New lumps for old

Sunday mornings I usually spend, lying in, perhaps reading a little or going for a walk in the car. Sunday afternoon I spend cooking the dinner for my Daughter and the kids (well it gives her a well-earned rest) This Sunday would have been no different had she not decided to clear some rubbish from her bedroom wardrobes.

She is a very active type of girl, despite having three children and the house to look after she is an avid gym devotee. She attends three times a week to work out and twice a week to attend Kick boxing classes. I knew she was pretty good at it, but didn’t realise how good until one day when we were out and about we came across a group of five girls and one boy all about sixteen years old assaulting a younger girl whom My Daughter knew. They were really laying in to her, kicking and punching her as she lay on the ground.

My Daughter shouted at me to stop the car, which I did but even before we had come to a stop she was out of the door and amongst the group telling them to stop. They threw some profanities at her but carried on, this turned out to be a big mistake on their part, I didn’t know she could move so fast, head buts, punches, elbow digs, spinning heel kicks, they were treated to the full catalogue of oriental pugilism.

In a very short time those that hadn’t managed to escape, (including the lad who had been kicking the young girl in the head) were crawling around on the floor moaning and looking for ears and teeth. We took the distraught girl home and were told by her parents that the bullying had been going on for some time, but this episode had been by far the worse, the reason apparently was that she was pretty and therefore different. You will be glad to learn that the young girl encouraged by my daughter attends kick boxing classes now and can more than hold her own, her confidence has grown and she does well at school.

My Daughter has a punch bag of some considerable size in the garden shed, which she kicks and punches with great force and just watching her makes me wince. So you can imagine my surprise when this Sunday morning she phoned me not quite in tears but certainly very upset with a request to take her to the hospital. As I said before she had been clearing out her wardrobes, which have sliding doors and are very heavy. One of them had slid too far, come off its rail and landed on her foot breaking three toes. She was in a great deal of pain and her foot had swollen and turned blue. We were at the hospital a couple of hours whilst she had it x rayed and strapped up. I said I would try and get her some steel toe capped slippers, but she wasn’t amused.

Crazy times

Where ever you go in the world the accepted rule of thumb is "When in Rome do as the Romans do" its a safe policy to adopt, keeps you out of trouble and mischief, and more often than not its an attitude that will be appreciated by the locals. In some countries not abiding by this rule can get you a lengthy jail sentence, and even a death sentence if you transgress.

In some of the hotter spots on this planet having a heavy night on the beer (home made of course) or perhaps offending a female in a way that would maybe get you a broken nose in good old blighty, can if you are particularly unlucky, mean that you would find yourself in some dusty market place, on your knees wearing a blindfold waiting for the sword to fall.

The only country I can think of where this does not apply is the United Kingdom, where if you so wish you can actually change local bylaws and even judicial law just by being offended. This type of behaviour is made possible by the lack of social and moral courage that exists at every level of local and national government.

Over the last few years political correctness has seeped down into our education system which has allowed all be it minor cultural changes. Such classics as "Bah Bah rainbow sheep" the introduction of the white board (which incidentally I find offensive, Who do I sue) and the very sensible decision to withdraw the nit nurse from circulation, which of course has resulted in the infestation of virtually every infant and junior school kid. I don’t know about you but I am sick and tired of our governments continual pandering to minorities at the expense of the indigenous population.

This country welcomes with open arms, and a level of help not seen anywhere else people from all over the world. Great Britain is a heaven for the oppressed and down trodden, who flee poverty, corruption and torture to settle in ghettos of their own making and collectively take the piss. If you’re going to cover your face, then cover it all. If you feel you have to wear the veil, wear it at all times, never take it of, never compromise because this is your religion, unless of course you are sitting an interview for a teaching job and it might hamper your chances of success.

The not so damp squid

I saw an old schoolmate the other day, apart from ageing forty years he didn’t look any different. He still had his usual hang dog look, he still licked his comb before flicking his lank blonde hair back, although he was now flicking it from nearer the middle of his head than he used to. Nothing much was said, we just exchanged a few embarrassed pleasantries then went our respective ways.

I'm almost sure the jacket he was wearing was the same one he had at school, buttons missing, sleeve stitched from the outside, school dinner down the front, it even had a dark area on the breast pocket where the school badge would have been. He was so tight that he would buy ten cigarettes then put each fag in its own packet, so he could get them out and not have to pass them round, "sorry lads, last one" he did that ten times a day and thought we wouldn’t catch on. I wonder if he still does it now.

We had many a laugh at his expense, like the time we dared him to put a banger (Explosive firework Maddy) in a still warm and steaming dog turd, we were spending our afternoon dinner break on the old army camp just across from school. He took the bait, to be honest I don’t know how he could get that close to it and not heave, the smell was atrocious. The banger was called "The Colossus" it was big in every way, it looked like a stick of dynamite, and sounded like one too when it exploded.

Our hero made a big show of inserting the banger into the unsuspecting turd, making sure that it was completely covered apart from the fuse. He did this almost lovingly, I suppose it was the showman in him coming out, this was to be a spectacle worthy of the two and six (that’s 12p in new money) he had spent on the colossus banger. We watched from a safe distance smoking the fags that had dropped from his pocket when he took out the banger. He had his back to us and was hunched over the turd making his preparations, presently there was a wisp of blue smoke, and he unhunched himself and scuttled over to where we were. We all waited with bated breath, but nothing happened, "Damp squid, Damp squid" we taunted him. The banger was a dud. Determined that he wouldn’t be done out of his money, he advanced on the turd, which now sported several flies, all of whom were oblivious to the imminent danger they were in.

What happened next was another of those slow motion scenes, imagine it. Our hero lights another match and slowly brings it nearer to the fuse. Cut to friends looking horrified and screaming but no sound comes from their mouths. Cut back to close up of hero looking puzzled, cut to the fuse which spits a spark out of the end, cut back to hero's face contorted with the realisation that he has made a major mistake, cut to flies going into warp drive. Then cue sound and BANG, that turd was spread across two counties, but most of it peppered our hero in smelly, sticky, slightly burnt orange shit. His hair was blown out from his head in Einstein fashion, his eyebrows had disappeared, his nose was burnt, and the poor bugger couldn’t catch his breath. He kept blowing out his cheeks in an effort to breath, all of this gave him the appearance of Orville the duck, add to that the crazy dance he was doing, it was a bizarre sight.

We couldn’t stop laughing, we were in pain with laughter, and we laughed even harder when he came out of shock and started barfing from the stench. Things got worse for him when in desperation he threw himself in the little stream that ran through the camp in an effort to rid himself of the shit. Someone had dumped engine oil in the stream, it covered the bank where he jumped in and rolled around. Now instead of looking like Orville the duck he had transformed himself into one of the black and white minstrels. This was the one and only time I have ever relieved myself in my pants, I was ill with laughing, gasping for breath and making sucking sounds, I thought I would die.

It was impossible to go back to school. We followed (At a safe distance) our hapless friend home and watched, with not a little shame as he slowly cleaned himself up in the kitchen sink and tried to make some sense of his wild hair that refused to do as it was told. For many years after that day, those events would pop into my head for no reason and I would laugh out loud, and seeing him again brought it all back.

What's my motivation?

Well I finally got the rabbit suit, tried it on and to be honest felt a bit of a dick. But I'm game for anything and I feel sure that with a few drinks inside me and the company of my little tease Maddy I will soon lose my inhibitions and get into the swing of things.

Can't remember what it is she is supposed to be wearing but whatever it is she will look great, she can wear anything that girl and look good. I'm always a little reticent about this dressing up business, well wouldn’t you be? Somehow it always turns out ok.

Like the nuclear fallout suits with matching helmets and oxygen tanks. I couldn’t quite get my head round that one, but sure enough within a short time she brought me up to speed. The helmets came in handy, people can’t see your face, which makes it easier to perform and less embarrassing that way. Come to think of it the oxygen did too, wouldn’t have seen the end of the night without a couple of gobfulls of that stuff. I wonder sometimes if our relationship would have lasted if we had stuck to camping and fishing, probably not, it was floundering anyway and was badly in need of a good spicing up. I suppose lots of couples suffer from boredom at one time or another. Well if your relationship has lost its excitement and sparkle, do as we did and join your local amateur dramatic society.

Because I can

I'm often asked why I got into the Lollipop man game, is it the uniform? No, is it the bright (traffic) lights? No, though they can be a help. Is it the glamour? Again no. All of these things can be a pull for some people, but for me its actually the power that waving a bloody great Day-Glo lollipop around gives you.

Not for me waiting until a reasonably sized group of Mothers and children wish to cross that most dangerous of places the school crossing. Oh no, I will jump out in front of unsuspecting motorists and stop them in their tracks if I even suspect that someone on the other side of the road wants to cross, I mean, why stop traffic twice when you can stop it twenty times. And nothing gives you the feeling of absolute control when having stopped the poor buggers, probably for the umpteenth time on their journey to work. Than to stand there proud and tall in the middle of the road chatting to the mums and sneering at the drivers as you pat kiddies on the head.

Yes its a great life being an arsehole, but I have to say that the real reason I donned the yellow hat is because it gives me a distinct advantage with the ladies. You would be amazed how many unmarried Mums there are out there, single ladies who don’t have a man in their lives and rarely if ever get to meet any due to a lack of any kind of social life. They make the school trip twice a day and the only excitement they get is dressed in bright yellow and orange and has a huge great lollipop in his hand. As I said before, the uniform and the glamour mean nothing to me, but they are a beacon to my ladies. The expression moths to a flame springs to mind.

Being the object of adoration is a big Responsibility, which I don’t take lightly, nor do any of us lollipop people. We are nationwide; we are on a corner near you.

Igor to please

Gilbert is a nice lad, but unlucky in everything, its as though he is cursed, maybe he is. I know this; Gilbert is the person everybody is glad their not. He is about my age but looks to have suffered, he is the only person I can think of with natural two-tone hair, and the tones don’t match.

He has one eye higher than the other, and the eyebrow over that eye is the wrong way round, giving him a permanently surprised look. His ears stick out and are a deep shade of red, which gives them the appearance of being cold, even in summer.

Accidents are a common occurrence with Gilbert, none are ever of the drastic kind, but they all seem in some way to affect his life. Like the time he was in a rush to get ready one day and mistook the Preparation H tube for the toothpaste tube, his gums shrank and most of his teeth fell out.

He walks with a strange gait, as though he was hiding something under his jumper and is forever looking over his shoulder. I suppose the icing on the cake would be a hump, but he stops short of that, all of this makes him a target for the police who stop him several times a day. Gilbert takes all this in his stride, which is also odd as his left leg travels further than his right.

I’m sure by now you have a mental image of this splendid man, and I’ll bet you are feeling more than a little sad for him. But don’t, he has been married three times, and all of his wives were gorgeous. His current girlfriend is an absolute stunner, so what has the guy got? Well, he isn’t rich I know that.

The stealth woodpecker

Some very odd people live near me as you will have gathered if you have read any of my other posts, There is one chap who keeps odd hours, he disappears on his bicycle for long periods of time and is always fastening bits of wood together with nails.

He has been doing this for years yet his back garden is empty of anything home made apart from a garden shed which is little more than a frame with a roof, a door but no sides, for some reason he still feels the need to lock it. I know for a fact his wife wouldn’t allow his D.I.Y. in the house, he must be the only person who has ever had an A.S.B.O. served on him for cocking up home repairs. Having said that I can’t remember the last time I saw his wife. It was some years ago, but she must still be around because her knickers can still be seen hanging on the washing line, I'm assuming they are hers otherwise they can only be....nah doesn't bear thinking about.

He wears a flat cap and bicycle clips all the time, I don’t think I have ever seen him without them. He even wears them when he takes the dog lead for a walk late at night, the dog died some years ago but he cant seem to get out of the habit of going for his evening constitutional.

Once he was sacked from his night job, he didn’t tell his wife but carried on leaving for work as though nothing had happened. This only lasted a few weeks of course, he was soon found out when the money stopped. My son told me he saw him in a karaoke club in town one night when this was going on, large as life on stage wailing his head of and yes he had his cap and bicycle clips on.

To my left used to live a family I could have sworn were cobblers, morning, noon and night all that could be heard was the sound of tapping, it accompanied my meals, I could hear it over my TV, it kept me awake at night. I talked to them several times about it but they denied all knowledge. You can imagine my relief when they upped sticks and left, the house was empty for a few months, during which time there was complete silence, then a thin chap who looked like he should be carrying a scythe and wearing a hood moved in and the tapping started again.

I couldn’t believe it was happening again, I thought he had to be a relative of the former tenants carrying on the family business. He, like them denied all knowledge, but said he would keep an ear out for the noise. I suppose I should be glad the culprit turned out to be a woodpecker in the loft, and I am not after all going mad, but I feel rather too silly to celebrate.

To run or not to run

I am still seriously thinking about this healthy lifestyle business, I am actually very good at the thinking part, its just that despite my best efforts I cant seem to find a working plan that doesn't give pie's and beer a body swerve. Perhaps I am aiming to high; it might be more realistic to go for a modest plan to begin with. Start small work my way up to big, I think that should be the other way round, but you get my drift.

I had a friend who did it that way; he changed his eating and exercise habits with a five-year plan. He was a little older than I am so he made sure his transition was gradual. He cut out all the bad stuff, cigs, alcohol, and fatty foods, he exercised for twenty minutes every day. In short he looked after his body and I have to admit that as he lay in his coffin in his mother’s front room, he looked more alive and dynamic than at any other point in his life.

The last time I got it into my head to become Mr Universe, I really did go for it, it meant a strict diet, and two hours exercise every day, no alcohol. I even got myself a home gym, and if I am honest I did enjoy all the jumping around, I even started to wear white T-shirts. It didn’t last, it never does, one of the problems was that whenever I met someone whom I hadn’t seen for a while, they would look at me in horror and advise me to get to a doctor quick. Weather that was just jealousy on their part or a real concern for my health, I'm not sure. In any case it didn’t last, and soon I was back to my Johnny Vegas ways.

As a young man I was very fit, I used to run everywhere, even when I ventured into town, I would run a lamp walk a lamp, then run continuously until about a mile from my destination, and I wouldn’t even break out in a sweat. These days just thinking about running and I am wet through.

I will do it, I’m positive I will, I just need a run at it.

Global bollocks

We live in a selfish world and despite what people would have you believe there is no such thing as the common good. Even the expression common good is self-contradictory. If you take what we call civilisation at face value then its very easy to fool yourself that somehow right will triumph over wrong, however dig a little deeper and very soon the truth will dawn.

The planet is infested with lieing, cheating, murdering, selfish human beings. Its always been so, and I fear always will be so, future generations of human kind will have to look out for themselves. We can't help them, we can't advise them, nobody learns from history, they never have. We are millions, and millions of sheep all doing as we are told by a few select sheep who have the insight to see the potential of being the shepherd.

Global warming is a term we hear all the time now, we have injured the earth to the point of major change and if we don’t act now to rectify this malady future generations will suffer because of the indiscriminate vandalism we inflict on nature. My point here is that for the best part of my life I have tried to be unselfish, I have tried to do the right thing by others, but there comes a time when this kind of behaviour wears a bit thin and for me that time has come.

In short I don't give a fuck about global warming, I couldn’t care less that people who come after me will have to endure temperature that could cook a Sunday dinner, or that they will live in barren landscapes reminiscent of the Land that time forgot. It’s a natural progression of human evolution and history. In the past people have had to put up with Genghis Khan, and later Hitler. We had to put up or shut up with Maggie Thatcher, so they will have to put up with skin cancer, living on a burnt out planet with no air, and the anarchy that all that will bring.

I think its a fair swap, and anyway the ceaseless hammering they will receive from a sun no longer filtered by a long gone atmosphere will turn everyone black, you don’t get a more level playing field than that, think of it, racism will no longer be an issue.

So I say car drivers of the world unite, say no to higher fuel prices, say no to higher aviation tax, and say yes to global warming....You know it makes sense.

Guy sucks

Well here we are in October and its very nearly Guy Fawkes night again, I think it must be because everywhere you go in the area that I live in, people are being accosted by groups of kids demanding a penny for the guy. By penny they mean three to five quid and by Guy they mean beer and fags. That and the fact that fireworks have been going off morning, noon and night is a sure sign that very soon people will be phoning the fire brigade to please come and put their cars out. Or at the very least having to visit motor factors to buy the overpriced body repair kit that will enable them to smooth out the bumps in the roof of cars that have had rockets land on them.

These days rockets are not the small things we used to buy as kids that went whoosh and then dissapered in a shower of sparks, no, no, these days rockets are huge great big things that even N.A.S.A. would be proud of. I wouldn’t mind kids asking for a penny for the guy if they had made some kind of effort, but usually what they call a guy is a just black plastic bag shoved under their arm.

When my brother and I were kids we used to get an old pair of overhauls from my Dad, sew the ends of the arms and legs up, then stuff them with newspaper. The same went for a pair of gloves that were pinned to the sleeves and likewise a pair of socks stuffed to the shape of feet and pinned to the legs. The head was usually made from an old cushion with a grisly mask attached and one year my Mum even made a chimney pot hat with a wide brim for Mr Fawkes. The last few days before the 5th we were allowed to stand outside Webs newsagents opposite the Lake Hotel for a couple of hours after tea and beseech passers bye for a penny for the guy, which really meant a penny.

Sometimes we got lucky and were given a threepenny bit. The best time was always a Friday night when people would be coming home from work with their wages, they were always more generous then and once a sixpence was thrown into our moneybox. Our Dad would come to pick us up and take us home, where we would add the coppers to the money we had collected the night before. Those last few days before bonfire night were a time of mounting excitement, because the more money we collected the better was our fireworks display. Dad would always put on a grim face and tell us that he couldn’t afford to buy fireworks that year. But we knew that on the day we went to Webs newsagents to buy them with the money we had collected, Dad would pay for a big box he had ordered weeks before.

There not fireworks anymore, its just semtex in a brightly coloured box, cheap imports from Asia have killed firework manufacturers in the UK, and now they are just explosives with names like snow storm, and vesuvious. It’s a strange world where if you do throw these beggars a few quid for the minuscule effort they have put into the black plastic bag that masquerades as a guy. They will (if they don’t spend your cash on Lager and cigarettes) torment you for weeks before, and weeks after bonfire night. And all paid for by your effort.

Ah well

For just a short time after she has left, the scent of a woman stays with you. It’s on your clothes, your hands, even in your hair. If her scent is still with you after years of her passing, surely you have loved.

No 1 Dad

I know a little boy who drew a picture for his mum; it was the kind of picture that kids everywhere draw, with crayons and coloured paper. In the picture there was a match stick lady with lots of curly hair and a big smile. On her right was a little figure with a sword in its hand, and to the left of her was another larger figure, this figure had no features and no legs, but had very big hands. The little boys Mum asked him who they were, he thought for a moment, then next to the curly smiley lady he wrote the word Mummy in big letters.

Then he pointed to the little figure with the sword and said, "that's me when I grow up". The Mum pointed to the figure with no legs or face and said, "are those clouds" The little boy scribbled on his drawing obliterating the legless, faceless figure and said, "No that used to be my Dad".

I wonder why we all have to learn from our own mistakes, why cant we learn from other peoples mistakes, that way we would be one jump ahead of everyone else. My Dad always used to tell me that, he was right too, a lesson well learned is of no use to anyone if the mistake that forged that lesson was an important but negative life changer. Then its too late, people get lost along the way, they become strangers, part of another time that you can never return to. It happened to my eldest son, and now I see it happening to my youngest son, and there is nothing I can do about it because they don't listen, they seem intent on learning by their own mistakes and creating pain where none need be.

I ask myself is it the way they were brought up? Did I do something wrong? The thing is, the son I had from my first marriage made exactly the same mistakes, and I wasn't there to advise him, so it couldn't have been my fault.

Lethal chocolate

I took my Daughter to the local shop the other night; we were late putting the lottery on. I parked outside and settled back to listen to a tape I had just bought whilst she went inside to chew the fat with one of the assistants she knows and perhaps do a little shopping if she remembered. There was a group of youths loitering outside, trying to get anyone who was going in the shop to buy beer and fags for them.

One of the youths who was leaning on a public waste bin had a brown bag in his hand, he took the contents (a white bag) out and dropped the brown bag on the floor, then started to eat what looked like a sandwich from the white bag. He then took the sandwich out of the white bag and dropped that on the floor, he mustn't have liked the bread because he took the contents of the sandwich, stuffed it in his mouth and dropped the bread on the floor. So now we have a brown bag, a white bag and two rounds of bread on the floor all within inches of a public waste bin.

I got out of the car and approached the youth, "excuse me, would you mind picking your rubbish up and putting it in the bin" I was polite "that's what its there for". He looked at me scornfully and said, "huh what's it got a do wiv yoo mate" I held my temper. "Do you work" I asked him, "nah, work is fer losers inn it". I held my temper "well I do, I get taxed on my wages and that goes toward paying for the street cleaners that have to pick your shit up of the floor, So save me some money and pick your litter up". He sniggered and walked away from me leaving his shit exactly where he had dropped it. I kept my temper again, "pick it up and put it in the bin now, or I will pick you up and put you in the bin"

His friends were watching all this with interest, one of them, a girl shouted, "bull im out Sasha". Sasha, for that was surely his name slapped his fingers and said "you is pickin on me cos I is black". I kept my temper yet again but put my face very close to his and said " I is pickin on you cos you is a iggorant selfish scruffy bastard, now pick your shit up and put it in the bin"

His mates were watching and he had come too far now to back down, he made a kind of lurch towards me and at the same time took something out of his pocket that was long and glinted in the light from the street lamp. I lost my temper and placed my forehead on the bridge of his nose at very great speed, Sasha was no longer a threat, he lay among the rubbish he had dropped earlier with a busted conk and goodly amounts of blood pouring from it. His friends had dissapered smartish, leaving him with just the curly whirly he had very foolishly tried to stab me with.

Money for nothing and your chicks for free

I had a cap doffed at me today by a workman; I haven't seen this type of courtesy for some time. He wasn't an old chap either, quite young in fact. I was so impressed by this that when he was leaving I gave him a tip.
On reflection perhaps that's why he doffed, but it does prove one thing, and that is that just a simple thing like common courtesy gets results from people. It certainly did from me. I don't know how many deliveries he made today, but I am sure that if he doffs to everyone he delivers to, the law of averages dictates that a goodly percentage of customers will tip.
After all he does lump huge great washing machines and fridges around, hard work by any standard and well worth a tip to a helping and friendly workman. At this rate his cap will soon be paid for and he will be into the profit margin.