefully driving off a ferry at Dover in a van containing a confused woman and a slightly more together tortoise and some furniture. She will be staying at the family seat this evening and my Mum and Dad will be driving her up tomorrow for the reunion. Thank you everyone for mucking in at such short notice and making everything realisable. Mark and Dad for the driving duties, Mum for the hospitality services and not least Sharon for sorting out the storage facilities, the extra muscle and the hotel. I honestly don't know what we would have done without you all.

Welcome home, Zoe x

*you'll find that in here. The radio edit is "ship". That wouldn't be appropriate at all.

It Mek

2011-03-15T22:53:00.002Z

It is about time I posted something. I do not wish to be overly serious either. There will be no comments on here about the Japanese being the world's foremost experts on earthquake proof building techniques but throwing all that good work down the drain by adopting nuclear power, a technology shifty enough at the best of times but downright mental if your country sits on a system of tectonic plates and fault lines the charting of which would have challenged Harry Beck. No, no comments at all. Nothing at all about possibly mutant 300 ft dolphins exacting their revenge in a couple of generations' time. Because that would be crass. I blame politicians.

Not a lot else been happening since I last spoke to you. I have lost some friends. I got one back though, which was excellent; the other I think decided I was politically unsound and instead of entering lively debate, has run away. Which was a shame because I liked him a very great deal. Personally I don't think there's anything wrong with humanely despatching politicians as long as the water table isn't affected.

I did have a houseguest for a week and that seemed to pass off quite nicely, thank you very much. I think she'll be coming back because she left stuff behind and buggered if I'm going to send it. Pink things. Crocs. Ew... And socks. Despite her appalling colour sense and equally distressing taste in food (I've managed very well without the triple threat of cauliflower, spinach and sprouts (obviously) thank you) we appear to get on very well indeed and there is an abundance of cheery happiness about me that is scaring the neighbours.

Elsewhere: obviously the most heartening news I've heard all year has been the revelation that the Dear Old Queen Mum Gawd Bless 'er ("I'm a hundred and ten you know") liked nothing better of a Saturday afternoon than to slip into the Fred Perry, lash on the 16 hole oxbloods and bop away to "Skinhead Moonstomp" by Symarip. Although I rather suspect this to be a well calculated plan to piss off the son-in-law. Sweet and dandy. I also have it on good authority that the Duke of Kent has an unrivalled collection of Albanian death metal. Wonders will never cease. I hope they don't because you couldn't make this crap up.

I came here for something...

2011-02-16T22:57:00.004Z

(I nicked the photo from here)

"Is that what I wrote?"

"Yes. It was. It was very lovely."

"Bugger. I should be remembering this stuff, it is all very important. I feel a tit."

"You've a lot on your mind. It's probably hormonal."

It comes to something when you can't remember even the smallest gist of something of intense personal relevance you wrote not a week ago. Indeed, it is more than even faintly embarrassing to have to be reminded by the muse herself of the content of the brief missive she had inspired. This is very worrying, especially when, not two hours earlier, I had recounted to the ex, and in tiny detail, an episode regarding the purchase of some clothing at a jumble sale 9 years ago, even the exact price of the item and how much we managed to flog it for on ebay (10p and £38, if you must know and it was bought at a jumble sale in Bedford St, near the Scout shop. We got there early and had to queue outside, like tramps outside MacDonalds at closing time. See?)

Last week at the self-serve checkout I had to go through the alphabetical pictures of the fruit and veg to try and remember what the sodding hell the large shiny black thing I was holding was called. Luckily aubergine begins with an A and I didn't have to suffer the indignity of asking someone for confirmation and then having to be guided to a chair and asking whether there was anyone she could call, dear.

Of course I'm worried. My memory has always been a bit of a source of pride and occasionally even good-natured ribbing. It is the repository of all kinds of useless shite that occasionally comes in handy, especially when people you think you haven't been listening. It's a bit of a shame it was never that good at storing the stuff that was deemed important at school but that could probably be put down to the fact that I almost certainly wasn't listening and may even have been asleep. I will make an appointment, if I remember.

Elsewhere: End of an era? Like Hell. Expect occasional added harridan.

How Your Government Works

2011-01-31T17:36:00.003Z

BIG NEWS!!!

Today I am not unemployed. No longer am I a dole scum. I'm so glad you're pleased.

Until now it had been costing the Great British taxpayer around £66 a week to keep me in the manner to which I had become accustomed. Woop woop! Rejoice! That should see the end of the recession and the re-employment of millions of unfortunate victims of Thatcherite capitalist greed.

Except it doesn't work like that. I am now a mere pawn in the massive game of statistical massage that goes on behind the scenes to convince you that your government is working for you. Bollocks is it. I'm still unemployed but for 13 weeks I'm on a course.

Today, at the insistence of the Department of Non-Work and Pensions Enhancement (Prop. Iain Duncan Smith, who wasn't exactly exemplary at holding his own job down), I started a work experience course. This aims to help me with my CV, provide resources to aid me in re-writing to all the companies who have hitherto rejected my previous approaches, only difference here being that I will be writing everything down on a white board in some cheap office accomodation and drinking free tea. Hopefully they will place me in a company for a few days a week to remind me of how it feels to do a job. This is not to be confused with cash-strapped employers getting staff on the cheap for a few weeks. Oh no. Definitely not.

I don't really need experience of work, I have done it before. Several times in fact. Apparently because I have been out of work for so long I am demotivated and need to have the experience of doing a job again before I er...get a job. I am not demotivated; I have an excruciating amount of debt to repay, to institutions and friends and family, this is motivation enough. I just don't really want to clean offices for 15 hours a week at 5 in the morning and earn less money than it costs me to drive to work. But to re-enthuse me and my fellow slackers, an outside training agency is employed at vast public expense. Moreover, should you actually become successful in your job search, the outside training agency already engaged at vast public expense will receive a reward from the government. I have yet to get my head around this arrangement. Even more moreover, the government is paying me another £15 a week for 13 weeks to do this. Should I be unsuccessful, I will revert to just being unemployed, not long-term unemployed, as if I'd been made redundant from a job I never had.

The real problem is that I voluntarily gave up a job in order to save the state a vast amount of money by helping to care for a family member and thereby keeping her out of hospital. Several years later I now find myself well into middle age and the skills and abilities that were appreciated 20 years ago are of little or no practical use to an employer, even though these skills are probably no different to those employed twatting about on Facebook. Because I don't have a degree in something that was done at the local technical college when I was at school, I am deemed under-qualified. The length of my CV, even without dates, works against me. The Department for Non-Work and Pensions Enhancement has done absolutely fuck-all to address these prejudices against the able yet unqualified middle-aged. Huh...the first notice I read on the wall in the training establishment as I made my second cup of free tea claimed that they were going to give me "advise on producing a CV". Go, as they say, figure.

After a few weeks of being newly unemployed, back in 2009, I approached the Department of Non-Work and Pensions Enhancement with an idea for a small business. I needed a bit of help with the finances though as I had no IT resources of my own and that's all I needed to get everything going as you can't try and run a business with an hour's internet time from the library or poncing off friends. A modest grant or bursary or loan would have seen me up and running and by now I would have been employing a couple of people and reinvesting in the local economy. I knew about local initiatives but I really wanted to test the system to see whether they really were doing everything they could to help. I was told to wait until I'd been unemployed 6 months when help would be forthcoming, they thought. It wasn't. I got stuck in a never ending circle, I couldn't really work up a plan when I couldn't devote the time I wanted to it. I couldn't devote time to it because then I wouldn't be able to do my jobsearch and would get no money to live on. Working up your own business plan being tantamount to skiving, when to be honest it involved a lot more effort than writing a couple of letters a week for jobs you knew you wouldn't get. I got demotivated, at least with regard to starting my own business. I got depressed. I got a promise of a job, and actually succeeded in getting a small contribution towards retraining from the DNWPE but my health prevented me from taking it up. It was frustrating. I got even more depressed. When I went to sign on and vented my frustration, not by shouting because I am very well-behaved, I was just told to "sign and date", usually by the patronising Scottish git who always seemed to deal with me when I was at my lowest. In two years only two people at the Jobcentre have ever showed me any empathy or did anything constructive to help me. One poor girl even told me she couldn't be seen to be overtly helping me as it was beyond her job description and it would be seen as favouring me. She did though. Bless you, Emma for using your initiative. Don't seek promotion, they'll kill it.

On the other hand, there is a strong argument for keeping a vast army of unemployed for precisely the reasons that I am now unemployable. We are not inactive, we are a mobile and capable sector of society that does things. We help out, we volunteer, we do odd jobs for the price of a pint or a gallon of petrol and by doing this we keep the social services at arms' length for hundreds of thousands. In turn our administration provides employment for legions of civil servants. It's trickle up. Cameron thinks he invented big society but as ever with a stinking-rich professional politican with bugger-all knowledge of the way people actually live (my entire house would fit in his downstrairs bog I suspect), he's way off the mark. Please don't vote for them, it only encourages them.

Otherwise I am as happy as the proverbial pig in poo.

Happy Birthday to me...

2010-12-29T19:36:00.006Z

Well, this is it. The last evening of my fifth decade. Tomorrow I turn 50. And I feel great.

When I was a teenager, 50 was an unimaginable distance away. A lot has happened in my life since I walked out of the school gates for the last time (and straight into The Fox in Hythe Rd, still in uniform. Hmmm.). College, work, money, marriage, no money, kids, even less money, no work, more work, lover, no marriage, money, step kids, illness, no lover, no step kids, no work, no money. But I have friends and people I can rely on in an emergency and I am someone on whom other people often rely. I have made friendships I will always treasure and I have few regrets. I wish some people close to me knew the truth, I wish the same people knew the truth about some others. I will not be drawn further on that.

A lot has happened in the world in those 50 years. Wars in Indo-China, the Middle East, Asia and even Europe. There has been a constant roller-coaster of arms races and strategic limitations; the pointless fucking brinkmanship that is necessary once somebody discovers the means to destroy every living thing on the planet a hundred times over. Attention seeking politicians nobody, anywhere, actually gives a shit about waving their stinking pus-infected genitals at each other while the rest of us quake in the corner. We've had boom and bust that makes the filthy rich richer and filthier and the poor...well, they've never really mattered. We've had emancipation in America and Africa and slavery elsewhere. I live amongst people who wilfully judge their neighbour purely on the colour of his skin, not on the size of his heart. We've had unbelievable intolerance and violence based on crackpot interpretations of philosophies supposedly based on love. We've had famine and natural disaster and incredible outpourings of selfless charity. We've had politicians that have promised much but delivered little. There was a frantic burst of exciting technological envelope-pushing that effectively ended when the American flag was stabbed into the Sea of Tranquility a quarter of a million miles away. I was 8. The 42 years since have culminated in us being able to watch endless re-runs of Neil Armstrong on bits of plastic the size of a credit card but not correctly utilise the fuel cell technology that sent him there so we rely on raping the world for our power instead. We've developed medical advances to keep us alive and give everyone the chance to breed but brought about the irony that there will be too many people on earth to feed.

I have learned that desperately chasing money and the in-your-face up-yours kind of status wealth affords is pointless. It breeds nothing but hate, a false sense of hunger and resentment. Your car will get you to your destination faster and prettier and noisier than mine but we'll look the same in a head-on. Ultimately we'll both end up being burnt in a box and our life being celebrated by someone who never knew us. Buy your stuff but never forget it's value that counts, not price. Those in power, remember that too. You're there because of us and for us, not so you can write a book on how you let us down and how you would have only done it better if only...

The only currency worth anything is happiness and love. Selflessness over selfishness. The rest is just dressing. I'm looking forward to the future. The depression that has haunted me for the past two years has lifted in the past few weeks and I feel great. I've rarely, if ever, been happier. I really don't know what changes this year will bring but...50? Bring it on, I can't wait.

Who needs Jeremy Kyle?

2010-12-07T15:47:00.003Z

This is a tragic story. It featured in last week's Crewe Chronicle and goes to show the perils a life of heavy drinking can bring, one of which is the kind of comedy demise outlined below. I suspect he didn't do it for the LOLs.

Inquest hears of Crewe man drowning in bizarre bathroom tragedy

I'm very sorry if anyone is offended by this. I'm not, he was the previous occupant of my house and left my bedroom littered with .22 airgun pellets, holes in the ceiling and one in the outside pane of the double glazing where someone shot back. There are also numerous skeletal remains in the garden, the result of his other hobby which was, according to a neighbour, shooting the small birds sitting on the fence. There are a few other stories which, although for the benefit of this post are hearsay, indicate he probably got what he deserved.

Gabba Gabba Hey.

2010-11-24T16:44:00.003Z

Today is the most important day of the past 18 months. Great events will soon be unfolding thousands of miles away as a handful of brave ~~South Africans dodgy~~ Englishmen go into battle against a ruthless and unyielding foe. There will be tales of great heroism and supreme athletic prowess and really quite appalling haircuts.

The nation's already hopeless productivity will once again suffer as those suckers who have greased the Digger's greedy palms with silver survive on half an hour of sleep for a week, as not even his mighty influence cannot transport the sun-blenched and snake-infested battlefield to a more convenient for the advertisers longtitude. And you will be forced to listen to the sages Huss-ain and Sireeyan for your trouble. And with a bit of luck, you'll get Gooch, too. Serves you right.

Savour these last few hours of glorious optimism because as sure as eggs is eggs, bloody Ricky Ponting and some squeaky-voiced youth probably dragging his still bleeding umbilical cord behind him as he runs in will have surely wrecked all hopes any sane Englishman has of exercising his birth-right by laughing heartily at the whining convicts by 3am tomorrow morning.

It's only a game. Isn't it?

Radio Gold.

2010-10-21T16:54:00.003Z

I had just finished my lunch at er...lunchtime yesterday and in a slightly dozy post-prandial state listening to Mr Jezza Vine of the wireless discussing the BBC's current drive to get everyone hooked up to the nation's interwebs. It was a phone-in so I fell asleep. But, in that curious half-dreamlike state between alertness and full on R.E.M. I swear I heard the following conversation:*

Jezza: And next on the line we've got Bob from Middlesboro. Hello Bob.

Bob: Aye.

Jezza: I hear you've been using the internet quite a lot apparently after being initially a bit sceptical. Is that right?

Bob: Aye, Jeremy man, that's right. I didn't trust it at first and then a bloke down the pub come round and set my email up for me, got me aal connected like and showed me a few websites. Canny they were and I was away, like.

Jezza: So you're really into it, now? That's great. So you email a lot, do you?

Bob: Aye, I do like. I've got lerds of friends all over the world now like and it's great to keep in touch. It's been brilliant, I really didn't think I'd get into it at all being as I'm getting on a bit now and don't get out much.

Jeremee: Well that's wonderful, another silver surfer, LOL. I bet you know what that means now! Do you use the internet as well as your email?

Bob: Yes, yes I do a lot, Jeremy. I've got some favourite websites that I go to for my hobby like.

Jeremeyyy: What's that then, Bob?

Bob: I'm a pedo, like.

Jezza: Here's the latest one from Elton John and Leon Russell...

*I might not have heard it at all.

Going Postal. Again.

2010-09-10T15:40:00.007Z

I was going to write about me turning up for a recruitment session an hour's drive away from home today and feeling a tit because I'd left half the required paperwork on my table and being told to bugger off home and ring the office because there was no point in me being there. But I won't, it's far too embarrassing, especially as you're all higher rate tax-payers so paying for me to lounge around all day on my arse doing bugger all. But I'm not going to.

I'm so angry about this. It is not often the sainted Vince gets it wrong, but he has this time. I'm not angry through sentimentality or sympathy with the employees but because this is yet another fantastic business being sacrificed to the all-powerful sacred gods of profit and competition.

In 1985 The Royal Mail handled roughly 42 million items a day and made a profit. Today, despite increasing competition from the new media and the vast section of the population who wouldn't know one end of a pen from the other and even if they could get it to work the only word they could spell correctly most of the time would be LOL, it still manages to handle 71 million items daily and still turns a profit. Admittedly, this is down on a couple of years ago but it still rather gives the lie to the oft-quoted reason that Royal Mail is facing competition from email or social networking.

I send lots of stuff through the mail because I sell a few bits and pieces on ebay. The town centre Post Office is rammed most days with people like me and Steptoe, especially around month-end because folk still like to tax their cars via a human, and you can only usually do that in the big offices (or the sub PO at Stubb's Cross near my Mum and Dad's, which doesn't even have a grill or a window because the post office is just one end of the counter and they're always dead friendly). They've already shut down half the sub-post offices on profit grounds (no post office locally? Bugger it, I'll send an email because I'm not driving ten miles to buy the right bloody stamp. Come on, it's not difficult) and they're in the process of centralising sorting offices. They've just closed down ours in Crewe and moved it to Warrington. The sorting office in Crewe is right next door to one of the country's most important rail hubs (Crewe only exists because of the railways, look at it on a map, it has 6 lines coming out of it) where you can connect easily to anywhere in the country. So obviously the sensible thing to do would be to close that and shift it a place with connections only to Crewe and Liverpool. People are complaining here that it takes 6 days for a first class letter to be delivered from one side of a town of 60,000 souls to the other. Of course it does, it has to go 30 miles up the M6 and back down again instead of to Weston Road and then it has to be sorted by an illiterate who doesn't realise that there are two Mount Pleasants in CW1 but three miles apart. The person responsible for this wonder of efficiency? Adam Crozier. Ran the FA before, now runs ITV. And the only sack he's had on his shoulder all his life didn't have Royal Mail on the side, I bet. Yes, deliberately cheap and I'm not sorry, he's a career twat.

I'm fed up with hearing that it can't compete. Complete crap. It can't compete solely on account of it having pointless competition. Where does it have competition? In the parcels sector where it's easy to cram a lorry or van full of stuff and send it up the motorway. Most of your stuff will be broken because it's been processed by zombies and when it does arrive you'll probably have to drive to their depot to pick it up anyway because their driver has to make 86 stops an hour or he doesn't get paid. I'm not saying Parcelforce are any better but...

Please, someone with half a brain explain to me - why does a postal service need competition? What's in it for us, the consumer? We are only actually interested in getting our letter or parcel to its intended address as quickly and as cheaply as possible. Now, I didn't do economics at school but I don't need an MBA to work out that the best way to do this on a national scale is use the provider where all the profits go towards making the biggest and best infrastructure, not paying off shareholders, ergo The Royal Mail. Even the RM's letterpost competitors realise this and use the the Royal Mail to deliver their stuff for them. Just cheaper. This is like me taking your food out of your shopping trolley and then selling it back to you before you've got to the checkout. Besides, if there were no competition, the RM would always be the cheapest. Competition invariably only means confusion for the consumer (how many of you really chop and change energy suppliers or really shop around for your car insurance? I mean really put loads of time and effort into it. I thought not). And just like the dot com boom, where the only people making any real money were the software designers and hardware suppliers, the only sure-fire winners out of the total break-up of the postal service will be the equipment suppliers and several hundred wanky consultants with pretend qualifications from the University of Mull Business College dipping their filthy snouts in the trough and then making it all up. And the government, who will no-doubt auction licences to the highest bidder. Kill the competition, pay a bloke 100 grand a year to make sure nobody's bowling dodgy no-balls and you're sorted. And please stop looking at Belgium and Holland for examples of how to run efficient mail services. These are countries the size of doormats, completely covered in roads and railways, flat and with a combined population 12 all of whom live in the same town. Look at a map of the British Isles; a clue's in the second part of the name for a start.

If it's the pension shortfall that's really the problem, then look at those who are ripping pension funds off. There is no way anyone needs a pension of a million a year. It's obscene. If I can get by on ten grand a year, so can you. And most super pensions are due to huge bonuses or pay-offs from the company, not personal contributions, that would have been better used shared amongst the staff at large. If a fund has to work itself to death to pay out sums like that then it's on a hiding to nothing, especially as the investment bankers have already stolen half the funds for their bonuses. Sorry I've come over all pink.

Come on Vince, don't be a Tory otherwise I will have to kill you.

World Gone Mad Pt 94

2010-09-08T14:43:00.004Z

It is heartening to see that in the land of brave and home of the free it is possible for even the least complex of lifeforms to lead a valuable and fulfilling life. All you need do apparently is paint a cross on the side of your shed and shit through your mouth. They'll come running.

Let's start World War III on Saturday!

On Stereotyping

2010-08-07T13:54:00.008Z

Hello. Just thought I'd pop in, I won't stay long, just long enough to make one of my typically anti-social annoying observations.

I don't really take much notice of advertising, being a single male, broke, unemployed and with my debts now largely under control, I don't fall into many target demographics and anyway, I don't like being pigeonholed in a particular social category. I have my own views and ideas, thanks.

Women don't though. Not according to the splash on an Iceland artic I saw earlier, Mums are all "Heroes". I don't understand. Heroic for shopping at Iceland? Can someone explain to me what's heroic about emptying boxes out on to a baking tray and slinging them in the oven? Maybe there's some kind of special skill involved in piercing cellophane with a fork or balancing the superheated sludge on a tray in front of the telly. Presumably it leaves them more time watch cooking shows and even more time to complain about fortnightly rubbish collections being inadequate on account of all the Iceland crap filling up their bins after 5 days. It's certainly not cheaper, I could feed myself for several days for the price of a frozen lasagne. It would be rather more heroic if the lazy chavs actually learned how to cook and dragged their obese vitamin-deficient offspring off the couch to help them.

Please help me, I am turning into the Daily Mail.

A Mug's Game

2010-07-09T14:20:00.002Z

I do apologise for not updating this journal recently, I have been very, very busy up here in the Pearl of the North-West. So busy in fact, that I have, on occasion, had to sit down and have a rest and watch the football. Or the tennis. Or the cricket highlights. And the motor racing. Unlike some, I have to make my own tea and meals so at least I have been exercising and still present a trim fifteen and a half stone. I suspect I will have to give the television back soon because it's not mine. I plan to do this after the golf and the rest of the cricket.

Anyway. There doesn't appear to be much else going on in the world at the moment. There's a man running around shooting people and threatening the law enforcement agencies in the north-east of the country prompting the locals to live in fear because a lot more men with guns, the fugitive's original avowed targets, remember, are now flooding their neighbourhood, escorting schoolchildren and old ladies collecting their pensions etc. thereby making them in turn targets. Rothbury is now sending a twinning committee to Sangin.

Elsewhere, I have been investing for my future. I have been enlisting the help of Maureen, the clairvoyant spider currently living in the corner of the ceiling above my front door. For the past fortnight I have been offering her a choice of specially labelled flies and this morning I dropped into Ladbrookes with my piggy bank and the following list:

Stephen Hawking to win Open Golf Championship.
Her Majesty The Queen to ride next year's Grand National winner.
Wayne Rooney to be Home Secretary next year
Guernsey to launch manned mission to Mars by 2015
Vince Cable and Cheryl Cole to marry

They refused to offer me odds for Crewe Alex finishing in the top half of League 2 next season. They said they didn't want to give betting a bad name.

Toodle Pip!

Something for the ladies

2010-06-14T15:10:00.007Z

I am temporarily World-Cup enabled. An armchair has been removed to my bedroom and replaced by a generic DIY workbench covered with a festive paper tablecloth. It is now festooned with electrical appliances and cabling and I have bought crisps although I've now run out of biscuits. I have discovered that if I sit on my sofa arm, I can still comfortably eat my dinner at my table while watching. I do have some pride.

I hasten to add that this is very probably a one-off. I have taken a cursory glance around the myriad channels now available to the viewer and have found them to be mostly this: utter shite. Especially ITV. The comedy is still of a fairly high standard although Frankie Boyle really ought to add to his vast armoury of dreadfully unfunny accents (1) by talking with his mouth shut. Sadly almost everything else I happened across that supposedly passed for entertainment over the weekend was bilge. I don't particularly care for soaps, although I always have had a soft spot for Corrie (we were born within days of each other) as the writing has always been dead sharp and some of the acting very fine indeed but I can't even bring myself to watch that now. Putting something on several days a week doesn't make it better, it turns us into mindless drones.

Having said that of course I need to make a necessary exception for sport. Yes, some sport is rubbish, especially that from the former colonies (basketball. 0-0, 2-0, 2-2, 4-2, 4-4. Make it interesting and miss, for pity's sake. Or die. Or learn another sport) but by and large, the action doesn't generally treat the viewer as brain dead. And there are some sports whose inherent grace and beauty could probably be used quite successfully by creationists as evidence of a grand designer. Second only to cricket in this respect is association football; a game so astoundingly simple in its execution but capable of producing moments of such exhilarating and sublime skill, it even numbers a few women among its followers (I can say this fairly safely, most of them would have gone by now).

There is a problem with the world cup coverage though; ITV are doing some of it and, resorting to type, they have recruited two supposed men of the people, namely Kevin Keegan and Gareth Southgate. Keegan was a gifted but ridiculously petulant player. He has been a singularly crap manager of every team in his charge and possesses almost no tactical nous whatsoever. He also has an annoying voice that renders almost everything he says instantly forgettable. Gareth Southgate is remembered for missing a penalty. He was a passably good manager of Middlesbrough for a while but he is also blessed with a quite boring monotone. But he has provided my own World Cup highlight so far. Last night, following the frighteningly predictable slaughtering and boiling down for glue of Australia by Germany, Southgate attempted a joke. Asked to comment on a silly rap record made by the new German playmaker, Mesut Oezil, he attempted to be clever. "What did you think of that, Gareth?" "It puts the C flat in rap."

That would be Brap, then.

OK, maybe not the best illustration and I dare say someone will make me look dreadfully foolish, but you get my drift.

Cuts - Extra Pressure on Charities

2010-06-09T10:55:00.008Z

As more becomes known about the extent of the ConDem government's proposed public spending cuts, the Prime Minister sets an example by offering his spare room to keep a demented old bag-lady from wandering the streets and continuing her life of petty-crime.

Wild in the Country

2010-05-21T14:56:00.012Z

The mercury is rising. I have checked with the Met Office and yes, it's nearly summer although they said I musn't quote them on this. There is a momentary stall in global warming as the acres of bare white Great British flesh temporarily reflect the sun's rays whence they came and the sound of "Greensleeves" echoes across the parched estates and ancient byways as a thousand ice-cream vans sate the masses with their chemical wares.

It is also that time of year when, of a weekend, naive and unwitting town-folk escape their dreary and unfulfilling lives in their droves and head toward the fresh air and soothing verdant balm of the countryside. Million upon million of them unaware that they are heading innocently toward illness, injury and certain DEATH!!

Although I now live on the edge of a small northern town, I was raised in the countryside and am of farming stock. Our footpaths and fields hold no fear for me, the knowledge of the ancients passed down through the generations holding me in good stead and protecting me as I take the air on my frequent pastoral constitutionals. By way of instruction, I have included below some photographs taken on my most recent outing, the notes outlining the perils the naive and foolhardy day-tripper may encounter.

Wild Markus

Grows at head-height in a bewildering and confused mass. Can cause temporary blindness if brushed near the eyes. The bright orange fruit smells of rotten liver and attracts hornets.

Totter's Dog

Abundant in hedgerows and along tow-paths and especially near grazing sheep. Benign and scentless unless trodden on whereupon it releases faeces-like odours and is near impossible to remove from footwear.

Bitter Scurran

If picked, sap can leave indelible red stain. If ingested may induce violent bilious attacks and possible spleen damage. One of our few carnivorous plants.

Coppensia

Rife in North America and Canada, this is a recent import to our shores. It needs little or no encouragement to flourish and is abundant virtually anywhere it turns up. Can cause headaches if smelt and the leaves turn very acidic if in contact with dog's urine.

Bearded Priest

Named not after a prelate but after the weighted tool with which an angler dispenses the last rights to his catch. Quite possibly the deadliest of our wayside plants and on no account should it be touched or picked. Ingestion will almost certainly result in multiple organ failure and a slow and painful demise.

Sot of Brabant

These are another recent arrival to these islands and are thought to have migrated beneath Eurostar railway wagons from the low countries. These rapacious arachnids can grow to 8 inches across and deliver a vicious and disabling sting. They are easily provoked. Attracted to picnics, especially where alcohol is being served.

All these perils were encountered during a 2 hour stroll. Luckily I returned home unscathed and I will do so again. Best leave the countryside to those who know - Stay at home!

Big Leggy

2010-05-18T15:36:00.003Z

Picture the scene: I was standing with a friend in the queue for the tills in Poundstretcher this morning when a vision in red strode confidently into the store and disappeared down the aisle between the gardening stuff and the knickers. But it wasn't the slim and lithe figure clad in bright red woollen tights, red tartan micro-skirt and matching top and teetering on red platforms that caught my eye, it was the short curly hair atop the tanned and very definitely masculine head. Nobody else seemed to have noticed and if they had, weren't that bothered. I tapped my friend on the shoulder and pointed, open-mouthed.

"Did you see that?"

"Yeah, that was Barry*."

"Aaah. Right. THAT's Barry."

I'd heard mention of Barry before but until this morning had never actually happened across him. There aren't that many nutters in this town**, to be honest, and as I tend to keep myself to myself and don't hang about the few dens of iniquity that are still trading, this kind of thing tends to pass me by. I've only lived here on and off for eight years, plenty of time to pick up the gossip yet. There's a bloke called Disco Pete who's banned from every establishment and social housing building in the area on account of his habit of falling asleep drunk and setting fire to things and otherwise making a nuisance of himself but that's about it as far as I know. There is a genuine Scot who insists on wearing a tatty old kilt come rain or snow (taken to wearing a pair of chinos under it now for some reason) but I don't think talking to yourself while using the microfiche machines in the reference library, which is where he's usually found, counts. We got back in the car, my friend continued:

"Barry comes in The Angel sometimes." The Angel is an establishment I've never frequented. I like a quiet life. I exit the car park.

"He says he's not had sex for years. He also insists that anyone can have his wife for a tenner. He pimps his wife in the pub!"

"Wha..?" I indicate left at the roundabout.

"Yeah. He offered her to me but I told him I wouldn't even touch her for a fiver."

I leave the roundabout at the third exit.

*Not his real name. It's nothing like Barry at all.

**I have heard rumours that about 40 years ago there was a group of hippies who lived in West Avenue and owned a tank. Undoubtedly this is preposterous nonsense of the highest order.

Members Only

2010-05-17T14:11:00.003Z

Despite our limping hero's best efforts last week, it looks like the great British talent for disaster maximisation and the tabloids' insatiable desire to create a story out of nothing just so's they can turn round and tell us that we're crap (is it any coincidence that David Triesman was an active communist in the 7os and that this non-story was fabricated by the Daily Nazi?) is going to thwart the country's attempts to bring football home in 2018.

Mind you, I have a better idea - possible trial sport for London 2012?

Dorset Knob Throwing

Look you...

2010-05-14T15:09:00.004Z

The new Deputy Prime Minister.

Or is it?

Tonight, Matthew, I'm going to be...

Tidy.

Constituent parts

2010-05-03T15:17:00.002Z

I was discussing the election with my mother yesterday. During our chat she mentioned that she didn't recognise the candidates on her leaflets, which is strange as Damian Green has been the MP there for a while and the Tory majority has historically been such that most of the opposition parties tend not to bother turning up. Green's predecessors were Keith Speed, Navy minister under Attila but resigned before the Falklands because he dared to go against her (he resigned protesting against cuts, before you get carried away) and from AD 526 until 1974, Dear Old Bill Deedesh, and you don't get much more Tory than the ex editor of the Telegraph. Actually, there was a two year blip when they voted Liberal but nobody talks about that anymore. I suggested she'd been subjected to a boundary change; Ashford, after all, is growing almost exponentially and the historical constituency would be struggling to stay within the usual numerical size limits in its existing boundaries. There was a brief rustle.

"Oh yes, just found the polling cards that arrived the other day. Oh, we're in Folkestone and Hythe now." Gasp! That's like...FRANCE! Imagine going to sleep in your house along the East Lancs Road in Greater Manchester and waking up finding you'd been moved to Merseyside. Still, it could have been worse; Folkestone and Hythe's most recent MP stood down for this election as he'd had enough of representing the peeepul.

Actually, I've noticed something else: my Nazi candidate shares the same surname as the one standing my mother's constituency. Has the one-eyed slug (the one-eyed slug that likes bigots, I mean) got a Gregory Peck lookalikee churning them out in Bolivia or something?

It's all about me me me...

2010-04-30T15:45:00.003Z

Today I have been mostly doing nothing, mainly because it has been tipping it down. I briefly shouted when Mr Jeremy Vine of the Wireless had that turd Griffin on. I was mildly pleased when the Jezza read out the final text that had been sent as I had been musing on the self-same thing myself: if you're so worried about immigration, why do you live in Wales? He really is such a profound knob.

Anyhow, this afternoon I pondered the meaning of the word "meme" as it appears to be enjoying a resurgence, largely due to the various tantrums of one the above-mentioned knob's heroes. I can't say I was even aware of its existence before the internet, when it became the label attached to those onerous "20 things you didn't really want to know about me but I'm going to bloody well tell you anyway" things that throw up every now and again. Intrigued, I did some research only to find that, apparently, it was actually me, albeit with a spelling mistake, who coined the phrase in the first place - only for that self-important lover-of-his-own-voice, Dawkins, to come along and thieve it. You live and learn.

Election script briefly torn up, PM runs off with ball shock...

2010-04-28T15:10:00.005Z

How much more of this village am-dram society crap can we take? It wasn't that he called her a bigot; it wasn't that he was caught expressing his private thoughts "on air". It was this that made me start talking to myself dementedly while making lunch and giving Yvonne, my next door neighbour, some cast-iron reasons for complaining to the housing: "That was a disaster - they should never have put me with that woman. Whose idea was that? It's just ridiculous...".

"They..." "...put me with..." Since when have I been living in Libya or Zimbabwe or Iran, you knob? Even John Major, the biggest wimp of a PM we've had since Chamberlain, wasn't afraid to get on the stump and answer unscripted questions from anyone who happened to be passing, oh yes. FFS, "The Thick of It" is meant to be a satire, not a documentary. Tell me one good reason why anyone with a modicum of intelligence should be taken in by anyone who actually WANTS to be a politician. The absolute worse thing is, we vote this clown out and (to borrow from Private Eye this morning) we'll end up with 2 for the price of 1. And some of us want to live in a republic and get another layer of this crap foist upon us every 5 years!

The Crewe Hoard

2010-04-21T14:55:00.003Z

Last Sunday I felt industrious and, as the weather was fairly good, I decided to garden. Along with almost everyone else in South Cheshire I had that morning visited the local boot market in Shavington and come away with a tomato plant and a souvenir programme from the Richard Seaman memorial vintage racing car meeting held at Oulton Park in July 1969. This is what poor men do. Faced with the choice between spending your last remaining couple of quid on something with at least some kind of practical use or calorific value and the complete opposite, we opt for the thing that will now lay at the bottom of the junk drawer* for the next 20 years. I decided to plant the tomato.

I chose my piece of ground carefully. It would receive plenty of sun and, being near the outflows from kitchen and bathroom, probably be warm enough to mitigate against any late frost. It was also directly beneath my kitchen and bathroom windows. I set to work with a mattock, breaking the old lawn and lifting the old turf. I intended to plant more than a single tomato vine in the coming weeks.

I pulled away a piece of turf from the blade and something glinted. In amongst the old cotton bud sticks and the ancient toothpaste tube was something shiny. I grabbed the ball of mud and broke it apart and there it was, resplendent in the South Cheshire sun: GOLD! I took it inside and washed off the remaining soil. It was perfect, no corrosion and no damage from the years of cultivation undergone in the area. A cursory inspection revealed the lack of a hallmark, possibly indicating a great age. I even thought I recognised the style as that of the late Tudor, Elizabethan, perhaps by the great court jeweller, Duke or his student, Robert Goss. Thoughts started running through my head: treasure trove! What would I do with the money? Would the British Museum be interested? I immediately told my friends and family; I'd see them right, this was my lucky break at last.

The next morning I sauntered into town, my step definitely jauntier than of late. Where would I go for a valuation? Crewe is largely bereft of major auction houses although there are several outlets promising a fast cash return should one find oneself on hard times and require to dispose of the odd heirloom or two. There was even an oriental gentleman sitting outside Wilkinson's last week amongst a pile of small white envelopes and a set of scales offering a similar service, no questions asked. "Crewe Jewellers. And Pawn Brokers". Ah, this looks the place.

"Good lady." I began

"Yes, love?"

"While ploughing on the estate one of my men has unearthed this object," I continued, passing her the treasure. "I think it may be of some value." I volunteered in a whisper, so as not to rouse the curiosity of the other customers milling about the premises.

She took it from me, examined it closely and placed it in the scales.

"Silver. Plated. 95p."

"Arse. Kthnxbi."

*of which I now have three.

In which I refuse to join the mass debate.

2010-04-16T10:34:00.005Z

Funny, I thought there was an election on. Apparently not if, like me, you don't have a television, listen to Radio 4 or can afford an unbiased newspaper. I exclude the interwebs from this list of media as it's a research tool; as yet, the computers in the library do not canvass me involuntarily, I have to really want to search election information out and you only get an hour for free. As yet, I have not had a single piece of election communication. Nobody cares about me.

A week in and I know two of my local candidates: the sitting Tory, who is exceedingly personable and polite and very visible around town. He won a by-election two years ago in the full glare of the national media and took over the seat from an old-labour national treasure. He's a good and, so far, efficient constituency MP who has shared a platform fighting with the unions to try and keep the local sorting office open. Unfortunately he's a Tory. The Labour candidate is only known to me because I can't resist baiting him on one of the local blogs, taunting him for belonging to a party that has apparently forgotten the meaning of socialism and social welfare. He'll turn up for the opening of a door if he can get his picture in the paper. There is a LibDem candidate but I don't know who he or she is, which kind of fits in with the LibDem ethos.

As for the rest, I don't know. Have we got a Nazi? According to my friend Jules who runs the aforementioned local blog and knows everything and everyone in town, no. Which is a shame because at least I would have someone to shout at or wave the thick piece of wood at that I keep behind the door especially for such an event. I find this strange because we have a Nazi Euro MP. Maybe if the local Poles were black it would be different. Perhaps we've got one of Mr. Farage's Nazi lites; I wouldn't know. As for the hippy tree-huggers and pot-hole campaigners, not a clue.

Yes, I am being deliberately difficult. I'm intelligent enough to find out this for myself. I know the idealogical differences between the big parties and the main talking points. But there are many who don't and don't have the ability to access the information. This, so far, is a non-election being fought by the most inept, faceless and characterless set of politicians I can remember and it is the first one in which I am considering spoiling my ballot. At least then nobody will get my vote.

Coda: Since I posted this I have a) bought The Independent. Apparently Mr. Clegg is now the prime minister and b) about 20 minutes ago, crossed a busy road, dodging a couple of swiftly running blokes as they rounded a blind corner in a hurry. I looked up to see that I had narrowly avoided being knocked over by our incumbent MP. I turned to hail him but hey, I couldn't be bothered.

On being rude in ASDA

2010-04-13T15:21:00.002Z

Today I got to stick it to the man. Well, not quite THE Man as such but an employee (sorry, that should be "colleague". Yes, that's what they're called) of ASDA and as they're owned by Wal-Mart, it's much the same.

I was using the self-serve tills to buy my paper but watching a supervisor a few feet away offer the benefit of her experience to a very young girl, obviously very new to the job. "You're working for ASDA now so I don't want to see you doing that (she mimed leaning on her elbows on a shelf)." It wasn't a bawling out but it was still quite strident and very obviously in full ear-shot of the public and the two other trainees she was with. The girl turned away and was quite visibly upset but stoically bottling her urge to weep. I felt for her. The supervisor wandered off and I hurriedly paid for my goods. I'm sorry, Lady, you don't get away with that! I'm not a vegetarian and an ounce of free flesh was in the offing.

Instead of leaving, I turned and followed her up the store and watched until she was with two regular employees then made my move. Interrupting her conversation, I moved right into her comfort zone - I'm 15 stone and six foot in my shoes, she wasn't -and told her straight to her face in a calm but clearly concerned and very audible voice:

"I was watching you and heard you just now. Next time you need to tell someone off, doing it in front of the customers and their workmates is just about the worst thing you could do. Do it in private and offer advice, not personal rebuke. That young girl will never live that down."

"Yes. Of course. Thanks. You ARE right. They're placements..."

"Doesn't matter who they are, it's the number one rule of keeping them on your side - you don't do it in full view of everyone. Nobody likes being humiliated for something trivial."

"Yes, thank you. I see your point."

I remain calm and security don't need to be called this time. I have made my point and rubbed her nose in it in front of her peers. Disturbingly, she maintains a smiling countenance throughout and doesn't appear outwardly phased, although her eyes give me the reassurance I'd hit the bull. One of her colleagues makes his excuses and walks away, no doubt embellishing the story with every departing step.

Number Crunching

2010-04-10T11:27:00.002Z

In true Private Eye stylee:

Cost of now discontinued annual grant to the Manchester Camerata from Cheshire East Council so they could bring classical music to South Cheshire, concerts that regularly attracted audiences of 600 to Crewe Lyceum and will no longer be happening because they can't afford to come: £7,300

Cost of Cheshire East's stall at last year's Tory party conference: £16,000

Go work that one out.

I might have this wrong but...

2010-04-05T16:23:00.003Z

While I think that not using your motor car is generally a good thing in that while I don't fully subscribe to the notion that it's wholly our fault Norwich will be underwater in a few years, it's not a bad idea to err on the side of caution just in case, I do think the oil companies and our most recent government have lost the plot somewhat. A tipping point between necessity and financial expediency has surely been reached.

I very rarely use my car. I walk into town most days and to a friend's house, where this computer is. I might use it if I'm in a hurry or combining a couple of journeys or errands but I do try and leave it in the drive to get shat on by the birds sitting in next door's tree. I try and save up my mileage for special events or for when the weather's decent and a trip out (invariably, ironically, to go for a walk). As a result I only do around 2,500 miles a year with the bulk of that mileage being over half a dozen longer trips up and down country.

I'm still unemployed so don't have a lot of cash to splash about and with petrol now costing 120p a litre those longer journeys will now be rather less frequent. I just can't afford them. And there's the problem; I still have to do the shorter ones, the ones where there's little alternative other than the car and short journeys are more polluting regardless of the quality of your car. Cars like to warm up and run best in high gears at low revs. And because I no longer drive efficiently, my average mileage has dropped from approximately 12 per litre to around 6. Whereas, out of every £20 pumped into my tank £15 may previously have been used efficiently, I reckon that in my case at least that figure will drop to around £2. Stupid. Or is it?

Of course, I truly do believe that it it is what the government wanted; we all leave our cars at home and use our still woefully inadequate public transport system instead in the name of saving the planet and not that everyone on a tight budget is now using more fuel to travel fewer miles and thereby pay off the budget deficit a bit quicker than predicted through an increased tax-take from both drivers and oilcos. As has happened. Of course not, I couldn't possibly be that cynical.

My only crumb of comfort is that 10 years of my working life were spent "totally" in thrall to a huge multi-national oil company and their shameless profiteering should ensure my pension fund will now be so fat I'll be laughing in my dotage. Ha. I got their latest statement this morning. Even they had to use investment bankers...

A complete idiot's guide to the election. Part 1 of an occasional series.

2010-03-24T17:02:00.006Z

It's election time and the race is on! Hurrah!! For the benefit of those of my readership hailing from the less important parts of the globe and also for those too young to have exercised their majorities in a previous one, I have compiled a brief guide to the runners and riders in this year's big race. There may be further editions of this guide as and when necessary. Or when I can be arsed.

This Week: The Parties.

The Conservative and Unionist Party

Idiots. Rich Idiots. Some not as rich as they could have been but they've resigned and won't be standing.

The Labour Party

Idiots. Like above but supposedly with a social conscience. Just don't mention the word "socialist".

The Liberal Democrats

They haven't quite decided if they're idiots or not. They'll let you know after the event.

The Green Party

Are they still going? Probably hippies.

The British National Party

Idiots with knives and dogs of indiscernible pedigree. No blacks or Irish unless Rangers supporters. Everyone welcome. Large hadron collider developed in order to detect presence of inter-cranial matter in party leadership. Large hadron collider currently broken, insufficient power.

The United Kingdom Independence Party.

As above but with a nice pair of slippers (from BHS) and a cardigan. And a shed and a compost heap. Dustbin always full after one week, knows editor of local paper's email address off by heart. Shouty.

Independent

Probably sectionable. Now Russian.

Respect

Glad to see the grand tradition of a political party having an ironic name hasn't died.

Official Monster Raving Loony Party.

Probably their best chance yet.

Who are you going to vote for?

And there's more...

2010-03-22T16:39:00.004Z

Three MPs get "stung" by a fake lobbying company. Oh, save me. I have to turn Jezza Vine off before I throw a shoe at the wireless. I must be stupid as I can't actually see what the fuss is about. They are ex-ministers and as such have to wait at least a year after resigning before seeking paid work with commercial enterprises while serving as MPs. Fair enough. It's not really right, no MP, especially one in government, should have "work" outside the Commons but it's not illegal. There's a Register of Members' Interests so there is always the chance that any nest feathering or otherwise will get found out, as it often does. But that's not the point, although listening to the crap in the media, you'd think it was. These three ARE all ex-ministers and, with the exception of Geoff Hoon who resigned in June 2009, haven't been in the cabinet for well over a year. But, they're all leaving parliament at the next election in May. THAT is the point that makes a mockery of the whole story. Nobody points the point out.

I'm against sleaze and corruption as the next man but please tell me what on earth's wrong with someone attempting to use the skills and contacts they've developed doing a job that's coming to an end in order to to get their next paid employment? It's called networking, isn't it? Anyone who's unemployed is actively encouraged to trade on their contacts and the knowledge they've built up. And lobbying companies, while a bit suspect, aren't actually illegal. We all have access to our MPs whether we're private individuals or commercial concerns - and if there's a means of getting your message across, fair or foul, many will use it. What's the difference between a lobbying company and knowing someone who works for your local paper or radio station who can get your story or concern media coverage? Or you publicising your cause with a newsworthy stunt? Absolutely none. All this has really done is show up Stephen Byers for being a bit of a tit with an ego problem. But then again, who of you reading this, hasn't massaged your CV a bit in the past?

What has also passed most people by is that this story was part manufactured and broken by The Sunday Times. That's the The Sunday Times, prop R. "Dave's my Boy"Murdoch ("You want crap, I'll sell it"). And everyone's fallen for it. Please wake me up in June.

Did you have to go so soon?

2010-03-18T15:20:00.004Z

I moved back to London, town of my birth, in 1980. The ex and I had a tiny, freezing cold, one-roomed garrett in Lewisham, owned by a spectacularly mental Italian woman with a dreadful bingo habit and a strange notion of charity ("You can use my fridge any time you want" "Mrs Ldro (that's not her name, it's an anagram. You never know these days), I've seen your fridge, I wouldn't even shit in it, let alone put food in it"). I think that place was why I developed a fondness for the works of Zola. Emile, not Gianfranco. Until we got a gas heater we had a paraffin heater and we had to get Esso Blue from the ironmongers or the machine at the garage. Keep up kids. In the olden days there wasn't much choice for home based audio-visual entertainment; three telly channels on the little black and white portable we had (it would be another 2 years before we could afford a colour one) and even that gave up after we accidentally spilt candle-wax over it. But I had a ghetto blaster, so we used to listen to the wireless, way into the early hours. This was also way back in the day when Capital Radio was actually good (it's total bilge now, of course, like anything relying on advertising has invariably become), with the likes of Richard Digance, Roger Scott, Graham Dene and the mighty David Rodigan doing interesting, and occasionally (in R-R-R-Rodigan's case, always,) exciting, stuff.

Another presenter joined at the same time as we started listening, Charlie Gillett. It gradually became apparent that what he didn't know about popular music wasn't worth knowing. Indeed, his masters' thesis was written on the History of Rock and Roll - in 1966. He was always engaging, somebody whose own enthuisiasm drew you in, even if you didn't particularly like what he was playing. You listened, enjoyed, and you learned. Peel was the same; Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie have some of it, too. He'd already made a name by championing unpopular (at the time) acts such as Ian Dury, Graham Parker, Elvis Costello and Dire Straits (sounds like a running order from a Hope and Anchor festival) and then became the touchstone for the emerging world music scene. In the 90s he went on to host a weekly world music show on GLR (latterly BBC London 94.9) which was, for me anyway, absolutely essential listening on a Saturday evening while I was working at the world's most exciting tolled river crossing. One of the duties there was as a "jumper", a rolling relief across three toll booths for half an hour at a time, in order that the incumbent could have a break. Everyone had their own radio, invariably tuned to Radio Smooth Cabbie FM. Not on a Saturday evening if I was the jumper. Chap would come back off his break to be greeted not by Mick Hucknall warbling one for the ladieees but Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan or a trilling Moroccan. OK, some of it sounded like pigs being run over by a steam-roller but anything's better than Heart FM.

Charlie Gillet passed away yesterday. Which is a shame.

Alex Chilton as well. Not everyone will immediately know the name but I'm sure some of the music will be familiar: ex The Box Tops (The Letter - his first ever song, not a bad way to start), the Replacements and of course, Big Star. One of the most distinctive of pop voices and a huge influence on so many bands over the last 40 odd years.

Both gone criminally early. I've been told there's a reason why but I'll never understand.

Is that really Vince Cable?

2010-03-12T15:45:00.000Z

The Lib Dem Party Political Broadcasts might just be worth watching for a change.

Volunteers for fluffers, anyone?

Knee Jerks

2010-03-02T16:18:00.004Z

A few days ago I was asked by a survey company to identify 6 brands that I considered myself to be faithful or loyal to. I thought hard about it but I couldn't do it, on account of I just don't "do" brands. You would be hard pushed to find anything I own, and I think anyone who knows me would back me up on this, that has been bought or is worn out of brand loyalty - apart from maybe Branston pickle and ASDA regular baked beans. But that I do on account of taste, not because of a perceived superiority to other brands, clannishness or cliqueyness or for the cachet. In fact, a brand flash is more than likely to turn me off buying something for precisely those reasons. I am not interested in clothing or footwear that ostentatiously displays a maker's name - why would I wish to be associated with something that in a very short space of time could mark me out as something I am not? 25 years ago a Burberry raincoat with its distinctive checked lining was something one saved up for and treasured as it was considered a finely crafted product that did its job suprememly well; nowadays that same pattern adorns the head and neck of every Staffie owning, concave chested, trackie bottoms tucked into socks gobbing yob at the jobcentre who wouldn't have a clue that it was actually a premier league product; you wouldn't get me wearing it if you gave it away.

Then I had a minor epiphany while listening to the news on the wireless yesterday morning. I suddenly realised that there is indeed one brand that I'm exceedingly loyal to and I which I do actually put on a pedestal way above all others: the BBC. I feel a bit rum in criticising the decisions it has been bullied into making as I don't actually finance it in any way; I don't own a television so haven't bought a licence for many years and I rarely buy any of their merchandise. I would if I had the money, some it's very good. But there isn't any viable independent competition out there at all, is there. Nothing out there can do anything the BBC does any better. Sure it's had some problems but most of those are more the product of professional jealousy, shit-stirring, rivalry or political expediency and exacerbated by the so-called democracy of the new media (I would prefer to call it bullying. I actually heard the "Manuelgate" thing live - how many of you sit and listen to Radio 2 on a Saturday evening? - but thought it was just a bit near the knuckle and didn't warrant the ordure/fan debacle that followed).

Commercial pressure is acid rain to broadcasting standards but the BBC is mercifully free from most of that. It doesn't actually need a bigger audience share and the willy-waving about viewing figures depresses me. Long gone are the days when more than half the country sat down to watch a single programme so what's the point in fighting over a dimishing slice of the pie? Have you ever listened to commercial radio? It's the broadcasting equivalent of an edge of town retail park, designer outlet or a Holiday Inn. Devoid of originality and flogging the same old mass produced sing-along pap because that's what draws the punters in and keeps them in their comfort zone for the advertisers (I hesitate to say chart - who was No 1 last week? No, me neither). It has to be populist out of necessity - you wouldn't get Mark Lamarr's "God's Jukebox" or Stuart Maconie's "Freak Zone" on Heart or Radio Cabbie FM. And commercial talk radio is just for gobshite Nigel Farage BNP lite clones so let's not go there because that's just plain scary.

As for Murdoch, I would happily bury him alive under Maggie's rotting corpse when the time comes and fill the hole in myself. Constantly bleating about the power the BBC has through its funding model seemingly without realising it's the unrealistic demands of the commercial pressures his company has created that's destroying the football league and with it, the positive influences that football clubs have had on their immediate communities. That's real, indiscriminate power, isn't it? It pains me that the tail wags the dog in such an outrageous fashion. It's heartening to see that nice Sig. Capello making such a commonsense observation, although I doubt if Rupe's seething, he's still calling the shots. Seeing a 20' "Sky Sports shown here" banner outside a pub has probably kept more decent people out of them than the smoking ban. My Hampshire friend will undoubtedly mention that I missed the Little Master's 200 the other day and much of the one true game as it is played throughout the world but in reply - I've missed well over 99% of all cricket ever played, so I think I'll survive. I might go out for a walk instead. I'll survive with my principles intact, too. You won't find anything from News International in my house, the man's a complete shit (Murdoch, not Vicus) and he won't get my money if I can help it. And yes, I know it's usually on in my local but the sound is off as company policy. Very few people actually watch it.

Quite why the BBC is running scared and caving in is beyond me. It has the luxury of being able to appeal to niche markets without a commercial imperative, although the demographics for 6 Music and the Asian Network could hardly be called niche and in 6 Music they have a unique service, a non-commercial left-field/specialist music network presented invariably by high-profile performers in their own genres or respected broadcasters in their own rights. No other station does this, not even XFM. Undeniably, the network for "pop" has to change as yesterday's hippies gradually claim their bus-passes and Radio 2 has the mechanisms for this. To be honest, it's the station I listen to most, mainly because I am allergic to "earnestness" in most things but it tries to fulfill a broad brief and invariably does it very well. And David Quantick's "The Blagger's Guide..." is one of the funniest shows on the radio. As I age I find my musical taste encompasses almost everything (musical theatre? OK, I'll make an exception) and I'll listen to most things presented with enthusiasm, humour and good grace. 2 and 6 Music make unlikely bedfellows but it works.

And the website is peerless, too.

Don't mess with it just for the sake of it, some of us actually care.

On the pain of being a moderator

2010-02-27T13:10:00.003Z

Far be it from me to mock those for whom the struggle with the complexities of our mother tongue is, for whatever reason, a never ending battle but there comes a time when the accidental use of the delete button is a necessary adjunct to the art of moderating a public site.

The dilemma for the submissions moderator here is "Do I write back to Julie and tactfully and politely ask exactly what she's after?" Or perhaps I guess, correct her spelling and grammar to what I think she's after and allow her to a) be affronted at my arrogance and upset by my public pillorying of her lack of compositional skills or b)to be pestered with emails offering her entirely the wrong thing or do I just publish for the LOLs.

Any clues? Demijohns? Used in home brewing...case closed.

[CreweandNantwichFreecycle] wanted dhemejhones winsford
From:
Julie Add to Contacts
To:
creweandnantwichfreecycle@yahoogroups.com

hi has anyone got any dhemejhones that they dont youse anymore it would be very much apresheat thanck you for locking and thanck agen

Thanks for coming in...

2010-02-25T16:46:00.005Z

Wouldn't you have loved a boss like RBS top banana Stephen Hester.

What I would have heard if I was his employee:

"We could have made loads more money but the really greedy integrity lacking bastards, the "talent", who used to work for us have buggered off to Barclays so we're left with you lot, the dregs; the United Counties League (Div 1 South Combination) of investment banking. Thanks for nothing, you miserable shower."

All in day's work

2010-02-10T16:53:00.007Z

Dave's industry often puts me to shame. I'm not really lazy but I am a bit of a procrastinator. I've been meaning to catch up with all those little odd jobs that have accumulated since I moved into this little place for ages. I had to get up early this morning to take a friend for a hospital appointment and as it was such a lovely fresh day and I had a couple of extra hours to kill, I nipped into B & Q and the garden centre and picked up a few things. It's amazing what you can knock up when you set your mind to it.

Firstly, I thought I'd weed round the cracks and tidy up the edges a bit. I had a few sheets of neoprene pond liner I'd picked up at a boot market last summer so I scratched out a water feature down near the back fence. I'm hoping some newts will move in.

Nice that, isn't. Like the wall I knocked up on the left? My pointing's getting really good now! Still only 10.30 so I thought I'd put up a few shelves for the Private Eyes.

Just in case I have some friends round I also put in some occasional seating. The pine shop in town's closing down so I got them cheap. Had to make a couple of trips with the roof rack on so that took up a bit longer than I'd bargained for. Cheese on toast for lunch - yummy!

Now then. What does every man collect, always saying that one day it'll come in handy? Wood of course! I had a couple of bundles laying in the corner that were just crying out to be used. And what were they crying? You guessed it! SHED!!!!

Cor, look at that sunset! I can feel a cup of tea calling. Toodle pip.

Not waving...

2010-02-08T17:02:00.006Z

Mr Danny Baker's most recent Saturday morning show on the BBC wireless featured a very serious item: he asked whether anyone had ever been told off as an adult. This reminded me of an encounter with Her Majesty's filth some 30-odd years ago that was in stark contrast to the utter professionalism I encountered from the Cheshire Police on Thursday just gone. I would hasten to add that unlike the majority of my readership, I've led a sheltered existence and have never been run-in and most of my meetings with the law have been as a customer requiring a service. The only squeaky-bum time I can really remember was while living in a student house in 1980 when I'd somehow managed to allow my housemate's moped to get stolen after he'd charged me with picking it up from the garage the previous evening after college while he was off hitchhiking to Penzance for a bet, the investigating constables failing to notice my absent comrade's small collection of rather exotic flora flourishing in full view on the kitchen windowsill (which were later eaten (yes, eaten) by my future ex-wife in a deliberate, and successful, attempt to piss him off after he'd annoyed her). Those were the days.

No, this one happened a bit earlier the previous year, during the summer before I went up (to Rochester). Myself and a few friends, Jim, Polly, Dave (now the Very Rev Dean of Dover) and Dave's sister, Maria used attend all the Mighty Super Kent's home matches that were within reach of Ashford. This was our final summer together before we all went our separate ways (is this too Swallows and Amazons?) and we were now all young adults. Some of us had even just voted in our first general election. How exiting - we had a woman prime minister! This game was at Folkestone. If anyone is familiar with the Folkestone cricket ground at Cheriton, they'll remember it's overlooked by a couple of very large hills, one of which is called "Caesar's Camp". Now the channel tunnel railway terminal is the dominant feature between the hills and the town but back in 1979 it was a bit easier to drive about through the villages of Newington and Peene to get to the top of the hills for a cracking view and then back down into town for the game.

The previous day we'd been sitting in the stands (for the benefit of my colonial readership, the "bleachers") watching walkers on the top of the hill. I bet my friends that I would be able to stand up there and see them waving at me the next morning, without the benefit of binoculars. Yes, OK, if you insist, they enthused wildly. So, next morning I coaxed my aging and protesting Honda SS50 sports moped along the nearest thing Kent has to an alpine pass and found a reasonable point to gain access to the top of the hill. There was nowhere to park the bike and anyway, the prop stand was a bit dodgy so I leant it against a fence and hopped over the stile. It was a fine sunny morning, the view was magnificent and there was the cricket ground down there next to the football ground, behind Tesco's (now a Morrisons, I think). I started waving. I waved a bit more, a trifle more animatedly. I gave it a couple more minutes of waving. I couldn't really see anything in the ground so maybe it hadn't been all that wise. But anyway, it had been a nice little excursion and the view had been wonderful. I turned round to head back down the hill and immediately noticed a blue Escort van parked behind my steed.

As I got closer I saw the side panel bore some badly applied and peeling white plastic lettering spelling out "Police". There was someone in the driver's seat. Oh bugger. I hope he doesn't look too closely at the bike. There are bad bits on it, poorly repaired bad bits that don't work properly, like the brakes and stuff. I saw he was wearing aviator sunglasses, just like the still recently departed Elvis. And he was chewing. He was also looking resolutely straight ahead. Chewing. I stifled a laugh. The big new hit on the telly was Dukes of Hazzard and was that a Confederate flag I just caught a glimpse of? Cleatus muttered something, still without turning towards me: "Are you Richard S of X Farm, Y Road?" "Yes, I am. How did you know?" I replied, stupidly ignoring the proliferation of aerials sticking out from the roof. "I ask the questions." he slurred. And with that, he slowly turned, motioning his head towards the small blue nylon bumbag I was wearing around my waist containing my wallet and stuff, the sun glinting off the frames of his beetle eyes and asked the singular most ridiculous sounding question I think I've ever been asked by an adult. With hindsight, I could see where he was coming from, but even so.

"You got a ferret in there, boi?"

On being taken for a ride

2010-02-05T16:55:00.002Z

About 6.15 yesterday evening I saw Sharon post an update on Facebook to the effect that Paul, her son, had taken the dog out at 4 and not come back. Shortly after, a text arrived saying the same thing. Paul going missing is not a huge problem for no reason other than he's got a few learning difficulties. He's 31 going on 5 and probably with a splash of autism thrown in. Despite that, he can understand almost any language spoken to him - specifically English and Norwegian; I've tested him on French and German and he seems to get those too - and has a genuinely caring nature, although he's wont to couple this with a certain ungainliness and clumsiness. He can't rationalise the consequences of his actions and has a feeble grasp of mortality (in his younger years he cleaned a few pets rather too thoroughly and also tried to take his toddler sister back to the hospital after he'd decided he didn't want her. It was Norway, the middle of winter and the poor girl was stark naked. She survived). But he does usually do as he's told (unless he's developed a singular notion about something and then nature, or an aware adult, takes its course. More than once he's been removed from power tools, screwdrivers and hammers only just in time and he hasn't tried to burn the house down for at least ten years).

Sharon had already had a quick flit around the area (scaring a couple of doggers in the park car park in the process) to no avail and then Linn Marie, her youngest and myself shot off in various directions trying to cover every local road. No joy. After another hour or so, she called in the police. An officer was sent and took control. After the obligatory search of the house and garden (Sharon, good naturedly: "You need to make sure I haven't murdered him, of course") he set off himself. I went for another drive around and caught up with him as he was about to enter the park which the council had just opened (the entrance to which is opposite Sharon's house). I said I'd go with him just in case Paul, should he have got himself locked in the park by mistake, was spooked by the sight of the cars and the dog handler. We drove round, me calling him through the speakers but to no joy.

Then the fun started. I was walking round the locked pavilion when the officer called me back to say there'd been a possible sighting - right across town. There was actually a serious fire in town that evening and this bloke had been seen hanging round the scene. As we cruised out of the park, the officer calmly said "I think we'll make this category 1 if we're to catch him at the scene". Something told me, as he pressed a button and the blues and twos started, that he wasn't referring to the category of incident. We were going to attend the scene, well over a mile away across the town centre, and we were going to be there very quickly. I stole a glance at the speedo as we shot off east along Victoria Avenue (blessedly straight for half a mile): 90 and accelerating. And there's a bend. With lights and a crossroads coming up. And he's still accelerating. Odd though, I felt really safe. This guy was totally in control and although I knew we were going very very fast, it didn't actually feel like it. I could have drunk a cup of coffee without spilling it. We got there, it wasn't Paul.

We drove around a bit more and had just heard the helicopter say that it was 17 minutes away (the area we thought he'd gone missing in comprises a 38 acre park, a 9 hole golf course, a large open space called the George V Playing Fields and some farmland. And a small river) when we received a call to say a distressed man with learning difficulties and a dog had been found - two miles away in a Co-Op Leighton. Oh, joy. The button was depressed, the noise started and off we shot. I'm supposedly taking driving lessons for a bus licence soon - I learned more about hazard perception in 2 minutes than any instruction DVD could ever teach me. All ended happily ever after. And there were tears. Not from me, I was laughing like fool. I'd had two rides you'd spend a couple of hundred quid do round Oulton Park (although there all the other traffic goes in the same direction and just as fast) and the adrenaline was pumping.

You can watch those shitty rubbernecky Police, Camera, Action things on telly till the cows come home but I can tell you now, it ain't nothing like the real thing, baby. And the copper said it had been pretty straightforward, no idiots pulling out or anything like that. Our perceptions of this were slightly different, and I suppose he does that several times a day - I saw at least two cars pull out right in front and half a dozen tits must have thought the flashing blue lights approaching at speed in their mirrors were forgotten Christmas lights. An education.

Seriously - It's so easy to pick on the police, especially when they cock-up on the high profile stuff. But when it's day to day policing for the man in the street and they do it without fuss or bother then we can rightly be proud of them. This stuff doesn't make the papers because only bad news is newsworthy. Treat them with respect and that's what you'll get back. So big up to Cheshire Police who played a blinder. Not once were we made to feel we were wasting their time despite there being another major incident in town and they were 100% professional, caring, skilful and understanding at all times. Happy customer.

insert Biblical reference to throwing first stone here

2010-01-30T15:15:00.003Z

It is heartening to see old habits refusing to die.

It is less than six months until the association football* world cup, a tournament the national side has a better than average chance this time around of actually winning. As I write, joint talismen Wayne Rooney and David Beckham have the correct number of intact and functioning feet and are both playing exceedingly well. In fact, everything in the footy garden looks pretty rosy for a change. Or does it. No, of course not. More fool me for being so presumptuous for, bang on time and with the precision delivery most centre forwards would give their eye teeth to be on the end of, the massed ranks of Her Majesty's Press play their traditional morale-sapping spoiler and pick on a vital member of the team, in this case the captain, for no reason other than the fact he's human and has a willy. And, probably more's the point, that his cuckolded team mate has a photogenic wife.

I fail to see what relevance this load of crap has to anyone outside the four people involved. We do not need to be told and it is not in the public interest. If readers were that interested in the sordid behind the scenes goings-on of people most of them had neither heard of nor cared about, I am pretty certain journalists themselves would be the subject of most news items printed. Comments welcome from any ex-hacks amongst my distinguished readership.

And on vaguely the same subject, this story beggars belief.

*Note I have used the "correct" term rather than the accepted term for the benefit of both my ex-colonial readership and Vicus. Both of these parties believe "foot"ball is better played primarily using one's hands, a point of view that puts them happily alongside the French and Argentinians.

How much?

2010-01-27T17:05:00.004Z

A couple of days ago I was asked by a survey company what I understood the word "bob" to mean. Although I'm only just on the bouncy and youthful side of 50 I can still remember the days before 15th February 1971* when a "bob" was a shilling. A shilling, of course, made up of two tanners or even a tanner and a couple of thrupenny bits. Or for some of my readership, 24 ha'pennies or 48 farthings. Some of you I can see are still a bit perplexed. I'm talking LSD, the kind we used to use in shops to buy stuff with. Round here in the almost far north-west, bobbing is what you do instead of popping. It's all very complicated.

Not as complicated as those twats at McDonalds would have it though and now the reason for the survey becomes clear. Not owning one of those television things, I was unfamiliar with the campaign (just as I am with wanting to do a poo at Paul's, which I had to look up on the google), so apologies to everyone for rehashing what may seem as old news.

Old. Indeed. When the cream of Her Majesty's advertising industry, presumably sporting several sackfuls of media related degrees from the University of Bognor (and no doubt MBAs to boot) between them, can't even be arsed to use their iPodTeccoTouchTabletDSLites to access the greatest reference tool mankind's developed in the last ten thousand years in order to check it was right, we've had it, haven't we. They could have at least asked their grandparents. Or great-grandparents if they live in Warrington. This bit gets me though: "research has shown it is now more commonly used as slang for a pound or money in general". As in?

*D Day. Or Decimalisation Day. We knew all about it in our house because Dad worked for NCR, or the National Cash Register Company. We couldn't move for conversion charts and we were all experts at knowing how much 15/6 was in new money (77.5p). The best bit though was that with the overtime Dad earned from converting all those cash registers, we went on holiday. Abroad! On a plane!! And I got sunstroke!!! Bloody new money.

Just a thought...

2010-01-22T18:43:00.003Z

Two items in the same news bulletin earlier today:

Total UK contributions to the Haiti relief fund so far: £40 million

Total amount of reined in bonuses Goldman Sachs are going to be paying to their so-called "talent" this year: $10 billion.

It is often said that some companies make more money than the national debt of many third-world countries.

Anyone got a handy wall?

Green Day

2010-01-16T15:36:00.004Z

Chaps of a certain vintage will remember Johnny Kidd and the Pirates. Early line-ups featured such luminaries as drummer Clem Cattini (who I think holds the record for appearing on more tracks than anyone in recording history) and guitarist Alan Caddy who both left and went on to make the Beast's favourite record, Telstar, as the Tornados. Johnny Kidd treated the band members largely as session musicians, nothing wrong with that, this was the way it was done and comings and goings were legion but the most enduring team was Fred Heath (Johnny Kidd), Johnny Spence on bass, Frank Farley on drums and Mick Green on guitar. Although the band again fragmented with Green's departure around 1964, this line-up continued to tour as The Pirates after Kidd's premature death in 1966 with Spence and Farley owning the right to the name. Mick Green passed away last Monday. He was one of the most revered and respected guitarists in all of British rock. And no, it was Joe Moretti who played the riff on "Shakin' All Over" well before Mick joined.

Mick Green's distinctive gutsy and choppy style was borne out of necessity. Being a three piece he learned to play rhythm and lead together which isn't actually as difficult as it seems but many, including myself, use it to cover up their shortcomings. With enough distortion and volume, even I can sound half-decent. Mick Green had no shortcomings, he had, after all, even trained as a classical guitarist for 18 months. He inspired among others, Wilko Johnson, whose style is relatively similar, and with that the whole English pub-rock sound and thence punk. I saw them once, in 1979, supporting the Radio Caroline Roadshow in a cavernous sportshall in Ashford. They were fantastic and I do believe I worked up a sweat.

Mick Green 1944 - 2010

Review of the Year.

2010-01-05T16:44:00.005Z

The Unthanks - Tar Barrel In Dale

I'll get this over and done with now, if you don't mind, I'm not going to wait another 360 days.

On the New Year's Day I wake up to snow. This is how it should be in January in the country. It is the last full day of my non-denominational midwinter break at my parents' house. Everyone has been very kind and I now have a car that is street legal for another year and I didn't have to pay a penny. The following day I will be going back to the day to day grind of being unemployed. In the frozen north.

On the 2nd I drive home. I go via my very best friend's house in a fancy bit of Hertfordshire. I am welcomed heartily and my very best friend's husband, with whom I used to work a very long time ago and have not seen for over 15 years, immediately drags me inside to watch a youtube clip of his friend making an arse of himself in front of Harry Redknapp. It is indeed very funny. We all go to the pub for a shandy and I keep my fingers crossed that my very best friend's husband does not notice that I have noticed his wife is wearing a very flattering cardigan with not enough wool in it at the front and that I am more than occasionally struggling to maintain eye contact. I leave several hours later laden with the remnants of their New Year's Eve party food and a hug that nearly caused my eyes to pop out. My very best friend's husband shakes hands with me so I think I got away with it. It is very cold but I am filled with the warmth from people's kindness.

On the 3rd it is my Mother's birthday. She is 5 days older than Elvis but has a better diet so has managed to get to 75 pretty well unharmed. I telephone her to congratulate her. In the afternoon I go to Sharon's as I am taking her daughter and her chap to Liverpool Airport so they can return to Norway. It's John Lennon's very own airport but I don't think he uses it much nowadays. There is a panic. Bjorn's passport has developed a mysterious wound in the form of a three inch diagonal knife cut across the cover and the important page. It is obviously man-made but nobody admits responsibility. As I have been away for the whole duration of their stay I am instantly exonerated. I have a theory, which I venture only to Sharon, as we sit in the car for two hours under the landing lights at the end of the runway in Hale village waiting for the text to say they were let through ok and wouldn't need a lift home, that I wouldn't stick my hand up to it either, knowing her daughter's rather unpredictable temper. Sharon agrees. We go home. I reclaim the table and two chairs I lent her for Christmas and return to my house. It is very cold and I don't feel very kind.

Yesterday was very cold. In the evening, along with many others recounting weather woe, I texted Messrs Radcliffe and Maconie while listening to their wireless programme that I was "sitting in my so-called modern house with the heating on and I can still see my breath". Mark Radcliffe said that that couldn't be right. He was very kind. Although I think the house would be warmer if I could afford to put the heating on more and buy some carpets. And curtains. And an electric blanket. And move. I console myself with the thought that my suffering is making the world a better place for my grandchildren. On balance, at the moment I would rather be warmer and let them sort it out.

Today it snowed. Half an inch of snow. England is paralysed. It is not so cold as yesterday but I stay warm because I have found my fake fur hat. I don't care if I look like a prat. Tomorrow it will be -6c. I am prepared to kill the next person who says "I thought it was meant to be global warming". You tit. It's winter.

Happy New Year.

In a very real sense...

2009-12-22T11:33:00.002Z

OK, that's the 48" HDTV I'm in desperate need of to watch the World Cup next year sorted. What's that about a commandment?

Idiot vicar

What it's like being old and DoleScum.

2009-12-18T15:37:00.003Z

Recently I made a brief comment on the award Lord Peter Whispy received for his mincing of the mother tongue (there's no point in anchoring it, I'm not prolific at the moment so go and find it yourselves). On opening my emails earlier today I encountered a veritable butcher's shop of same - not from foreign Johnnies attempting to sell me stuff I have no use for, this was, disappointingly, from another government department. Those of you familiar with my occasional posts on the Facebook may remember my frustration at being unable to complete a job application to join Natural England, a sub-barony of Defra (or for the senior members of my readership, The Ag and Fish) for whom I used to work some years ago before circumstances and idleness overtook. Yesterday, and contrary to common sense, I once again requested an application form from them following a lead from Dolescum Central, this time for the post of Regional Geographic Information Analyst. It's to do with mapping and stuff. I like maps rather too much for someone of my tender years and when I worked for the Ministry, the digital mapping systems were just coming in and as my department dealt with field sizes we were just starting to use it to digitise the existing mapping data. I played with it and it was like, fun; I was able to calculate the size of our drive to a fraction of a square metre. It really couldn't have been that difficult to use as our mapping clerk was Finnish and she managed it ok. Fair enough, things have probably moved on a bit in 7 years but I thought I might be in with a shout. I have excised and present to your good selves some of the key phrases from the documentation I was sent, I leave you to judge for yourselves what the outcome was.

Accountabilities for Natural England outcomes and objectives:

The GI analyst will work (sic) the GI specialist to provide geographic services to support the delivery of our strategic outcomes.

Natural England Behaviours (eh?) and role requirements :
Please identify a minimum of two Natural England behaviours per strategic shift (WTF?) and, if relevant to the role, any technical/specialist knowledge required.
The four Natural England strategic shifts that frame the Natural England Behaviours are:

Creating Environmental Leadership
•Communicates with people in a way that is meaningful for them.
•Engages partners and suppliers early, actively and regularly.

Delivering Our Business (What "business" ? - Earlier you said this post is primarily "internally focused". Oh, I forgot, no doubt there's an "internal market")

•Reacts in a positive and constructive way to problems and setbacks.
•Embraces and values difference.
•Is always prepared to adapt and minimise process in order to achieve a better outcome. (Actually, they way I interpret this crap is, "Do away with crap like this")

Oh really there's so much of this and it makes me want to cry. It's obviously designed for an internal application or for someone who's done an MBA (More Bollocks from America) and can understand this shit. There are four pages describing what "behaviours" are and I'm still none the wiser. I think it means job requirements and responsibilities allied to seniority. I remember making an internal application while I was there and it was nowhere near as daft as this. I mean, I even got an interview. How on earth does one start working there? How is today's iPod Touch wielding teenager meant to get a rung on the public sector ladder even if, as we are constantly being led to believe by those who claim to know, they don't really communicate using words containing vowels? Or are they taught this crap at school?

One of the repeating themes of the "behaviours" was doing more with less and reducing obfuscatory practises such as this. Oh, and right at the bottom, there was something the Jobcentre neglected to put on the original description - degree needed.

Ironically, while writing this I have been offered an interview for another job. The online application form consisted of, if I remember correctly, 6 questions along the line of "Tell us about yourself? Why do you think you're qualified for this job? and what are your best qualities?" The woman who phoned called to say she loved my application and it made her laugh. And she was American. Civil Service? Tossers.

My tooth. The End.

2009-12-10T18:21:00.004Z

I have toothache. I've been to the dentist and will be having the wretched thing removed in a couple of weeks. This tooth has been giving me grief for over 15 years and I've had enough. So, hopefully no more infections, abscesses and headaches. Here's a happy song some of you may know.

Oh, and I have just learned I am the internet's 10th most useful resource for anyone seeking "anthea turner influence teapot". Jealous, eh?

Fog Index

2009-12-08T17:46:00.002Z

Yes, it has now been confirmed: politicians speak a language only themselves are able understand, fluent bollocks.

Mandelson Wins Award

Lazy Blogging (pt...)

2009-11-30T17:46:00.002Z

A day late but I'm really really ill. I mean I can still see and walk around a lot but I'm ill, I tell you. Ill. Sputum and germs. Stay away.

Anyway, the other day friend Vicus wrote of his admiration for a rugby footballer. The other day Dave did a bit on Graham Hill. Were I still to be sticking posters on my wall I dare say there would be a prominent one of this gentleman. And he is a gentleman: one club for 18 years; 819 appearances, 151 goals; the only player to have played and scored in every season of the Premier League since its inception; the most decorated footballer the English game has produced. But he's Welsh. OK, so you can't win 'em all. On Saturday he scored his 100th Premier League goal. He earns £4 million a year - overpaid primadonna? You want to me to sneeze on you? He EARNS it, he's an entertainer, not a banker. Does football matter? I don't know but it's a difficult case to argue against when you see it being done exceedingly well. Yesterday he was 36 years old and he's still more of a genius with a football than most players will ever be. Happy belated birthday, Ryan Giggs.

Tickled

2009-11-18T14:26:00.004Z

What a wonderful day, missus, what a wonderful day for tipping a bottle of syrup of figs into Alistair Darling's coffee and saying "How's that for quantitative easing?"

Doddy's in da house.

Solved

2009-11-11T12:00:00.001Z

I just entered "Peter Mandelson" into google on this library computer. I got this:

"We're sorry...
... but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spy ware application. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now.
We'll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, if you suspect that your computer or network has been infected, you might want to run a virus checker or spy ware remover to make sure that your systems are free of viruses and other spurious software.
If you're continually receiving this error, you may be able to resolve the problem by deleting your Google cookie and revisiting Google. For browser-specific instructions, please consult your browser's online support centre.
We apologise for the inconvenience and hope we'll see you again on Google."

A life's a life...

2009-11-05T15:31:00.002Z

A couple of years ago I co-wrote/ghosted call it what you will, a biography. Unless you were a real afficionado of mid-40s big band/swing/jazz in this country and South Africa, wrestling, hairdressing and cruise ships (especially the sinking of the Lakonia in 1963 for which he was wrongly blamed) you wouldn't have heard of the subject. Nor had I, it was a commission. Mind you, as I interviewed him and researched the subject it turned out that Tony Kaye was a) a bloody nice and exceedingly hospitable bloke and b) had done a load of dead interesting things, often very funny, some extremely sad and others at pivotal points in history. He'd played alongside UK jazz and music greats such as George Shearing, Ray Davies (not the Kinks one, the Button Down Brass one, hipsters) and Bert Weedon as a young boy and had a fund of interesting and occasionally naff but invariably entertaining stories. When we published the book he was 80. He'd had a life.

Leona Lewis is 24. She warbles in a background music sub-Whitney Houston 80 notes where 3 will do derivative, she won a talent show on telly, has released a couple of moderately well received (by grannies) albums and has a pretty good pair of legs. Sorry, I came over all sexist there. The only controversial thing she appears to have done is turn down a million quid to open The Fugger's corner shop sale one year because he sells fur. Big up to the LLster. She lives a scandal free life with her childhood boyfriend. A month ago she was assaulted as she signed copies of her autobiography. Her autobiography! 2 days ago she played her first ever full-length live concert.

I'm sorry? Just run that one by me again will you? She played her FIRST EVER full-length concert yet she's known as a singer? And has ALREADY written her life story? Before she did the gig? What, may I ask, is in it? Where did she learn her craft? How many smoky basement clubs a night did she work? How many oily spivs wanting 90% and a bit more did she have to negotiate before she got a break? (that's easy, one. Cowell). How many times did she have to stick a leg out behind the broken down Transit on the A41 to get to the next gig? When was the last time she did anything remotely interesting?

If you're still around in 40 years, love, do another one. I might just read it.

Grab it While Stocks Last.

2009-11-02T15:52:00.004Z

He did tell me he'd been visiting Crewe.

On finding out your best friend's a Draclia

2009-10-31T12:16:00.010Z

As you know, I am one of Her Britannic Majesty's 1st Battalion Unemployed and rely on the largesse of my lovely tax-payer friends to keep me from experiencing a pauper's demise. Through judicious application of guile and not a little inventiveness regarding yellow labels, sell-by dates, a bit of ebaying and the odd lottery win (three last month, £24 up on that thanks), I have managed to stretch the £64 odd per week deemed enough for a single person to live on to cover just about all my outgoings, debts and all. The general trend of my finances has been towards the positive and whereas 6 months ago I was regularly flirting with the outer limits of my overdraft and regularly calling the bank up to beg yet another favour, all I need to do at the moment is make sure my regular outgoing payments coincide with the regular incoming ones. It's been running pretty smoothly for three or four months now. All I need do is actually manage to land myself some decent employment and I'm sorted.

There is of course, a weak link in all this and that is the Civil Service. I have been a civil servant, the lowliest of the low; the scabby dog-shit covered mat you tread on before stepping onto the bottom rung of the ladder. They are the ones who do all the work. The higher up you go, the more time you get to stand around talking about how much sick you've got left to take this year and whether it will affect your pension entitlement. Anyhow, the weak link failed, unbeknownst to me, on the 16th of September when the bastards forgot to pay me my fortnightly Dole Scum Allowance.

Now, I had been doing my maths and what with a couple of good ebay sales (we're talking a few quid, not hundreds or even tens) and the odd surprise care of Camelot, I was expecting to be in a relatively healthy position come 30th of September when the next payment was due, just in time to pay my road tax. This was assuming the regular payments had gone in, as they had been doing for nine months. All done by computer, isn't it. Failsafe. I checked my account on the 28th only to see that it had all gone, shall we say, tits up. Panic. I was £6.12 over my overdraft limit. A couple of calls and a quick rescue transfer from Sharon (hint: keep in with the ex) took me just the right side of the line and showed the bank I was on the ball. I called them, told them what had happened and that I was on the case. My next payment arrived on the 30th and thank goodness, it was a double one. They'd rectified the error. When I had a moan at the Jobcentre they said they didn't have a clue what had happened but not to worry, if I'd incurred any bank charges through their error, they would refund them. I said that I'd been onto the bank already and that a note had been made that it wasn't my fault and that there was a chance charges wouldn't be applied anyway.

Scroll forward to a couple of days ago. I open my latest statement. Notification of £25 charge for going over by £6.12. Will be taken on 9th November. Bugger. I call the bank immediately and remind them that I went over briefly, not my fault, I've been good recently, would have been well under if the twats at Dole Scum HQ had done their job properly etc. You'll recall the charge, won't you. I get transferred. I explain everything again. OK sounds fair, I'll just ask. I listen to ropey classical music for 15 minutes. He comes back. Er...we see your point but you still went over so we're still going to charge you. Especially as you said that they will reimburse you any charges. But, as a gesture, we'll only charge you half.

Half? What's the bloody point of that? If you're going to make a gesture why not wipe the charge altogether? Have you any idea of the hassle I am now going to have go through getting that charge reimbursed? Do you know what it's like dealing with these idiots? Eh? Eh? I'll need to call Chester to make an appointment with my local office in Crewe on an 0845 number from my bloody mobile, which I refuse to do, so I'll have to...oh FFS! As gestures go that's like having your car nicked, smashed into a wall and put back on your drive. Bang goes my cheap premiums next year, regardless of my protected no claims bonus and it not being my fault. It could take weeks before I get that money back yet all you've got to do is click a couple of boxes and wipe the charge off in an instant? In the meantime I've got to risk the domino effect from 8% of my income disappearing in one hit and not being reimbursed immediately. You've admitted it wasn't my fault so why should I have to break my back doing all the hard work getting it sorted when I'm meant to be getting myself a job? Don't bother with your gesture, it's a bloody insult. You're First Direct, the bank with the highest customer satisfaction rating ever and all-round good eggs. This is not like you at all. I expect more.

Hmm. I see your point. I'll get financial services to call you tomorrow. I can't do anything tonight.

Financial Services called. I won't bother boring you, same deal, no joy.

Then it struck me. Despite First Direct being absolutely brilliant with me and helping me through the worst financial nightmare of my life these last few years; being understanding, approachable, friendly and fair, and despite the HSBC group not receiving any outside help during the "crisis", they were finally resorting to type. They were suddenly becoming bankers. The new kind of bankers, the ones we've sussed this last year. Lazy, money for nothing, snout in shitty trough bankers. They'd realised that although it wasn't my fault, the tax-payer was going to recompense me for charges I'd incurred because of the Jobcentre's error. In effect, the taxpayer was going to pay First Direct £25 for doing absolutely bugger all. Or rather it was going to pay them £25 for the honour of being a cynical blood-sucking vampire. And I really don't think that's fair.

I have written a brief missive to the chief executive and made him party to my innermost thoughts. Happy Samhain.

Right time, wrong place.

2009-10-29T18:40:00.002Z

It was midnight last night and I had dozed off in bed reading The Independent. My phone rang. It was my best of all best friends, she has a habit of doing this, of phoning me on the way home from a night out. However, I hadn't spoken to her for a month and I had been a bit concerned so I let her off. I say "spoken" advisedly; our conversations are generally one-sided but not through design. I rarely get a decent go. She is also not easily embarrassed. Again, this is not through design, it just happens. We both went on a train once, in the rush hour. She didn't use trains as she lived in central London at the time. "You've never really been on a train before in the rush-hour, have you?" I said. "People are looking at us." She is immense fun, on top of being drop-dead gorgeous.

Last night she was on the tube. After half an hour of me trying to get a word in she suddenly said, "Where are we? Oh, Pinner" then broke down in gales of laughter. "Two blokes have just got off. They were sitting opposite me. One of them asked me as he went past, 'Don't you ever take a breath?' "

There were so many replies I would have given had I been there.

Lazy Blogging

2009-10-24T15:37:00.003Z

My friend and former colleague at the world's finest tolled river crossing and Government give-away in Dartford, Andy, has sent me an email. It is possible you have seen it already, in which case, sorry. It is a prime illustration of why that nice Mr Obama is going to have a bit of a struggle getting any kind of reform accepted. Yes, why bother paying when someone else can...

The annual Stella Awards:

For those unfamiliar with these awards, they are named after 81-year-old Stella Liebeck, who spilled hot coffee on herself and successfully sued the McDonalds in New Mexico where she purchased the coffee. You remember, she took the lid off the coffee and put it between her knees while she was driving. Who would ever think one could get burned doing that, right? So... These are awards for the most outlandish lawsuits and verdicts in the U.S. Here are the Stellas for the past year (with some editing):

7TH PLACE : Kathleen Robertson of Austin , Texas. Awarded $80,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The store owners were understandably surprised by the verdict, considering the running toddler was her own son.

6TH PLACE : Carl Truman, 19, of Los Angeles , California won $74,000 plus medical expenses when his neighbour ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Truman apparently didn't notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal his neighbour's hubcaps.

5TH PLACE : Terrence Dickson, of Bristol , Pennsylvania was leaving a house he had just burglarized by way of the garage. Unfortunately for Dickson, the automatic garage door opener malfunctioned and he could not get the garage door to open. Worse, he couldn't re-enter the house because the door connecting the garage to the house locked when Dickson pulled it shut. Forced to sit for eight, count 'em, EIGHT, days on a case of Pepsi and a large bag of dry dog food, he sued the homeowner's insurance company claiming undue mental anguish. Amazingly, the jury said the insurance company must pay Dickson $500,000 for his anguish. We should all have this kind of anguish.

4TH PLACE : Jerry Williams, of Little Rock, Arkansas, Awarded $14,500 plus medical expenses after being bitten on the arse by his next door neighbour's beagle - even though the beagle was on a chain in its owner's fenced yard. Williams did not get as much as he asked for because the jury believed the beagle might have been provoked because Williams had climbed over the fence into the yard and repeatedly shot the dog with a pellet gun.

3RD PLACE : A jury ordered a Philadelphia restaurant to pay Amber Carson of Lancaster , Pennsylvania $113,500 after she slipped on a spilled soft drink and broke her tailbone. The reason the soft drink was on the floor: Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument.

2ND PLACE : Kara Walton of Claymont , Delaware sued the owner of a nightclub in a nearby city because she fell from the bathroom window to the floor, knocking out her two front teeth. Even though Ms.Walton was trying to sneak through the ladies' room window to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge, the jury said the nightclub had to pay her $12,000, oh, yeah, plus dental expenses.

1ST PLACE : (May we have a fanfare played on 50 kazoos, please.) This year's runaway First Place Stella Award winner was Mrs. Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City , Oklahoma who purchased a new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On her first trip home, from an OU football game, having driven on to the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver's seat to go to the back of the Winnebago to make herself a sandwich. Not surprisingly, the motor home left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Also not surprisingly, Mrs. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not putting in the owner's manual that she couldn't actually leave the driver's seat while the cruise control was set. The Oklahoma jury awarded her, are you sitting down, $1,750,000 PLUS a new motor home. Winnebago actually changed their manuals as a result of this suit, just in case Mrs. Grazinski has any relatives who might also buy a motor home.

These people elected the leader of the free world.

Prize guy

2009-10-12T13:57:00.002Z

I've done a bit of that writing stuff before; if the Nobel Prize committee would consider advancing me a million sovs this time next year I promise it will inspire me to work my arse off over the next three or so and write that proper book I've always known is in me. Honest.

Hey, mum, it's the...

2009-10-05T17:04:00.005Z

Dear Cheshire East Council,

I currently have 4 waste bins. This is something I do not really object to, I am all in favour of recycling where possible. I do not object to this even though I live in a VERY SMALL HOUSE. With a VERY SMALL GARDEN. I am lucky in that I have a drive and can line 3 bins up outside my door and still have enough room to park my car on it. I even have enough room to wheel the garden waste bin out of the garden, round the front of my car and between my car and the festering wreck of a Corsa sitting on my neighbour's drive, sometimes even without knocking her wing-mirror out of its socket. Every Monday evening, come rain or shine, I wheel one (or even two if I've filled the silver one with cardboard and tins) of them to the end of my drive, a distance of some 20 feet. I make sure that there is nothing in the wrong bin because I don't wish to receive a fine. I make sure that the lids are tightly shut because I know you won't collect them if they're even a tiny bit open. As I live on my own and create very little rubbish this generally isn't a problem unless next door's sk8terboi emo-cretin son has dumped another load of takeaway cartons on me. I make sure the bins are positioned on the edge of my property as instructed. In fact as repeatedly instructed. You even go to the lengths of printing a newspaper twice a year instructing us how to fill and position our bins correctly so your staff don't have to do too much heavy work. I mean, god forbid they should actually have to lift anything like in the olden days. I don't even put my silver bin out until it's full because I can't see the logic in using energy to mechanically lift a heavy bin onto the back of a lorry just to empty out a couple of baked bean tins, a milk carton and a pizza box. I save you time, money and energy. Thinking, thinking thinking all the time, me. Considerate, ain't I.

So, with all this in mind, would it be beyond the bounds of reasonable possibility to expect the crews visiting my house to at least repay the favour once in a while by actually leaving my bin exactly where I left it and not in a group of half a dozen 15 yards down the street in the middle of the sodding pavement thereby forcing the endless stream of passing teenage mothers to dodge into the road with their twin prams. A manoeuvre difficult enough to execute at the best of times but nigh on impossible if you're texting and listening to your iPod at the same time.

How bloody difficult is it to do a job properly?

Yours etc,

Insert your own title here

2009-09-24T15:22:00.007Z

Some of my readers may, I am sure, already have strong opinions on this, but I think I am pretty certain, in my own mind, of the singular most pointless example of the application of SCIENCE to a non-existent problem. These.

Leaf blowers. Why? What, in all that is good in creation, is their use? Somebody tell me because I can't for the life of me think of one. I cannot even begin to imagine what bizarre event inspired the twisted mind that invented these machines. The end of the Crystal Maze, perhaps? I don't know. I drove down Victoria Avenue yesterday afternoon. As you may guess, Victoria Avenue consists of two lines of trees, one on each side of a road. It is also a busy main road, a vital artery into and out of the throbbing hub of Crewe's town centre. A middle-aged man was busy using one on the area of pavement directly in front of his house. The area of pavement in front of his house was completely clear of leaves. It looked very neat. It looked even neater because of the contrast of the clear grey pavement with the two deep areas of russet-coloured leaves on either side and in the road in front. What's more, he looked as if he was going about his work in a slightly furtive manner; presumably he didn't want to be seen increasing his neighbours' leaf load. Of course, his satisfaction can only be guaranteed for the minute or so it takes for him to disappear through his front door when either a light breeze, natural or the product of a passing bicycle, or his neighbour wielding his own pointless tool, redistributes the decaying foliage. Square one.

I just don't understand why would anyone want to blow leaves around in the first place. Not only is it a spectacular waste of energy but when it comes to redistributing bits of nature, wind, in its myriad forms, is known more for its destructive lack of discrimination rather than its accuracy. Heaven forbid the tree on his property should deign to shed a few more leaves overnight or on the next breeze. What on earth's wrong with a sodding broom or a spring-tine rake? Then pick them up with two bits of cardboard and put them in the bin your council has just thoughtfully provided you for free, you lazy bastard. You deserve to have your council tax doubled. Having said that, our local council employs men to pointlessly blow things around so maybe that's not the most efficient use of funds.

Saintly

2009-09-22T17:10:00.002Z

Some suggestions were made in the comments at the end of the previous post as to the possibility of my beatification. Been done already and look, I've also got my own sign. Shame the local icon makers got their words a bit mixed up.

Gratefully Dead.

2009-09-18T14:09:00.004Z

You may have heard on the wireless, or any other currently available media format, the exciting news that a few bits of the mortal remains of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux are visiting this country on their never-ending world tour. A bit like Bob Dylan in other words. Look, Leicester and next month, presumably in an effort to do a Johnny Cash, she's playing the Scrubs. Please do try and stay focused, I'll try and not excite you too much.

Now, my copious research (listening to Jezza Vine while making scrambled eggs earlier), has revealed that she's a dead woman who, while she was alive, was a big fan of God and his son and heir, Baby Jebus. I haven't really looked deeply into her background but according to Jezza, whose researchers obviously did their jobs properly so I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of his reportage, she was canonised largely on the basis that "she smiled at people she disliked, ate things she hated and took the blame for things she hadn't done" a philosophy she called her "little way".

I don't wish to sound picky or anything but she was, after all, a Roman Catholic nun and presumably not completely up with the ways of the world. Her "little way" has been practised by every single man who's ever been married. I cannot ever recall being referred to as a saint.

Carry on.

Gipsy tart makes you fart

2009-09-09T10:37:00.004Z

I am not unnaturally quite perturbed by this. I fear the mentalists in Flintshire, not a million miles away from here, have very very little to do. Boys will be boys, and so will men. I think I will apply for a job with them but I will make it quite clear that if they don't employ me, I will assume it will be on the grounds that my name will cause general ribaldry to the point of distraction. Nonetheless, I have had 40 odd years of being used to it and nobody has come up with anything remotely original for at least 20 years (I actually quite liked Mr Seeds - everyone in a cricket team has a nickname) so I think litigation would be justified. What makes me laugh more than anything is the quite parochial nature of the complaint: renaming it "Spotted Richard" is quite laughable to anyone with a passing knowledge of rhyming slang.*

On a similar note, here in Cheshire garages and car dealerships with high values of customer service/satisfaction etc (ie doing what you'd expect them to do) are awarded the "Golden Spanner". Quite. Employ the services of the excellent Peevish.co.uk to understand why I won't be using them.

*If you really don't know, Richard the Thirds. Work it out.

And the moral is...

2009-09-07T15:52:00.003Z

As I was walking out the door last night on my weekly trip to take advantage of Mr Wetherspoon's crunch-buster special offer of all the low alcohol content beer you can drink for a quid (now all you can drink for £1.20, the recession's over, haven't you noticed?) my gaze was ambushed by the sight of an impending conflict of a sinister and ghoulish nature. I stood for several minutes transfixed by the drama that was about to, and indeed did, unfold.

My hallway contains a small alcove, the top corners of which are about 4' apart. In each of these corners for the past few weeks there has been living a small spider. Although I have more than a mild aversion to spiders I decided to leave them alone, they weren't going to bother me, I wouldn't bother them. Perhaps things had come to a head between them. Maybe they hadn't been getting on and the final straw had been loaded onto the camel's back. I do know the feeling; my own neighbour has some annoying habits, not least the one she has for filling my dustbin with her unsorted rubbish and filthy take-away cartons, the lazy cow. And for driving a huge 4 x 4 at warp speed to the end of the road 50 yards away. I'm not sure I'm up to making the same response though.

The smaller spider (when I say 'smaller' it's actually a matter of a few millimetres - the bigger one has a span about the size of a penny, we're not talking Bolivian red-legged cow-eating spider sized animals here) had gone to complain and was now only about 2 inches away from the larger one. It was at this point I considered an alternative scenario: as they bore a resemblance to each other I wondered whether I was going to witness something else and would the legend prove true - do male spiders only get to do it once and would it be worth it? The larger one stood its ground, the other moved slowly forward. Half an inch apart now and the small one puts up what could be either an act of defiant braggadocio or a sign of panic - it waves its two long front legs around in the air rapidly. It doesn't look to be a come-on. The larger one does the same but you sense an air of menace in its movements. They close rapidly, the larger's legs fully embracing the smaller whose legs stop their protestations as the coup de grace is delivered. It is over and I leave for the pub.

Traditionally this is the point at which some well-meaning homily is delivered by a smooth voiced Irish cleric (and indeed, I had just switched off Brian D'Arcy and Sunday Half Hour); "You know, in a way, I often think Jesus was like that at the crucifixion...". And yes, I was quite moved by the smaller spider's stoic acceptance of its inevitable fate regardless of whether it was bravado or lust that drove it on and yes, there are certainly lessons to be learned. Buggered if I'm going to tell you though.

Wit and wisdom.

2009-09-03T09:38:00.002Z

There has been an outbreak of the most pernicious and damaging disease known to mankind - Management Consultancy.

I tell you, if it wasn't for those sick buggers, we'd be laughing. Here's some free advice: stop paying management consultants. If they could actually manage, they'd be doing it.

Elsewhere:

We've all been there haven't we. Couple too many, fall asleep, wake up on a different planet. Most of us make it back. Obviously some don't.

Japanese first lady abducted by aliens

Rant

2009-08-28T16:00:00.004Z

I have just returned from my bi-weekly soul destruction session at the job centre. Car*le of Crewe JobcentrePlus, I want this job: I wish to be your nemesis. I pray for at least one day of working once again with the general public and that you are my first customer. For I will completely ignore everything you say when you try to answer my questions or attempt to engage me in polite conversation and when I actually deign to listen to you I will give you a faintly condescending grimace and answer neither your questions nor concerns and proceed to talk over you. Our brief professional relationship/customer interface will be over when I turn away from you and tap details into my computer or till, acting as if my last uninterested glance at you caused your molecular disassembly, doing like a scared toddler and metaphorically covering my eyes so you can't see me. You will of course have access to my manager in order to complain about my surly treatment of you and I will get the sack; a luxury I do not currently possess as the Jobcentre Plusses have made it quite clear in the national media that they are overstretched and interviews are of a minimal timespan, exonerating their own behaviour. I realise that this ultimately makes you my nemesis but I would have had the brief satisfaction of being able to treat you in exactly the same way you treat me.

It is already bad enough that I am knocking 49, have not had a proper job for nigh on 7 years due to other concerns and have come to the conclusion that unless I want to clean either offices or old people, I am probably unemployable. I respect the fact that these things have to be done, but not by me they won't. I really have no wish to be a skivvy and while I have done the caring thing, it was out of love and duty, not a career option. I have O levels, not GCSEs, in subjects that do not exist anymore. I didn't go to university because universities back in the 70s were for exceptionally clever people who could already read and write when they left school and for which local authorities gave you a grant to attend. Polytechnics were, er... you went to a poly? LOL. No, I went to art college and eventually dropped out, man, and drifted into industry. I have spent a lifetime doing jobs that didn't really matter (and in a large part were empire building) and building up a set of useless non skills with office software that is the equivalent of being very good on a calculator. My body is also failing; I can't bend very well and although I'm generally fit I can't lift much as I've had the full set of hernias and may well have another brewing. I don't even have any proper referees, which is hugely embarrassing. The jobs I'd really like to do (I would, for instance, really love to while away my declining years doing something meaningful on the waterways) are very few and far between and modern offices bear no relation to the ones I used to work in. In order to claim benefit, I have to make myself available for work almost round the clock yet in the real world, if I eat later than 8pm I am up all night with vicious heartburn because of my hiatus hernia. I can't sleep during the day as I turn into an utter shit because the rest of the world is up and being noisy. I live next door to a family whose children, while quite nice, take advantage of the fact that their parents are both profoundly deaf and can't hear the racket they make. I would probably end up killing someone during nights. So no, C*role, the shiftwork admin job at the warehouse you told me to apply for is a non-runner.

In the 90s, following my redundancy, I was, for a brief time, a regular attendee at the Job Centre in Erith in South East London. Signing on there was almost a pleasure and the staff friendly. When I finally secured a job extorting tolls at the world's premier tolled river crossing in Dartford, one of my very first customers on my very first day was the nice lady with whom I used to sign every week. We had a laugh and I thanked her and she was visibly pleased I'd found a job, however menial.

Which was nice.

Can you spare me 5 minutes of your time?

2009-08-25T15:35:00.003Z

I am a very great fan of all those interesting quizzes one finds on the Facebook. They are, to a man, insightful and revealing and I have learnt so much about myself and my online friends through completing them and viewing the results of others. Freud and Jung must be spitting feathers over how easy psychoanalysis has become. Fun for all, eh! Anyway, while not wishing to belittle the prodigious amount of work and effort the compilers obviously put into devising these tests, I spent ten minutes knocking one together yesterday evening so would like to run it past one or two of you before I unleash it and allow it to take the world's premier social networking hub by storm. I have taken the liberty of running it through a new Firefox add-on, "Facebook-o-fix" in order that you don't have no probs readin it. Here here!

Men - How do you Slice You're Toast?!!?

Did you know that the way you slice you're toast can tell evryone about you? Do my quick quiz and find out if you can really cut it!!!LOL!

1) Square quartered

Your outwardly solid and dependable. You aer careful with you money and make lots of provisions for you and your family for when your made redundent. You like family holidays and have a dog. You have a shed concealing a large collection of vintage Danish porn. Job = C.I.D.

2) Diagonal quartered

Youre over-sensitive with some inpenetreable depths. You have a few CD's of George Butterworth and Vaughan Williams English pastoral music to assuage your guilt at your huge collection of Norwegian Death Metal. You secretely fear foreigners and would really like to be a vegetrian. Job = Local goverment compliance unit.

3) Half diagonal

As a teenager you had a crush on your best mates' mum. You spent a year in therapyin your 20s but your OK now you think as long as you don't forget your lithium. You keep a picture of K.T Tunstall in your wallet which you pass off as your girlfriend although your probably gay anyway. Like video games and UFO's. Job = Freelance journo for gadget mags.

4) Half square

No flies on you! You sale through life without a care. You outwardly don't give a toss about money and you fear no-one and nothing. But your actually crap at everything and should of gone to university straight away instead of deferring and then getting married. And divorced. Job = What job?

5) I just cut it without thinking

You really love the sound of your own voice and can clear a poub in minutes. Your annoyingly good at DIY and everyone you help out you call your mate. But they only ever call you as a last resort even though they know you got a heart of gold really. You always wash your car every Sunday morning even if its' raining and you like cats. Once went on holiday to Phuket and had embarrassing altercation with a ladyboy. Job = Local councillor

6) I don't cut it.

You think ribbed condoms are dead sophisticated although the last time you used one you put it on inside out and had a alergic reaction to the lubricant. You like long bike rides at the weekend and have all the gear but have always had trouble doing right-hand bends and get a lot of gravel burns taht you like to show off. You drink far too much Red bull and are developing twiches. You have the kind of face that attracts attention from the police. Job = Web designer

There you go. Any tweaks?

In which cricket causes me to re-evaluate some things

2009-08-22T18:34:00.003Z

Telly! I am watching the cricket highlights for only the second time all summer. It is good to see a rampant England, the team promises to be a fine one post the retirement of its talisman. Andrew Flintoff may not be everyone's cup of tea and although not the best all-rounder England has ever had, he's still a fine player. He has the right attitude. He's a hero to a certain section of male society, often for the wrong reasons, and I can only hope that the livelier elements of his followers look past the fireworks and his fondness for a pint and learn. The handshake from Ponting as he came out for his final innings was a case in point; he's held in immense respect by his opponents because of the spirit with which he plays the game and that one moment was a distillation of everything sport should be about. It's something you won't see much of in football (Bristol City not doing the decent thing and allowing Palace a soft goal last week for the "non-goal" everyone bar the officials saw scored for instance) and why, despite having always followed it, you will probably never see me in the crowd at a game. The competition is on the field of play, it's not to be taken into everyday life. There really is nothing quite so boorish as a nutcase football supporter. It's only a game.

As for Ponting, can't say I've ever been a big fan but he went up a huge amount in my esteem after taking a full on drive in the mouth at silly mid-off. No helmet and it takes a brave man to field there without protection although I can imagine Brian Close wondering why he didn't head the ball to slip if he couldn't get his hands to it. I did a fair amount of time fielding there when I was playing, something to do with having good hands apparently, and was lucky enough never to get hit although as a batsman whenever I was given a close fielder I tried to hit him to get him moved. Fair's fair, I would have bought him a drink after if I had.

I also have to eat some humble pie. It is well known in some quarters that I am not the world's greatest admirer of multi benipped songstrel Lilly Allen of that London village. I don't much care for her professional yob father and some of her own antics have left me a bit cold in the past. However, she was the lunchtime guest of Test Match Special on the wireless today as it has been well publicised recently that she has come out as a big fan of test match cricket. The interview revealed, quite unexpectedly, a decidedly charming young lady and her quite touching reaction to being presented with a book signed by Graham Onions, for whom she has declared a crush, fair brought a quiver to my lower lip. I dare say a full character reassessment ought not to be made on the basis of a 31 minute conversation with an apparently awestruck Jonathon Agnew, but I'll return my judgement to the reserved box for the time being.

Apologies to the colonials and the ladies amongst my many hundreds of followers, for whom this must be exceedingly tiresome. This was also my 400th post and I really had nothing much else to say.

World of Rupe

2009-08-17T10:54:00.007Z

Being regular readers of this diary you will be well aware that I do not possess one of those new-fangled highly-defined televideograms that everyone seems to have now so while preparing my dinner yesterday evening, I turned on the wireless. It was having none of it so I was forced to listen to it.* It was that little gardener cove, Titsarse, doing your 100 Best Tunes or whatever it's called now, apparently Hubert Gregg no longer being up for the gig having passed away several years ago. Didn't fancy it, nor the god slot after, so I tuned to the medium wave to catch the athletics world championships from Berlin just in time to hear the commentary on something that was quite frankly remarkable.

Exactly a year ago in Beijing, Usain Bolt strolled 100 metres in a time requiring something approaching warpspeed to complete. It was a truly stunning piece of human athleticism that anyone who appreciates any kind of sporting prowess could admire. He made a quality field of the best athletes in the world look like club journeymen. As he had a bad start and also appeared to be slowing down and showboating for most of the second half of the "race" it was surely only a matter of time before he would get everything right and produce something memorable and last night was that night. He ran an insanely fast time and broke his own record by 11/100ths of a second and over 100 metres, where world records are measured in one or two 100ths at a time that is a ridiculous amount. Tyson Gay ran the third fastest time in history - what would have been a world record a year ago - and came second. It sounded a spectacle. But some spectacles can only truly be appreciated visually; it is often extremely thrilling to watch someone do something expertly and if they are a peerless master at that skill then that thrill becomes a privelege, even though that privilege is being shared with millions.

I texted my sister, no mean athlete herself (a multi be-medalled Veteran world champion) and asked whether she'd seen it. Yes, she had and it was superb. Bugger. Oh well, it was 9 pm and time for my Sunday evening indulgence; I'd go and watch the replay in the pub. Bound to be on - that was history being made, wasn't it. 15 minutes later and I was propping up the bar in the Gaffer's Row watching two screens in turn, one showing Rupe-O-News and the other Rupe-O-Sports News. A big yellow tickertape was flashing along the bottom of both screens announcing the breaking news of Mr Bolt's triumph. "Good", I thought, they'll show it soon. Did they bollocks. Two hours I stood and watched that shite. Oh they mentioned it enough and on the Sports channel I saw miniscule highlights of lots of things. Rugby League; Andy Murray winning a tennis match in Montreal; a seagull nicking a bail at the Australia v England Lions game at my spiritual home, the St Lawrence Ground, Canterbury. They talked about the unravelling final round in the US PGA golf and showed a bit of the Moto GP. Wayne Rooney gave a lucid and intelligent interview, Neil Warnock showed righteous indignation at the "non-goal". It was on a loop, the same stories over and over again and and presided over by two of the most vacuous, uninspiring and boring presenters I'd ever witnessed. No sense of history at all. This was the sports channel for crying out loud! Something truly remarkable in the world of sport had happened and you weren't talking about it. Why not? Instead you were showing the Dutch football league table. Who's interested in that? Who buys this crap? Go hang your heads in collective shame.

*© S.Milligna, 1955

I become a laughing stock

2009-08-07T17:14:00.006Z

As is my wont, I ~~strolled liesurely~~ power walked into town earlier, about 10.45. I was only gone a couple of hours and on returning I happened to glance in through the driver's window of my car as I passed by on the drive. There was stuff on the passenger seat. Lots of it. And a bit more stuff on the drivers seat, too. I went to open the door; it was already open and not on the latch either. I had been the victim of an attempted burglary.

I say attempted as there was no sign of forced entry so I'm guessing I must have left the door unlocked when I got back from my walk along the Trent and Mersey canal through Middlewich yesterday afternoon. There did not appear to be anything missing. The fact that the door was actually open suggests an opportunist who was probably in and out in a few seconds or surprised in the act by a passer-by. Ironically, as I left earlier I'd noticed the van owned by the maintenance company my housing association uses parked next door, unattended, with its sliding side door wide open, a range of power tools within easy reach. It was still there on my return. Modern thieves are as thick as shit.

I have been the victim of burglary, of both vehicle and domestic kinds, before. It's not a pleasant feeling, especially when nothing's been nicked and all you've suffered is wanton vandalism. My previous car was broken into twice and both times a window was smashed causing me to lose some NCD even though nothing was actually taken. It's the buggeration factor of having to get repairs done and make a claim that annoys me more than anything. At least this time I don't need to make a claim.

The only feeling I've got this time is one of mild embarrassment and I hope the little felon is nobody known to me otherwise he might point and laugh. My car is eleven years old and I've had it all bar 5000 miles of its life. It's part of me near enough and it's almost my own personal museum. I lived in it for several days once, it's home. There were bits of old personal ephemera and effects hauled unceremoniously out of the glove box and spread onto the seat: old bits of printout with maps on; the manual and handbook; my old spare clip-on tie I wore as part of my uniform; some directions with a little billet-doux sign-off my ex-wife sent to me to get to the holiday home she and the kids were already at - our last holiday as a family unit and the one during which I decided to leave; a pair of surgical shears I bought at a boot market and which I use for fishing; a pad of now useless concessionary disabled driver tickets I used to give out as an employee of the world's most popular tolled river crossing (what were rather disingenuously called "cripple tickets". Weren't they, Andy); a pair of pliers and a tyre pressure tester (I haven't checked to see if my torch is missing - I have "a thing" about torches, I don't know why. The provision of artificial light to a small area giving a sense of immediate security and comfort perhaps? Anyway, I'll always accept and appreciate a torch as a gift). The ashtray had been removed, presumably to look for the stash of hobby medicinals I do not use or the emergency tenner I can't afford.

What was most embarrassing though was that he would have seen I still have the factory-fitted entertainment system. It's not even a CD player, let alone a Bluetooth enabled iPod friendly radio, it's a radio-cassette player. With "Rover" on and the same cassette that's been in it for about 7 years (Rory Gallagher, Live in Europe if you must). He probably picked up a cassette and wondered what on earth it was. At least he I didn't take the Postman Pat one that's been in the car since my children were infants and which I can't bear to throw away. No taste.

Childish

2009-08-04T14:50:00.006Z

Some time ago I was diagnosed with very high blood pressure, as is often the case with fat old men, and am now "under the doctor". Last week I went for one of my periodic visits to have my BP checked with the nurse. It had gone up slightly necessitating a further review by the GP, which I had yesterday. He immediately doubled the dose of whatever it is I'm on at the moment and I started the new regime yesterday evening. I don't know whether it was the increased dosage, the quick snort of Glenlivet I sluiced down before retiring or a combination of both but I slept like a baby. Once I'd finally got up this morning I found I had about as much determination as a comatose sloth and dozed off on the sofa while reading an Inspector Banks novel. I like Peter Robinson so it wasn't the book.

After a while I was alerted by Mr Jezza Vine of the wireless trying to whip up some kind of frenzy among the English Democrat section of his BBC Radio 2 listenership by talking about the craze of "sexting" amongst teenagers. I was previously unaware of this new diversion, maybe you are too, so I will elaborate: children, teenagers mostly, take compromising pictures of themselves with their mobile phones and send them to each other via the media of text or Bluetooth, hence the scurrilous play on words. This part is relatively straightforward, children have always done this. Indeed, I recall some children at my primary school even making a tidy income (maybe even enough to buy a packet of Potato Puffs) from pimping the budding charms of the more well-developed girls. I never had any money on me but I doubt I would have wasted it on peering down Kipper's vest anyway. Innocent behind-the-bike shed fun and oh so normal. Unfortunately the newer craze has a darker edge.

Teenage relationships are not known for their longevity; young boys are painfully immature, young girls can be unbelievably shallow. Introduce hormones and technology and you've got problems. Both parties, but I suspect mainly the boys because their immaturity encompasses the inability to deal with break-up however shallow the girl is (get used to it lads), are vengeful and these pictures end up being circulated amongst not only their peer groups but also on the Facebook and suchlike. It's not nice is it.

Still. Adults are more mature aren't they. I immediately text my very dear friend who lives a very long way away:

"You heard about this sexting mullarkey where people send titilating pictures of themselves to each other on their mobiles?"

"F*** that for a game of soldiers"

"Here's a picture of my lunchbox"

Contrast

2009-07-31T15:20:00.003Z

This doesn't bother me:

Tiresomely arrogant squillionaire German with face that just makes you want to hit it for no other reason than it's attached to a body to drive fast car round and round in circles again.

But I feel no shame in admitting that this tribute made me blub like a baby. Try as I might, I can find nothing ill to say of him:

Bobby Robson 1993 - 2009

I am confused

2009-07-24T15:24:00.004Z

I really don't have a lot to say at the moment. I get up, do some stuff, eat some stuff, listen to the wireless and go to bed. Occasionally I speak to some people. On Sunday evenings between 9 and 11pm you will invariably find me attempting to read a book in a quiet corner of The Gaffer's Row. This is my weekly treat. I'm easily pleased.

But I do like to observe. Occasionally I see things that make me laugh. More often than not I witness the crass and boorish ignorance of the great British public that makes us so loved around the world. Yesterday, while sitting at one of the library terminals, I was becoming seriously annoyed with the loud and aggravating noise leaking from the earbuds of the young man sitting next to me. He's a regular user and to be honest, he scares me. He's the kind of person who you're pretty certain, just from watching his body language, exists permenently on a hair trigger, ready to go "off on one" for no apparent reason. After a while, the guy sitting on the far side of him, who happened to be a member of staff, very politely asked him to turn his music down as it was annoying other library users. Not 4 feet away is a giant poster, covering half a wall, that exhorts users to be considerate.

"What?"
"Could you please turn your music down, it's very loud and is annoying other users."
"Who says?"
"I do." And points to his staff badge.
"Tsk. It's not loud. "
"It is."
"You're having a laugh. I have to have it loud because...(and here a completely illogical justification takes place based on the fact that the music is loud in the first place)."
"Well can you please turn it down then"
"Who's going to make me?"
"There's no need to be so aggressive."
"I wasn't being aggressive"
" I just asked you politely to turn your music down. You replied aggressively."
"You don't know what it means. I wasn't being aggressive. I'll show you aggressive."

At this point I am sitting behind him shaking my head and mouthing "wanker" at him. His surliness, complete disregard for others and plain ignorance is really starting to annoy me and my lower middle class hackles are starting to rise. I'm poised, like a coiled spring, to leap into action. I could take him out, I think, with a swing of my golf umbrella handle to the base of the spine, else I could easily snap his neck with a couple of quick moves like you see done at the pictures. Or I could run out the door in a gratifying display of rank cowardice.

A mobile phone rings, loudly, 3 times. The owner gets up and politely walks out.

"You going to tell him to turn it off?"

I want to point out the obvious. Luckily, my time is up, my screen clears and I make my escape.

Elsewhere: I hear on the news that apparently soldiers are dying in Afghanistan. Regardless of the legitimacy of the conflict, that they are doing so in far fewer numbers than any previous heavily armed conflict seems to have escaped most commentators. That they are also soldiers and this is what they signed up to do is also lost on everyone bar the families of the men who trot out the familiar lines about about duty and protecting us (it's working. There are very few Taliban in Crewe now. 6 months ago you couldn't get a decent sausage anywhere but the stonings in Town Square really brought the crowds in). Apparently the cause of these deaths is a dearth of helicopters. I scream at the wireless in a Milligan-esque fashion "You twats. It's the other side. We sent our soldiers out there only to find that some shit had the temerity to sell the other lot guns. WTF did you think they were going to do with them, train their sweet peas up the barrels?"

A couple of hours ago, in the petrol station, the headline in the Daily Express catches my eye. Children are now being blamed for the spread of Swine Flu. I look up to the sky, the clouds have turned dark and there's a flash of lightning...

Yabba dabba don't

2009-07-15T14:30:00.006Z

A Statement from Sir Frederick Flintstone:

"After a ~~brief chat with my agent~~ great deal of consideration, I've decided to call it a day as long as ~~five day piss-ups are~~ test match cricket is concerned and shall be retiring from the England Test Team immediately after the Ashes series~~or on Thursday morning if I don't pass the fitness test for Lord's because that's me buggered for the rest of the series~~. It's well documented that my body's been rebelling against the rigours of five day cricket but I would like to think that I still have a lot to offer the England set-up and I hope to be available for the one-day series and 20/20 games as long as I am fit~~where the money's far better and I don't piss everyone about if I crock myself on the morning of the game~~. Thanks for all your support etc...etc..."

Statistically, it's no great loss. Since 2005 England have performed far better without Andrew Flintoff in the side than when he's been fit but it's signal of a malaise that goes far deeper than statistics and I sincerely hope the morons running the EWCB (and the other morons running world cricket, especially in India but not, surprisingly, in Australia) realise what they've done.

Flintoff is a proper cricketer. Obvious? No. He's not a cricketer because he wears white clothes and goes out and hits a ball with a flat stick, it's because he has a peculiar talent that anyone who's watched cricket for a long time will recognise: presence. He's a good batsman with a decent technique and a properly aggressive and genuinely fast strike bowler but it's that quality you can't see that 99% of the journeymen currently toiling the world's greenswards don't possess that is the reason why idiots like me love the game so much. Watch a match with him in it and you never know what's going to happen. A moment of sublime genius, an application of skill and technique way beyond the capacity of mortals, is always just about to happen - the unplayable ball that cuts a batsman in half off a length; an effortless pick up of a good length ball into the second tier or the catch out of nothing. In my lifetime I've been lucky enough to watch at first hand players of the quality of Viv Richards, Ian Botham, Alan Knott, David Gower, Clive Lloyd, Shane Warne, Derek Underwood, Kapil Dev, Imran Khan, Barry Richards and Mike Proctor, all of whom could, in the space of 15 minutes of astounding ability or outrageous invention, turn a game through 180 degrees and make you tingle with anticipation. There's a few missing I know but there are also precious few from the modern game. Why?

The reason is the same one Flintoff is crocked and won't risk himself over 5 days. Money. Greed. They (sponsors, not the players although some are just as guilty) all wanted their pound of flesh and the EWCB were happy to cave in. There's no conditioning on the county grind when you're under contract to a dodgy banker or a Bollywood poptart. There's precious little reward for average cricketers in the county game but if you want 11 cavemen with 3lb clubs bludgeoning everything in sight into floodlight pylons and spinners bowling negatively into the rough as your adrenaline fix because you're so conditioned to having everything you do served up in handy easily digestible bite-sized portions, go to America, have your brain removed and watch baseball or buy a Sky dish and settle down to watch 20/20 for half an hour of synthesised mush. But don't for the life of me ever tell me you're watching cricket otherwise I shall be forced to kill you. Slowly. If you want to see a cricket match, take a couple of days off work and watch a county game. It might be a bit boring in places but that's the game. You can only play chess with 32 pieces and 64 squares. Stay with it, pump your money into that and invest it in proper talent instead of paying off Murdoch's sleaze fines for him. For my money, I would rather see someone who could mimic an effortless David Gower extra-cover drive (without a helmet on) than any ten-a-penny pinch-hitter. The wonderful thing about a 6 was that it was a rarity and a surprise, not an expectation. I mean, they even pull the boundaries in to make sixes easier to hit! When I used to watch cricket at the Oval, once one of the biggest grounds in the world, it took supreme timing or strength to clear the ropes, now I reckon even I could do it. Having said that, most 20/20 games appear to be the cricket equivalent of tip and run or touch-rugby where quick singles are the order of the day. What on earth is exciting about two teams getting 140 and nobody able to build a century? I really don't get it.

I'm old, aren't I.

Going Postal. Again.

2009-07-09T17:17:00.003Z

I went to the Post Office to post something earlier. "First class inland" I said to the clerk.

"Is it of any value and do you want guaranteed delivery tomorrow?" she ventured enquiringly.

"No" I said, "It's not of any particular value except for the fact that I wish to send it to someone otherwise I'd jump up and down on it for the sheer hell of it. And look at the address. Hertfordshire. It's 150 miles away from here on the motorway. I can do it in three hours at a steady throb in my ancient Rover. If it's not there by tomorrow morning, that nobjockey boss of yours, Crozier, will be hearing from me. First Class used to be guaranteed next day delivery to all but the most distant and inaccessible islands of this vast realm until that useless tosser took over. Post offices used to display a map of guaranteed delivery times, it would be hard bloody work trying to find the miniscule speck on it that would have to wait an extra 24 hours for their Private Eyes to be delivered. So how much?"*

"I'm only doing my job. We're told to say that. £1.24 Standard, £5.48 Guaranteed delivery."

"Like those patronising twats in Morrisons who, when you approach with a pot of yoghurt, ask if you need any help with your packing you mean?"**

"Yes."

"So, really what you're saying is that by saying it's not guaranteed, you're hoping I'm going to get all twitchy and worried that my precious little letter isn't going to get there in time and that I'm going to stump up another £4 for the pleasure. I'd like to point out to you that we're in the age of high tech postal sorting machines, highly trained operatives, speedy and efficient distribution networks and highly paid and motivated staff yet you still can't guarantee that my small parcel can't get to the outskirts of Watford from Crewe within 24 hours, something that has been guaranteed almost since Sir Rowland Hill proposed the Uniform Penny Post over 170 bloody years ago? Christ woman, the poor sod would be turning in his grave. I could have had a conversation quicker than texting across London in 1850 using the postal system yet you can't guarantee me delivery to a town that's an hour and a bit down the same bloody railway line?***

"No."

Adam Crozier and Peter Mandelson should be thrown into a dark room full of bitey spiders. Between them they have managed to completely ruin a public service purely in the name of greed. Of course it's inefficient, it's being run by a complete arse.

*I might not have said all of this. I didn't call Crozier a nobjockey.

** I did say this.

*** I should have said this but there was a queue. I said it to myself as I walked out and sounded like my medication was overdue.

Jaffa

2009-07-08T15:48:00.005Z

Today is the official first day of summer, according to Wisden. As is well known, I do not have one of those electric picture wireless things but even if I did own one I would never be a subscriber to that cock Murdoch's evil empire of greed so until the ECB sees sense and I can afford it, I will have to rely on the good offices of the BBC Test Match Special team (which is only really interesting when Geoffrey Boycott or Phil Tufnell - much better than one would think - are on).

Unfortunately, my strictly held principles mean I was denied the spectacle of Katherine Jenkins opening the proceedings with a couple of lethal looking bouncers.

Boom and indeed, boom.

(Any comments about sending one down the corridor of uncertainty will be heavily censored)

Great Unanswered Questions etc...

2009-07-06T14:51:00.006Z

Isaac Newton wrote an infrequently quoted coda to his third law of motion, known only to the public carriage office that can be paraphrased thus: "To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Except in this cab where the laws that govern the universe don't apply, pal."

If I need to use my car for a short journey of say, a mile, like to the council tip with a bootfull of garden rubbish, which requires me to get in the vehicle one end of the trip and exit same the other for a very short time, I am legally obliged to wear a seatbelt for the duration of the entire journey. This is a good thing, most accidents occur within a short distance of home on familiar roads when we are at our least alert and observant. Can somebody therefore please explain to me why a taxi driver, a specie of professional driver for whom egress from the cab is required only for the purposes of refreshment, refuelling or relief ("sling it in the boot mate. 's'open") and very rarely for the benefit of the person paying his or her livelihood, is not required to belt up at all regardless of the length of journey? Why NASA spends billions on fuel to send the shuttle into orbit when in reality all that's needed is 1998 Skoda Octavia 1.9 TDi with 350,000 miles on the clock and a full tank of diesel is anyone's guess.

Beat it.

2009-07-01T09:04:00.005Z

I generally take little notice of the crap that passes for news on the front page of the redtops but one caught my eye this morning as I walked through Asda's cooling lobby. It was on the front page of several so I won't bother quoting a specific, suffice to say that the gist of it was that the well-known late popstar isn't the father of his own children, whom I believe to called Princess Anne, Prince Michael of Kent II and Bedbug.

I didn't stop to read any of the articles but I am surprised it has taken the newspapers this long to arrive at this conclusion. The Peter Pan of Pop, a man who has at times had trouble breathing the same air as the rest of the planet, disappearing into a room with a galley pot, a copy of Fiesta and a nervous smile is surely one of the most unlikely and, indeed, inconceivable of scenarios.

Catch up.

Out of the loop

2009-06-29T14:02:00.005Z

Last Friday morning just before 9am, while I was in the dentist's waiting room, my phone rang. I could be heard but could not hear. Oh dear. It had been playing up all week, ever since Monday but it was still serviceable. I managed to copy my phone directory to my sim card and about 3 hours later the thing completely died on me. I don't have a landline.

It has been a peculiar weekend. I used a public phone box for the first time in years and was shocked to find it now costs 40p minumum. For this you get 20 minutes. Fine, but who wants to be stuck behind someone making a 20 minute call in a call box. BT are removing them complaining that they are not being used. Of course they aren't , they're too bloody expensive. But they are for emergencies and should be maintained. I would have liked to have made several short calls but I wouldn't have been able to afford it. This is the moron Adam Crozier school of business thought: it's not used all the time, scrap it. Then two people want to use the last one at once, one gets angry at being held up and vandalises it. BT remove it because of the vandalism problem. There's such thing as a public service. This is the same with the post office: shut all the sub POs so everyone uses the main one. There are now queues at the main one almost all the time so everyone starts doing everything online (like printing stamps and getting the weights wrong, so the clerk told me) so the Post Offices are deemed unpopular or surplus to need. Shut them down.

Apart from not having a landline (or a telly. Have I told you that before?), I don't wear a watch either. I use my mobile and it serves as my alarm. I borrowed an alarm clock because I had to be up very early on Saturday morning but it was too loud and kept me awake all night even though I put it on the landing. I could have thrown it down the toilet. It was an old clockwork one (the clock, not my toilet), made in Scotland (when was the last time you saw "Made in Scotland" anywhere?) and went by the trade name "Jock". How quaint. The hands were out of sync so the alarm was impossible to set. It was a useless Jock (like Adam Crozier). I went to Argos and bought a cheap alarm clock for £4. Argos is the only place in the world where you can buy cheap alarm clocks that just tell the time and wake you up. Nobody needs them anymore because everyone has a mobile phone.

By far the worst part of the last few days has been the feeling of total isolation even though I live in a town of 50,000. I have been completely uncontactable and for the most part, been unable to contact anyone without spending a lot of money, something I don't have. I don't know my neighbour's phone numbers, I have no computer at home. I send texts, not to many people, just a select few. It's pseudo conversation and it stops me from feeling lonely, even though I'm not overtly gregarious. I never thought I would ever really miss my phone but I have. Thankfully my brother-in-law is sending me an old one which I should receive tomorrow - I can't wait, something I find rather sad. I gave my old mobile to my Dad, my mum uses my sister's old cast off. My mother has just started to text and thinks it's fun. Odd, it used to be clothes that were passed down, now we pass the latest technology the other way.

Wacko

2009-06-26T08:46:00.001Z

Poor, poor Farrah Fawcett. Destined to be the answer to pub quiz questions for eternity.

Packing heat

2009-06-25T14:33:00.004Z

It has been a good week.

Last week I went to a funeral. Or rather, I tried to go to a funeral. My Uncle Mike's to be exact. Or rather, to be even more exact, my Mum's late younger sister's husband's. Mike was a cracking bloke, blessed with a fantastic sense of humour, a love of (at various times and probably sometimes all at once) golf, smoking, Tottenham Hotspur FC and the odd libation (I do believe he ran the bar at Rye House stadium for a while). He always seemed to be around when we were kids and I can remember him being an excellent conjuror, something I'm sure he regretted as we always pestered him to get his tricks out whenever we visited. He was also probably responsible for my interest in the blues as I remember as a young teenager picking up a musical reference book from his shelf that explained the nature of the pentatonic scale and the modulations involved. I was fascinated because for once I'd just about grasped some musical theory (it's about the only theory I've retained). The same day he produced Eric Clapton's "461 Ocean Boulevard", something I thought seemed a bit out of place in an "old" person's record collection. I hadn't seen him since my Grandma's funeral in 1996 but he'd rather kept himself to himself after the death of my aunt in 1985. He was someone of whom I had genuinely fond memories and wanted to pay my respects; I had to go.

The funeral was for 10am in Harlow, which was going to be a bugger from Crewe. I borrowed a Satnav, planned the route and set off at 5.30 am. The satnav said I was going to be there at 9.18. Stacks of time. Then it all went arse over tit, a lorry having a wheel changed on the A14/A1 junction, getting stuck behind a hire van and the final straw with 3 minutes to go, the bloody satnav sending me into the council estate next door to the crematorium (apparently, I wasn't the only one this happened to). I missed the ceremony. If it had been my satnav I would have jumped on it. My cousin, Mike's daughter, had come all the way from Sydney NSW and she made it in time. But the rest of the day was great, I met up with some cousins I hadn't seen for years, had a good laugh with them and it was a seriously fun day, which would have pleased Mike no end. I'll be sticking with maps and the traffic reports.

I spent the next few days at the family seat in Kent. I'd not been back since I returned to Crewe at Easter 2008 so it was good to be there, especially on Father's Day. I don't usually go in for all that sentimental card-shop stuff but it was actually good to do the odd son/dad thing, like take bits of my car apart and problem solve together for a change. There is a poignancy there that I don't wish to dwell on but I do hope that one day I shall experience the same as a senior citizen. Ashford has also changed a lot in the last year. It's now a very modern town but despite all the changes, it still retains a distinct character and doesn't look like a generic off-the-shelf town. I do hope they put the brakes on its growth though before it swamps the local villages.

On Monday on my way back up north, I arranged to meet my dearest and sweetest friend, and, when being particularly blonde, occasional feature of these pages, AJ. I haven't seen her since last century. She is what would probably be termed a force of nature; 100 mph one minute and say "I'm really painfully shy, you know" the next. She's also the only person I know that can disappear to Dubai for ten years and come back looking exactly the same age as she was when she left instead of looking like a baked walnut. She'd tried to prepare me for the shock of seeing her again after so long but she needn't have bothered. It was extraordinary and I felt embarrassed for her, I must have looked like a taxi driver who'd been on shift for 36 hours in comparison. But we had an afternoon and evening of enormous fun. But there was one typical AJ moment. She has always loved chillies; I do too but not to the same extent. We used to occasionally share a jar from Selfridges when we worked together - I would have two, she'd have the other 28, in about 15 minutes. We went for a meal on Monday, to an Italian in Amersham. She'd already polished off a couple of doses of garlic oil and ciabatta and then settled down for a plate of spaghetti carbonara. She asked if she could have chillies on it. The hottest. But it wasn't enough for her so she asked the waitress to bring her a bowl of dried chopped ones. She returned a couple of minutes later with a bowl the size of a teacup, brim-full of chillies. AJ took it from her and promptly tipped the whole lot onto her already heat-laden meal and churned it in. The poor girl's jaw visibly dropped, "I've...never...seen...anyone...do...that...before..." she muttered, quite dumbfounded. "I'm so bloody glad I'm not going home with you tonight," I said loudly and quite non-plussed, having not batted an eyelid during the whole episode. I've known this girl for a quarter of a century, nothing ever surprises me. "I'm even more glad I'm not waking up next to you in the morning."

A couple of minutes later:"Wasn't hot enough. Didn't like that". She didn't even break sweat.

Fish

2009-06-19T00:37:00.002Z

If you've been listening to the wireless then you will have noticed that on Wednesday the BBC reported a proper news story and not something featuring Robert Peston (due to my not owning a television receiver, I have so far been fortunate enough not to witness this gentleman putting the shits up the working public. I'm staying at the country seat for a few days and despite there being several televisions here, the folks prefer ITN. I still haven't seen him). My immediate thought about sticklebacks being declared piscene geniuses was that a revered (and oft quoted as a piece of quite useless information) part of my Nuffield biology was now in question. Anyone of a similar vintage to myself may well remember the story about the sticklebacks in a research lab tank that appeared to get particularly excited at precisely the same time, each and every day. Except Sundays. I think I've remembered this correctly: the male fish display a red flash when on the pull. This would provoke aggression and excitement in surrounding fish depending, of course, on their gender. A sharp-eyed technician noted that the unexplained agitation coincided with the delivery of the post and of course, the Royal Mail then used, as it still does, red vans. The measure of fishy intelligence in the 1960s presumably didn't included the ability to decide whether a threat or potential suitor was of an aqueous or terrestrial nature.

However, it is a shame that some sections of our society still appear to display even less intelligence than a two inch long animal commonly found swimming in ditches. By the way, these morons call themselves British nationalists. I do hope you didn't cast a protest vote.

Rubbish

2009-06-16T15:19:00.004Z

Spotted outside Crewe Baths earlier today. If you're going to litter, dress it up a little.

I am going to be spending a few days darn sarf. I'm attending a funeral in Harlow tomorrow morning and have decided to take advantage of the location to nip across the river via my old place of employ (look out for me, Andy. Same old car) to visit the ancestral seat in Kent for a few days. It's the nearest I've come to a holiday since January 2007. If you work for the JobCentrePlus, I have told you already as I'm due to sign on Friday. I will be doing my job search via my mum's computer; I would hate for tax-payers' money to be wasted on a lazy, good-for-nothing ne'er do well. Heaven forbid.

I have been taking Sir Paul's advice and have been eating salads. I believe it is this action that has made it possible for me to slip, sylph-like, into a suit I last wore six years ago. It's a tight fit and after 4 hours in the car I'll be regretting it but I'm happy in that I've been doing my bit for the planet. Sir Paul can feel justifiably pleased at his initiative, maybe he can think of some more as his chauffer drives him between any one of his 17 houses, the national treasure. If you're on your way to Peasmarsh, Macca, pop in. Mum does a cracking cold collation. With cold potatoes and all the trimmings. I have encountered a slight problem though, I appear to be farting a lot because my body's not used to all the roughage. I suppose it's OK as long as I fart less than a cow.

Annual lecture

2009-06-11T12:08:00.003Z

Today is six years without a cigarette day. I never thought I would but I have. There have been plenty of excuses along the way that I could have used to start again but my resolve has never wavered. Surprising because with most other things I'm disgustingly weak-willed. I still don't see myself as a non-smoker because I still "like" it inasmuch as I never found the habit overtly disgusting (although there are occasions when people sit down next to you in a pub or restaurant who stink of the things when it comes pretty close and filthy curtains and ceilings are pretty awful). I would feel I've let myself down badly if I started again though. I'm not really sure what the key is but if you want to give up, you can.

I can't even say I remember having cravings as such - like any vested interest, the manufacturers of patches and other "aids" make it out to be far worse than it is. They're in business, it's in their interest that you take as long to give up as possible. They have shareholders who demand a dividend and it's even better if you relapse. Don't listen to the people who say it's hard, they really didn't want to give up and made it difficult for themselves. If you're weak-willed you'll side with them and believe them. Listen to the ones who didn't have a problem - there are loads of us out there. If you really really want to give up, you'll be reassured. I really didn't want to smoke anymore. I value increased taste and smell and being able to breathe easier. I don't suffer Reynaud's any longer - the tips of my fingers don't freeze - as my circulation is much better. I can travel for more than an hour without having to plan a cigarette break and I'm a safer driver. I'm not spending over a fiver a day on killing myself. It's the only hobby you can take up that from the moment you start, you're actively shortening your life. Don't listen to the idiots who say Auntie Edie lived to 98 on 40 Senior Service a day, remember the hordes of her contemporaries who never made it past 60 and who looked 60 when they were 40. That was a lonely 38 years with no friends.

Do it.

Burning Issue

2009-06-10T09:10:00.001Z

Beware of right-wing emigré Austrians advocating doing away with books

Fear and loathing in Crewe

2009-06-08T10:51:00.004Z

On Saturday a lot of old men stood on the beaches of Normandy and wept for their fallen comrades. 65 years earlier they'd stood on those same beaches after wading through sea stained red with the blood of their friends as part in the largest invasion force in the history of humanity in an effort to free the world from the hate and tyranny enshrined in the vision of one evil man. I walked into town today full of anger, looking at my fellow citizens wondering which of those evil bastards made those brave men's sacrifices worthless by electing two of the vilest and most contemptible of human beings conceivable into positions of responsibility. One of the founding principles of the European Union was that together we would not allow these parties ever to flourish again. Now we're electing them. I hold my head in shame as a member of the human race.

I'm not a jingoistic patriot but I love this country. I still honestly believe it to be one the best places on earth to live. We've done a lot of wrong in the past but we've also done a lot to try and put that right. It's not always worked. We constantly learn and we'll learn from the mess this government's currently in. But we're still free and allowed to speak, criticise, praise without duress and protest as free people regardless of our past crimes and misdemeanours. These are precious freedoms. There are very few countries on earth where you can do this. Cherish our freedoms while we still have them because if you continue to vote for these mindless hate spewing thugs, you will have few chances to in the future.

I apologise to all my black, brown, yellow and non-English speaking friends, you and your families still are and always will be welcome at my house.

Disorder, disorder!

2009-06-06T15:16:00.004Z

Quite the most amusing story to have emerged from the whole expenses farce was the one yesterday concerning Gerald Kaufman. Anne Widdecombe thought Michael Howard had "something of the night" about him; comparitively Kaufman is a full blown gothic novel complete with piercings and fake blood but apart from being slightly scared of him, I've got no particular axe to grind with him. He's a good and well-respected MP, has a fairly sound sense of humour and doesn't generally suffer people taking the piss with idiotic explanations. For instance, in committee, he was particularly withering towards the CE of the Royal Opera House regarding the perceived wastage during its refurbishment using Lottery money a decade or so ago, so much so that she resigned. He's been around a very long time and hasn't been a particular drain on the public purse, being one of the more frugal of MPs. He's on our side in other words.

Which is why I'm particularly suprised that he's explained the reasons for him having to buy a pair of Waterford crystal grapefruit bowls at £220 down to his self-diagnosed obsessive compulsive disorder. I done a LOL. Gerry, not interested. You have the same breakfast every day. I'm stunned. I do, too. Porridge. It's good for you. Slow release carbs, low GI (I think. Whatever GI is) and good for the heart. Except on Sundays when I blow it all by feeling compelled to have a gut-buster full English on my special big plate. My treat (not for the pigs, obviously). What's of rather more interest is why you thought it reasonable to claim expenses for something most of us would use our day to day income to purchase. If my special big plate were to get broken I would be expected to replace it out of my dole-scum allowance, I'm not allowed to put a claim in. If it were the only plate I had then I may be able to get a crisis loan but I'd have to pay it back straight away. Moreover, I lived for years with someone who had OCD, if all I'd had to contend with was the requirement for the same brekky every day I'd have been happy whereas it bloody near drove me to breakdown. Was needing a pen at £225 OCD as well?

I've had enough of expenses now. Job done, government broken, which is what the Barclay brothers wanted. All it's really proved is that most of them are greedy and totally devoid of morality, some more than others, and that most of them play a corrupt system to a degree and that they looked after themselves by manipulating the rules of this corrupt system in their favour. "It was within the rules" means nothing when you make the rules; Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot made their own rules, too. It's particularly vile that that most upstanding and moral of professions, journalists, of all people, are profiting from this story. I wonder how many are putting in inflated claims for sitting outside MP's second homes for hours on end waiting for another crappy sound-bite? Bearing in mind of course that these expenses are ultimately recouped in the price we pay for the consumables advertised in the newspapers and the TV stations the hacks work for, I think we should be told.

Vote

2009-06-04T11:05:00.004Z

As you know, I am currently unemployed. In fact, I think I'm probably unemployable unless I want to clean toilets. I'm of a certain age but due to "things" outside my sphere of control have been out of the employment loop for a while. It doesn't look good on a CV, however well I dress it up and potential employers aren't stupid. O levels instead of GCSEs (even if a C grade O was for 50% plus rather than 18% as it has been recently) and a leaving school date of 1979 really don't help. If an employer can't work out that I'm just nudging 50 then he or she is phenomenally stupid and yes, ageism does exist despite what they tell you down the jobcentre.

A while back I had an idea for a bit of business enterprise. The trouble is, because I'm broke I lack most of the resources needed to carry it out and as it won't yield a return for a while I'll need other means of support until it does. But it's a runner and with time and effort, should eventually provide a reasonable living. I've been trying to find out how I stand vis-vis benefits and government assistance should I decide to devote time to this enterprise, after all, it's the stated aim of our proud and supposedly competent prime minister that his government will pull out all the stops to get people back into work.

Our prime minister is unfortunately, as are most other politicians, arse-numbingly stupid. There are over two million people unemployed and only ever 4 jobs. There is no point in making my CV more attractive to an employer (part of the help available to me after 6 months of being unemployed), there are people out there infinitely more qualified than I who will walk into these jobs. Getting me to revise my CV satisfies the Jobcentre's targets. They're not even going to grant me a proper face-to-face interview on my 6-month anniversary of being unemployed in a fortnight, they are going to phone me. Wow, that really makes me feel fucking special (I'm really very sorry about the deterioration in my language. Swearing isn't big or clever. Not all the time, anyway). Let's be realistic, eh? Getting people into work means giving them the means to create jobs and supporting enterprise, however small-time. There is a scheme I could join - this is the government's support for enterprise, as explained to me by Simone at Crewe Jobcentre plus this morning: at the moment I get £60 a week JSA and can barely survive. After 6 months (and only after six months of being out of work) I can jack that and get - wait for it - £50 a week for 16 weeks while I try and start a business up. For her part, Simone understood my plight and tried to offer a grain of comfort. Well, she said, you only need to satisfy us that you've done three things each week to look for work. Look in the paper, speak to someone about a job, go on the internet, that'll do. What you do the rest of the time is up to you. Of course, if I get caught "doing my own thing" while claiming income support or whatever, I'll be on a hiding to nothing. Ho hum. This government really doesn't have the first idea.

On the other hand, please don't waste your vote today. Bear in mind it's proportional representation so if you're protesting, I'd rather have clueless than Nazi.

Things That Make Me Want To Yell

2009-05-28T10:23:00.004Z

No 2 in a series of indeterminate length

Teenage mothers with twins in double pushchairs who stand outside the entrance to ASDA, smoking and scream conversations down their mobiles at Andy

Obviously I have a headache or something, I am not in a particularly charitable mood and no, it has nothing to do with the football result. It's only a game. If only Piqué had been more charitable to his old club and allowed Park a bit more of a stab at the rebound then it may have been a different matter of course, but no it's nothing to do with the football.

No, I have never, since the advent of the mobile telephone, ever heard anyone conduct such a loud and one-sided conversation. She made Dom Joly sound like Bob Harris. Poor Andy. He hadn't done anything, this was just a yobette who loved the sound of her own voice and who wanted everyone to know her business. I didn't hang around to catch the gist, she was, as is these idiots' wont, standing at a pinch point on the pavement so I squeezed past, muttering remonstrations at a level that would have, save for the audio barrage, been quite audible.

I pity anyone called Andy living with strident mothers of twins.

Things That Make Me Want To Yell

2009-05-27T14:30:00.003Z

No 1 in a series of indeterminate length.

People who go to the library solely to fill in the crosswords in the newspapers.

Being dole scum, I can't afford a newspaper every day so sometimes I like to go to the library to have a quick read of one. Like today for instance, when I wanted to check what time the football kicks off this evening. I have invited myself round to Sharon's to watch it on her new telly - the one I tried to pick up for her yesterday but which Argos wouldn't let me walk off with because I wasn't her. It will be the only football match I've wanted to see all season, being as it is what us old people used to call the European Cup Final. I did wonder whether I could get through a whole season without watching a single game but there are exceptions. It will be Ryan Giggs' 7243rd game for Man Utd for a start and there are few more dignified players in the British game. He deserves another medal. I shall also be watching through my fingers every time Paul Scholes (his 5476th game - how many other clubs can boast players of this dedication, eh? Eh? Arsenal?) attempts to disguise a clumsy two-footed tackle on Lionel Messi. So, yes it's unmissable. Isn't it. I eventually found a newspaper not being selfishly scrawled over. The Guardian. First time I've looked at that all year as well.

As for the crossword hogs, I will be taking pictures of you and forwarding them to that nice Mr Griffin to use in his next set of brochures.

Missing link

2009-05-20T15:25:00.006Z

Palaeontologists have unearthed a 47 million year old fossil primate in Germany. They believe it to be a possible missing link in our evolution but perhaps one where the branch evolved no further.

I've got news for them, they did evolve, but not much. The bastards have been knocking on my door while I've been out, the cowards. If I catch one, I'll make sure it has no opportunity to evolve any further.

Some Nazi Scum

My two penn'orth*

2009-05-12T14:32:00.004Z

Gordo announces the formation of a "body" to look into the calamity surrounding members' expenses. Idiot. He needs Reg and Bill.

The phrase that I am finding particularly offensive when used by these disgraceful and increasingly indefensible and useless tossers is "It was all done within the rules/guidelines". No. Excuse my potty-mouth here, I don't do this very often so you'll have to forgive me as I am upset, who the fuck do you think you are trying to kid? You want us to elect you yet you're now crediting us with no intelligence whatsoever. We've all filed expenses claims at one time or another pal, we know the dodges. Most of our expenses weren't coming out of the public purse though. You therefore deserve all the opprobrium you're getting. Squirm, it's fun. What they really meant to say was "I've looked at the rules and this is what I think they let me get away with". What that actually means is "I really have no sort of conscience whatsoever, am completely devoid of altruism or a moral streak and despite the fact that as a minister I earn over £100,000 per year - that's £2000 per week, 33 times a week more than you, dole scum - I want some more. Where's the trough?" Even more offensive are the bastards bleating about whether any parliamentary rules have been broken by this story being published. What planet do you think we've just arrived from? I am not a violent man but I am wondering whether there is a form of violence that is theoretically defensible in law but would allow me to "legally" cause actual bodily harm to one or several of these oxygen thieves and get away with it.

Back in the very early 80s I worked with a young man called Tim who previously had worked in the office in the House of Commons responsible for paying expenses (The Fees Office). There was never any talk of abuse, so maybe this very public greed is a modern phenomenon. In fact the only observation I can ever remember him making was that whenever Ian Paisley turned up to collect his, he was very polite and there was a visible bulge under his jacket. Tim and I worked for an engineering company in Tottenham Court Road. If we ever had to do anything that incurred expenses, which in my case was quite often, we had to fill out a chit and take it up to Reg to be approved. Every company used to have a Reg, responsible for signing chits. Ours was Reg Austin. Underneath, Reg was actually a very decent chap. He was a cricket fanatic, something I managed to use in my favour a couple of times. His prime function though was to reduce grown men to quivering tearful wrecks. The first few times I ever went up to his office with a chit were fine. We discussed cricket and stuff and I thought I'd softened him up. No, it takes years to soften up a Reg. Reg was also in charge of pencils, rubbers (for the colonials, that's erasers. This was London, not Amsterdam) and Pentel leads (we had a very large drawing office). One day he wasn't in his office but his door was open so I waited. I waited until I could no longer wait so I helped myself from the cabinet. I wasn't thieving, I was going to leave a note on his desk. He came back in before I had a chance, my hand most definitely in the till - or so it seemed. I got the treatment, what they call at Manchester United when you've upset Sir Alex "the hairdryer". I felt like a 5 year-old being told off by his dad and to be honest, I was so upset that I don't know how I managed to keep it together. I hadn't done anything wrong, my intentions were honest and sound but I'd bent the rules to my own needs. Needless to say, I didn't do it again. The strange upshot was that my contrition earned Reg's respect and we were OK after that.

Bill, on the other hand, was even worse, Bill was a smiling assassin. If Andy's reading this, he'll know who I mean. I worked at the world's greatest tolled river crossing in Dartford for 6 years. Although most of the operators there were beyond reproach, it wasn't entirely unknown for the odd unscrupulous chancer to slip through the net and try one on. It was pointless. You knew something was up when you saw Bill walking around with a printout under his arm, grinning inanely and telling excruciatingly bad jokes. Next day, someone's house had been turned over by the Kent Constabulary and there was one less on the payroll. Although he'd never been an operator Bill had worked out the possible scams in advance. He didn't need to set traps, if you conformed to a set pattern, you were probably on the make. Catch him in the mess room in his zip up cardy and glasses and he was about as unassuming a cove as you could get but he was diamond-edged sharp and once he was on the scent there was no escape.

*I'm claiming this for the electricity used while posting this.

Truth

2009-05-06T10:53:00.002Z

A notebook of formulae thought to contain the original recipe for Dr. Pepper, the well known soft "drink" of United of States origin has been unearthed in Waco, Texas. Where else.

I have only ever drunk this stuff twice in my whole life. The first in 1980 from McDonalds in The Strand following a visit to the National Gallery while at art college. I thought there'd been some kind of mistake with the pipes. The second time was a couple of years ago. One sip was enough to convince me that I had been wrong in my initial assumption. It must be one of the vilest concoctions foist upon mankind.

An examination of the original recite is quite illuminating. There was a note attached:

"Doc, Billy's horse had an accident at the store but I think we've got something. I've been using this on my beans and they've really come on"

Ingredients:

Cabbage water - 50 gals
Mud - 5lbs
Old saddle. Must be at least 2 years old and well used
Molasses - 30lb
1 turnip.

Method:

Allow saddle to seep in cabbage water for one month. Remove. Add mud, molasses and turnip. Boil. Allow to cool. Strain. Serve. Use woman's side saddle for less potent version. (I think this is now the diet option).

A bit late but I'm sorry

2009-05-04T01:00:00.004Z

4th May 1979, one of "those" days. I was already well over 18 and was about to participate in history. I shot off on my extremely rural paper round at 6.30am (so? I had a burgeoning beer and fag habit to sustain. £2.40 a week off Norman saw to that) and on the way back, at just gone 7, I stopped in at the polling station, a pair of wooden booths erected on Des' farm shop front lawn to exercise my democratic right for the very first time. I was one of the first voters on that pleasant Thursday morning. I'm sorry, I did all I could.

My constituency was Ashford, Kent. Solidly Conservative, with one of the biggest majorities in the country so, with the best will in the world, my efforts were going to be completely in vain. The incumbent MP was Keith Speed, his predecessor Bill Deeds(h); "Dear" Bill. How apt. (The current representative - and I wonder why it never gets mentioned in the national press because he's hardly been out of it for the past 6 months - is Damian Green. Watch that space, it could be interesting as Ashford's largest minority by a long way, is Gurkha and Damian Green is the Tory immigration spokesman and Ashford, on the whole, loves the Gurkhas).

I'm digressing. You will of course have guessed by now that I'm referring to the darkest day in the recent history of this fair land; the day Margaret Hilda Thatcher began ruining it. There was, of course, a certain frisson of excitement about that day: we were almost certainly going to get a woman Prime Minister. We weren't going to be the first, Mrs Bandaranaika, Indira Gandhi and Golda Meir, among others, had already been there and done it so the only novelty factor was that she was British - a "Superpower" leader. Blimey, what fun.

I heard some woman on Friday's Jezza Vine show on Radio 2 say that she was a hero, that she encouraged a work ethic so people could better themselves. No. You brain dead harpie, you must have been living on a different planet. She encouraged lazy bastards to make money by giving them shares in things they already owned, which they then flogged ASAP. No work involved except putting something in an envelope. The hardest work some people have had to do as a result of that bitch being in power is to decide which champagne bar they were going to visit and then call the wrecker out after they'd smashed the Porsche up running into a group of proles waiting for a bus along the A13. Somebody else on the programme even had the audacity to say that greed really was good, that it drove the economy forward. No. It produces a society of selfish creeps for whom the pursuit of wealth is the be all and end all. It glorifies peer pressure among children. God help your kids if you haven't got plenty of money. Her legacy is vile and this pathetic government has just carried it on. The sooner the evil woman is 6 foot under the better. I will be the first to dance on her grave.

Coda.
When folk mention what they mistakenly think are positive things to say about Thatcher they ought perhaps to bear the following in mind: incredibly stupid people who really shouldn't be allowed out to breathe the same air as thinking people invariably say the following about Hitler: "Say what you like about him, he built the motorways and made the trains run on time." The reason he did those things was in order to move the army and SS around more efficiently so he could indulge his hobbies; death, weapons production and genocide, those kind of things. Think PFI. Plenty of material there to be going with I think.

Morons

2009-04-29T11:02:00.003Z

This morning I received a CCJ. That's a County Court Judgement, if you've always had enough to get by on and been lucky enough to have never been made redundant or been landed with any other uninvited crap, like illness, to deal with. I've been in negotiation with a creditor about how I can repay a debt, you see. However, instead of actually deigning to answer any of my letters (or actually providing an address to which letters could be sent - I had to research it) or employ a fluent English speaker with the necessary authority to make decisions, they just passed the account on to solicitors who then issued the CCJ. The solicitors didn't even bother to answer the letter I sent them either. Oh, they cashed the small cheque I included but didn't answer the bloody letter. How incredibly rude. No wonder this country is ruined when common courtesies such as acknowledgements go straight by the board. I will stop this bit before I get dangerously Daily Mail. This was the letter in which I told them how much I could currently afford a month, which wasn't a lot, but was better than nothing.* So instead of trying to work something out to the benefit of everybody I'm now expected to pay £125 per month for 4 months. Pardon me for being cynical but if I could afford £125 per month to pay off a creditor, I wouldn't be in debt. My income as unemployed is £60 per week, paid fortnightly. The words to describe the sheer blind incompetence of these knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers haven't yet been coined. Maybe some of you could do me the honour.

*This was also the letter in which I, perhaps rather disingenuously, compared solicitors to bankers. Damn.

How much?

2009-04-23T11:05:00.006Z

I must admit, I didn't take much notice of the budget. I'm unemployed, it will affect me whether I like it or not and the government's statement that they really want to help the unemployed are weasel words, just empty promises and a decent sound-bite. They haven't got a clue. Not to put too fine a point on it, they shit on the unemployed and the civil servants paid to do their dirty work are the fundaments through which that shit passes. Got that out of the way.

Now, one thing I do remember from yesterday is that the government will now find 2 grand for you for your ten-year-old car if you can afford a new one. No. I do not want to buy a new one. It means energy and resources will be used to create something I don't need yet. It's more economically and environmentally sound to keep my old one in good order. However, today is the day my car insurance is renewed (I knew 23rd April was relevant). Will my premium go up now that my ten year old Rover 600 is now valued at £2000 instead of £500? I have a feeling that for the next couple of years this stunning piece of forward thinking will stimulate the market in 10 year-old cars and nothing else. What talent we have in government.

It was also reported yesterday that prices fell overall and are expected to do so again next months. No more inflation, it's deflation. Apparently this is a bad thing. Again, I can't understand this. I thought levelling inflation was the holy bloody grail of economic policy but strike me down if I haven't got that one wrong as well. I'm not allowed to understand this because I'm just a numpty who left school at 18 and has been struggling for the past 30 years without letters after my name. Surely if things are coming down in price, we will be able to afford them. Not crap that we don't need like Sky boxes, new cars and Wiis but essential items such as nourishing food, decent and well made furniture so we can sit on and around it eating the nourishing food and be families again, public transport, that sort of stuff. If we can afford this stuff it will stimulate the economy and give us some dignity back. Maybe it will even make our remaining manufactured goods competitive again and produce proper jobs as a result. But no, I haven't thought it through deeply enough. I've not produced any earth-shatteringly trite jargon. I'm not an economist or a politician. I'm just broke and wondering how to spend the little money I have wisely. Come on Gordon, gissa job.

Goat Food

Cheese shop

In which I get a bit uppity.

This call may be recorded

This Charming Man.

Football theory.

Silly count.

TL;DR

Sickening, isn't it.

Smiling As The Shit Comes Down*

It Mek

I came here for something...

How Your Government Works

Happy Birthday to me...

Who needs Jeremy Kyle?

Gabba Gabba Hey.

Radio Gold.

Going Postal. Again.

World Gone Mad Pt 94

On Stereotyping

A Mug's Game

Something for the ladies

Cuts - Extra Pressure on Charities

Wild in the Country

Big Leggy

Members Only

Look you...

Constituent parts

It's all about me me me...

Election script briefly torn up, PM runs off with ball shock...

The Crewe Hoard

In which I refuse to join the mass debate.

On being rude in ASDA

Number Crunching

I might have this wrong but...

A complete idiot's guide to the election. Part 1 of an occasional series.

And there's more...

Did you have to go so soon?

Is that really Vince Cable?

Knee Jerks

On the pain of being a moderator

Thanks for coming in...

All in day's work

Not waving...

On being taken for a ride

*insert Biblical reference to throwing first stone here*

How much?

Just a thought...

Green Day

Review of the Year.

In a very real sense...

What it's like being old and DoleScum.

My tooth. The End.

Fog Index

Lazy Blogging (pt...)

Tickled

Solved

A life's a life...

Grab it While Stocks Last.

On finding out your best friend's a Draclia

Right time, wrong place.

Lazy Blogging

Prize guy

Hey, mum, it's the...

*Insert your own title here*

Saintly

Gratefully Dead.

Gipsy tart makes you fart

And the moral is...

Wit and wisdom.

Rant

Can you spare me 5 minutes of your time?

In which cricket causes me to re-evaluate some things

World of Rupe

I become a laughing stock

Childish

Contrast

I am confused

Yabba dabba don't

Going Postal. Again.

insert Biblical reference to throwing first stone here

Insert your own title here