Pass me the rope

Well Christmas has come and gone again, and every year its more and more like sex, a mad excited rush towards an anticlimax that never quite delivers what it promises. However unlike last year I wasn’t sat warming myself on a candle and eating gruel. I actually enjoyed myself, I went round to friends for Christmas dinner, stuffed myself then had a drink or two. Just the New Year to get over and then…….nothing. Nothing at all for months, I have plans though and a great deal of work to do before I can relax and, well never mind.

I read somewhere that the months of January and February have the highest rates for suicides, I can see why, it’s a boring and bleak time of the year. Suicide isn’t for me though, I tried it once and damn near killed myself. Its also the most likely time to get kicked to the kerb, blown out, given the elbow or politely asked to piss off. Been there too but being dumped is an all year round thing for me.

I suppose what comes round goes round, we reap what we sow as they say, despite my expertise in being persona non grata it didn’t help me advise a friend of mine who over the holiday was given his marching orders from his girlfriend. Poor chap was gutted, he took the love of his life to a party and left alone, apparently she saw Johnny Handsome there and that was it. Made her mind up there and then that he was the one for her.

She disappeared for most of the night and when she eventually turned up it was just to tell her ex that he was an ex, they even drove of in his car, poor bugger had to walk home, it wasn’t far but still, talk about neck. I told him all the things he wanted to hear despite wanting to tell him what I thought about her, but what’s the point, he wasn’t really listening, just waiting for a pause so he could get another whinge in. He saw a decent amount of my gin off too so it wasn’t long before I was getting his life story. It’s a sad fact that as beautiful as some women are they can be so disappointing, sugar and spice and all things nice my arse.

There is the right way to do things and the wrong way, and I have to say Tracy Lambford, you are an arsehole. By the way, should Johnny Handsome object to that last statement, he can at any time discuss it with me, It shouldn’t take long.

Boys will be boys

My comrade in arms and I crawled slowly and silently up the hill to the ridge where we could get a better view of the enemy enforcement’s and decide our battle plan. What we saw when we got there chilled us to the bone, ten thousand or more were massed in the valley below and more reinforcements were coming in from the east.

I looked across at my comrade and saw fear in his eyes. He swallowed and pulled his gun closer to him, "what are we gonna do" he said his voice wavering. Do! do! We are gonna charge them solder that's what we are gonna do. "But we are outnumbered sarg, we don't stand a chance". "Element of surprise" I said "works every time" he was right we didn't stand a chance, But British soldier's are the best soldier's in the world and I knew we were more than a match for a couple of thousand baddies. In any case we would take as many as we could with us. "How much ammo you got left" I growled at him. “A hundred bullicks and my knife” he replied trying not to look scared.

Bullicks were what my brother and I called bullets, well we were only eight and six years old at the time and playing a game we played every time we visited our Grandmothers house. A patch of waste ground just around the corner from where she lived served as our battlefield and usually guns made from wood were our weapons of choice.

This particular week it had been my birthday and my present was a Canadian mounted policeman’s gun, it had a lanyard that connected it to the holster so it couldn’t be lost or easily taken from me by baddies. To stop my brother from crying she had bought him a rubber knife. I was rather enamoured with the knife and proposed a swap with the gun to my brother who immediately snatched it from my hand and nearly pulled me over (Remember the lanyard) it was my turn to cry. The result of this confusion was that my Mother bought us both a Mountie gun and a knife each. Thus we were armed to the teeth for our latest war game.

Before going over the top as they do in all good war films, we lobbed a couple of pretend grenades (stones) in the direction of the enemy then jumped up guns in hand howling our war cries and firing as we ran. We must have looked a frightening sight especially as my Brother had his knife between his teeth pirate style, however it wasn’t enough to scare the four bigger boys on the other side of the hill whom we hadn’t seen when we first reconnoitred the area.

One of the boys had a small patch of blood over his eye where one of our pretend grenades had hit him, he held the offending stone in his hand and for a moment I thought it was going to be returned to me at speed.
The enemy advanced toward us enquiring in a menacing way as to who had thrown the stone, I did the only thing I could, pointed at my Brother and said “it was im” He looked at me in that Judas sort of fashion but directed his reply at the baddies. “So what you gonna do about it”.

My heart sank, they were bigger than we were, there were more of them and at that time I was going through my coward period. I desperately tried to think of something to placate the awoken tiger but before I could my Brother shouted “charfff” (remember he had the knife in his mouth) and ran up to the biggest boy firing as he ran. The sound of the gun caps going of which whilst we were playing had sounded like real gunfire to me, now sounded rather thin and inadequate. Not so my Brother who fleet of foot, holstered his empty gun, retrieved the knife from his mouth and still running plunged the rubber blade into the belly of the big boy.

This had the effect of knocking him flat on his back; the other boys completely surprised by this show of ferocity fled leaving their stricken comrade to his fate. He genuinely thought he had been knifed because clutching his belly he scattered backward on all fours and made good his escape. I managed to recover my composure thankful that the baddies had not managed to exact any retribution for the thrown stone and looking at my brother said “well done soldier, you passed the test, from now on you are promoted to commando”

He smiled and said “Just doing my job Sir, you would have done the same for me”. He was a kind thoughtful boy, and now he is a kind thoughtful man.

Thinking of you.

Across the sea live two little girls, with beautiful smiley faces and curly whirly hair, which curls first one way, then the other. I hope that Santa brings them everything they wished for. Merry Christmas A and C.

Waiting.

Why is it that whenever I pass my local hairdresser’s shop he is always sat in his chair reading the paper and having a fag, Yet if I decide to call for a haircut the place is rammed with grey haired old men asking for the George Clooney look. Not that he can do it, he can’t, I know, I asked.

It’s the same whenever I want to fill the car up, I could pass any number of empty forecourts but the one I turn into out in the middle of nowhere is choc a block with cars.
You can lump Doctors surgeries and supermarkets in this list too. I have tried going at alternative times just in case but its always the same, I hate waiting, I have patience, tons of it, but unnecessary waiting is different.

Which brings me to Rotten Ronnie's, even if they get the order right, which they never do, you are still asked to park up and wait till they bring it over to you. I was once told at the window that they had no fries, no chicken burgers, in fact nothing. I was about to burst when the assistant hurriedly told me that they had shakes.

Give me a bleeding chocolate bleeding shake then I said through clenched teeth. He passed it to me trembling and said in a thin high voice "no charge Sir" I should bleeding hope not I snarled. I felt a little guilty as I drove home, by the time I had entered the house I was disgusted with myself for displaying such venom. That was until I sucked the straw and filled my mouth with ice cold nothing, It was just whatever that crap is without the flavouring. Anybody walking past my house that night would have heard the plaintive cry of an exasperated man, BASTAAAAAAAARD.

Ain't life funny.

During my youthful idiot days I like a lot of other youthful idiot’s was convinced that the streets of London were paved with gold. Of course I found out that they were paved with anything but, and so I found myself disappointed and penniless hitchhiking my way back home. On this occasion it was rather more hike than hitch and it took the better part of four days to get back up north. On the evening of the third day I found myself sat on a hill overlooking a motorway service station just outside Manchester, cold, hungry, and tired.

The smell of food wafted over to me from the services restaurant and changed the hunger to an unbearable ache. I couldn’t walk anymore that night, so I had climbed the hill to scout the surrounding area for a place to bed down, I couldn’t see anything that looked even remotely inviting.

As I sat there head on my knees the wind rustled the grass around my feet. I looked up and westward, the sky was turning dirty blue to black, and in the distance dark rain clouds were rolling toward me. The wind blew stronger and whistled, it was almost a taunt. At the bottom of the hill where it met the road was a motorway sign with scaffolding round it, and it was lit by a propane light that gave of some heat, not much but it was better than nothing. At that moment I thought life couldn’t get any worse than it was right then. The rain started as I snuggled down for the night, and crying from the cold and rain I fell asleep.

One thing is true, you can learn something from every event in your life, in this case I thought it couldn’t get any worse, but I found out it could. What balances negative experience is that at times in your life when you think it doesn’t get any better than this. It does.

Keep it safe.

Most people will have read the book; The secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It’s a charming story full of wonder and adventure. When I was a young chap of eleven or twelve my friends and I used to spend our pocket money on a train ride to Marple. I haven’t been there for many years but then it was a small village set in a picturesque part of our northern countryside. We used to enjoy camping and climbing on what then looked to us like mountains. Before returning home we would spend our last few coppers in a quaint little teashop near the bridge. Or perhaps buy a joystick (A cigarette six inches long made from the dung of a camel) from the shop near the pub and sit on the bench overlooking the river and set the seeds for bronchitus and cancer in later life.

One week my friends had other things to do and so I decided to take the train to Marple alone and bring my sketchbook with me. The walk down the hill from the station took me past a long high wall that had a door with a small archway set into it. Most of the green paint had long since peeled off and the dust from countless passing cars had covered the step leading up to it. Above the archway a stone proclaimed that this archway, or wall, or both had been built in 1803. I was impressed and looked at the door more closely, it had an ornate ringed handle set into a lions mouth which was had rusted over the years but still worked because when I turned it, the door opened. I had to push hard there was a bush blocking the way but eventually the gap was wide enough for me to squeeze through.

Once inside I was in another world, despite the overgrown grass and bushes it was obvious that this had once been a large garden of some beauty. There were wild flowers growing on the path that circled a white stoned fountain whose centrepiece was a figure half fish half boy with head back looking up at the sky with pursed lips which must at one time have spouted water into the stone basin below him. At various points around the garden set into the undergrowth stood statues, there was an angel, a crying boy, a large eagle taking flight and all were covered in lichen.

In the far corner of the garden sat an ornate stone bench with the words A place to rest and remember carved into the backrest. I sat on the bench, it was then that I noticed just a few feet away from me almost hidden by the long grass several small headstones, less than a foot tall and only eight inches or so wide. Engraved on them were names and dates, Susie 1823, Jack 1832, Sarah 1840, I discovered many more dotted around the garden most of them overgrown, but all with a name and date and all very small. It was a children’s cemetery, I had learned about these in history class, in the nineteenth century the mortality rate for babies was very high due to poor diet and conditions and children that had died before being baptised had to be buried in unconsicrated ground.

I sat on the stone bench pleased with myself for being knowledgeable about things past and began to draw, I must have stayed there drawing and exploring for many hours before the failing light forced me back to the station and my train home. I went determined that I would tell no one about my secret garden and I never did. My pals and I visited Marple many times and we always passed the door on the walk down the hill from the station. But I kept my secret, and most times I wanted to go through the door again, but instead I camped and climbed and smoked myself silly with joysticks on the bench overlooking the river.

Over the years my secret garden would pop into my head and then pop right out again, I had discovered girls and all the other things a young man finds exciting and had no time for a fading memory. Until one day I was clearing out some unwanted things and in a box I discovered several of my old sketchpads. I flicked through them and came upon the sketches I had made that day. As I looked at them I remembered how magical the garden had been and I resolved to visit the garden again.

A week later I stepped of the train in Marple station excited about seeing this wondrous place again. I made my way down the hill with a spring in my step that quickly disappeared when I reached the place the garden should have been. There was no wall, no door, no garden just a patch of green grass with a few trees and set in the middle where the fountain should have been was a bungalow.

I was sad, but at least I still had the sketches. I retired to the pub near the bench overlooking the river for a pint and something to eat. Whilst drinking my pint I got into conversation with the landlord and asked him what had happened to the children’s cemetery, he hadn’t been here that long so he referred me to old Bob sat in the corner. Old Bob had lived there since the turn of the century and knew everything about the place. As I described the garden to him he started to smile then chuckle then laugh "There never has been a graveyard for little un’s sept for the church" he said. "Place your talkin abart was a pets cemetery, bulldozed a couple year ago for to build arses" I felt a little silly, the names on the headstones though not a Rex or Rover or tiddles amongst them were cats and dogs names.

As I sat on the train back to Manchester I reflected on my folly at not visiting the garden when I had a chance, still I had my sketches and could look at them and remember. Its odd to feel nostalgia for something you have only seen once, and unfair that a beautiful garden could be replaced by something so mundane as a bungalow. Another surprise awaited my return home, a large bonfire in the back garden and on it all the junk that my Mother assumed I was throwing out. Including my sketchbooks. So the moral of this sorry tale has to be; if you find something that you love, keep it safe for as long as you can, or it may turn into bricks and stone.

Good egg Helen

Things are coming along very nicely with the events company, Helen who to be fair is doing most of the important work has made some great contacts and secured some really good deals with various companies just itching to part people with their money. However, as mercantile as that might sound the aim is to give a good service at a great price and still make a reasonable profit. I just hope that when it comes to doing the overseas research I get to do some of the legwork as it were. Well after all I am a natural when it comes to checking out hotel rooms and tropical nightlife.

Oop's

I’ve had another concerned friend email me about the content of my Blog, the second in as many weeks, my friend thought I was giving the impression of having spent most of my life involved with violence. A good deal of it has been, but for the most part it’s just been an interesting life. And whilst Bloggs are in effect journals, I’m sure reading about what I had had for breakfast that morning or why I choose to wear the red threadbare shirt today instead of the blue threadbare shirt would be very boring. It would bore me anyway. If you take the interesting points of anybody’s past and lump them all together in a blog it will appear manic. Some of the things that have happened to me would scare the shit out of you, but they will never appear here. A large amount of my life has been spent working, thinking, getting plastered, loving, creating, getting plastered, crying, getting plastered again. Just normal things that everyone gets up to. So J**** get a grip, its supposed to be true but funny. People can think what they like as long as they are entertained.

Bugger.

I’m sick as a chip; my company has an offer on at the moment with SKY incentives. If you book with us for any time in 2007 on confirmation the organiser of an event is issued with two return flights to a country of their choice in Europe or £600 worth of travel vouchers. I was rubbing my hands in anticipation of my freebies given that this place would collapse without me, only to be told that the offer is not available to anybody (let alone the guy who keeps the place from collapsing) who works for the company.

None of the other affiliates have that policy, if I want to go rope climbing or quad biking I can, as often as I like. Trouble is I don’t want to go rope climbing or quad biking, I want to go to Paris or Rome or Barcelona or even Madrid. The expression it’s a bastard springs to mind.

Reminds me of someone

Greater love hath no man

In the late seventies I worked at the Bavarian Beer Hall in Bell Vue as a doorman. (They are called receptionist’s now) My duties included greeting guests as they arrived, ripping the entrance ticket they had just purchased in half, generally keeping an eye on things, and beating the shit out of them if they got stroppy.

I quickly learned how to rip a ticket without actually ripping it and palming an already ripped half to the customer. This enabled me to hand back the unripped ticket to the girl selling them at the door so that it could be resold and not ripped again. We made quite a few quid doing this, which was good because the wage for a door receptionist wasn’t what you would call great. I know I’m a cheeky monkey but everywhere you go someone is on the fiddle and it was a dangerous job, so I looked on it as a perk.

Another good perk at the time was selling Beer stein’s to the drunken rabble that fell through the doors at the end of the night. Bell Vue paid fifty pence for them; they paid a fiver, pretty good return for something that didn’t belong to us. Then when everyone had gone we would go outside to collect the steins that they had left lying around because the coach driver wouldn’t allow them on his vehicle, and sell them again another night.

We had our regulars, but most were out of towner's on some kind of do from work. We were host to uncountable stag and hen nights, but whatever the reason for coming to that cosy little inn, you can be sure that around ten-o clock at night the shit would hit the fan. It being a beer hall, the guest’s were encouraged to get drunk, stand on tables and wave their beer steins about, the more they spilled, the less they could drink, ergo the more they had to buy. By the end of the night, elegant woman who had earlier breezed through the door in evening dress would be seen with their skirts tucked in their knickers pissed as farts grovelling on their knees looking for the false teeth they had spewed onto the beer soaked floor.

Yes it was a glamorous life, sort of. We had our pick of women, who seemed to migrate naturally toward anything wearing a dickie bow, as much alcohol as we could tolerate and on many occasions rubbed shoulders with some very famous people. I could name drop here but they are stories in their own right, when I say we I refer to my colleagues, Geof, Mike, Les (The head) Stan, and others that came and went when they were all out of teeth. Glamorous but risky, I remember one weekend two coach loads of Scouser’s came down hell bent on revenge after several of them had been thrown out the week before.

We were used to this kind of thing and brought contingency plan A into effect, it still irks me that they thought they wouldn’t be recognised sporting their black eyes, hooters like red peppers and miss shaped faces. There were around forty of them, they had already imbibed loopy juice on the way into Manchester, and as they very obviously were going to top up their addled brains, didn’t really present that much of a problem. Fact: Forty pissed up Scousers are no match for six sober door mechanics. Sound like a boast? Well don’t forget contingency plan A.

There are as in most inner cities some very hard chaps knocking about, we knew those of any note, and more often than not they would come into our place before moving on to a club, so we knew they could be relied on to help should things become sticky. We made them aware that it might get a little turbulent later in the evening; this kind of news always seemed to bring a smile to their faces. The opposition inevitably tried to outsmart us by staging fights in various parts of the hall, this way they split the available doorstaff up and caused confusion. Confusion did as it happens play a big part in the evenings events, but it was only evident on the faces of our gallant Scousers and remained there until the violence that ensued replaced it with swollen lips, broken teeth, blood and yet more black eyes.

When it did start even I wasn’t prepared for level of violence that quickly spread to every part of the hall, word had got round amongst the regulars that Armageddon was about to erupt, and I think that under cover of the main altercation some old scores were settled. In any event what followed was like a scene out of a cowboy film, a bar room brawl. Nearly everyone was involved, even woman. I saw two people thrown from the balcony, another chap had a fire extinguisher introduced to his head, several people had glasses smashed into their faces and at one point a gun was pulled out but misfired.

The whole thing lasted twenty minutes, which is a long time even for a well-organised, well-attended event like this one was. However at the end of it, our hapless band of Scousers minus their shirts and in some cases their pants, finished the night lined up against the security fence, bloodied and bruised, waiting for the police to arrive and I suspect wishing they had stayed away from the rainy city. They were escorted out of town by the police, who incidentally arrived just after it was all over. A rematch with them was expected but didn’t materialise.

The next week all doormen who worked for Bell Vue were told to arrive early on Friday night for a meeting in the beer hall with the then regional head of Trust House Fortes in the north of England. I won’t divulge his name because he is a Christian and his subsequent behaviour later that night might embarrass him.

Suffice it to say that we were royally bollocked for the fracas the week before. I’m paraphrasing here but it was a long time ago anyway it went like this: Your total lack of even basic diplomacy in dealing with customers who had a legitimate complaint was abhorrent to the way any decent human being should think. The ugly and sustained violence that was meted out to them by representatives of my company will not again be tolerated. Anyone and I mean anyone who displays this kind of Neanderthal behaviour in future will be immediately dismissed. You will in future gently escort using only as much force as is necessary people causing trouble to the managers office where the reason for their upset we be ascertained.

He went on in this vein for some time and his parting shot was to remind us that we were not allowed to drink on duty, which we didn’t do anyway we had more sense than that. He came over to the Bav as we called it several times that night to let us know that we were being watched. His last call was at around ten thirty, the place was jumping every one was having a good time and there hadn’t been much trouble up until then. I remember him standing near the main doors, hands behind his back moving up and down on his feet, much like Dixon of dock green used to do. He had a satisfied smile on his face and was looking around and no doubt feeling quite pleased with himself when the first punch was thrown. I don’t know who threw it, or who received it but the exchange of skin erupted very quickly into an ugly and very vicious fight. People who were there the week before must have thought that it was round two of the Scouser affair as once again all hell broke loose and glass pots chairs and anything that wasn’t screwed down became missiles.

I forgot to mention that our regional head of Trust House Fortes in the north of England had an assistant, at least that’s what he called him. His name was Simon, a slight lad of immaculate taste, who had a fondness for pink shirts. Simon had been talking to a customer very near the epicentre of the earthquake and at the onset of hostilities clapped his hands to his head and screamed at the top of his voice. Our regional head of Trust House Fortes in the north of England looked on in horror as Simon was punched to the floor by a woman, who then began piercing his pink shirt with the heel of her stiletto. Our regional head of Trust House Fortes in the north of England sprung into action. (At this point hum chariots of fire in your head) sprinting several yards bounding onto one of the tables and launching himself like superman into the air into the direction of his downed and wounded assistant.

As he flew he threw punches, when he landed he grabbed the woman with the overzealous stiletto’s, by her blouse and gave her a head but even Les would have been proud of. He looked round franticly for his stricken pal who was hiding under one of the benches and dragged him to safety before once more joining the fray and handing out the kind of justice that not many hours before he had forbade us to use. The fight didn’t last that long thanks mainly to the ferocity of our regional head of Trust House Fortes in the north of England, in fact we had to pull him off quite innocent bystanders who were just trying to get out of the way. It took a while for him to calm down and even longer for the wild look in his eyes to disappear. He was high on adrenaline, and between you and me I think it turned Simon on, certainly he would look at his immediate superior in a different way from now on.

They left for fields anew the next day and I never saw them again. We went back to our old way of doing things at the Bav, but you can bet that Simon and our regional head of Trust House Fortes in the north of England spent a supercharged last night in Manchester.

Brutal News

On the TV news last night and again on the radio this morning I was horrified to hear the newsreaders, one of whom was a woman refer to the two murdered girls that were found yesterday as Prostitutes. It might well be that they were ladies of the night, but for Christ sake they were human beings first. Why couldn’t they have first been referred to as women or girls and then (if they have to) mention that they were prostitutes second. The close family of these poor girls must be going through hell as it is, without them having to hear their loved ones labelled in this way. It’s almost as if it’s a foregone conclusion that they and every other prostitute ask to be brutalised. I hang my head in shame for this country more and more.

I fixed Christmas

For the last three years I have been promising to give my friend Kerry a musical, mobile Father Christmas of some stature that I bought in the nineties. It stands about three-foot tall, is resplendent in a violent red outfit with a golden waistband. He holds a lantern that lights up rolls his head, waves his arms and plays several Christmas songs all at the same time. He has been unwanted since the kids left home and has spent the time since in a dark cupboard under other junk.

I dug him out last night only to find that he was broken, the arm carrying the lantern had come away from the body and his sleeve was torn. Nothing for it then I had to get the needle and cotton out, not to mention the pliers and screwdriver (its hard to get hold of red cotton these days, tomatoes have complained that its racist). I had to undress the old guy to get at the inner workings which were made of plastic and contained the motor that drives the head and arms.

Bereft of clothes, there stood a podgy little figure made of grey plastic and wearing black boots, on his back were the words Made in Taiwan, I wasn’t impressed, but as they say if it can be built, it can be fixed. I set about extracting his innards; the repair wasn’t difficult, just awkward. The battery box was next, and as the old batteries had corroded, the contacts had to be cleaned which meant splitting the box to get at them.

Inside was a folded piece of paper on which was written the words “ is me am working in herr is swet shop mum dont now dad dont now help help very big pleas telefown me” There was a series of numbers but chemicals from the corroded batteries had obliterated them.

Given that this had probably been written anything up to eighteen years ago, it crossed my mind that had I read it when I had first bought the thing, what if anything would I have done about it? Informed the authorities? Contacted a human rights society? Or would I have rang the number to find out what was going on. Trouble is I was concerned that the helpless little sweatshop worker had access to a phone, call me cagey, but it happens all the time now, never a day goes by without the arrival of an email pleading for money. Perhaps I’m just a cynic.

The fixed Father Christmas was delivered to Kerry this morning and right pleased she was with it too, I didn’t stay long, I thought it best to get away before it fell apart again…. Merry Christmas everyone.

Legless and bloodied

Had my six monthly check up today, (a friend got me into this habit and I thank her for that) the nurse Elaine is a lovely lady who can bang a two foot needle in your arm without you noticing a thing. Which is just as well because I had two jabs for flu and Pneumonia. Needles don’t bother me at all which came in handy when some years ago I had my gall bladder removed and spent nearly two weeks in hospital.

The stones in my bladder had migrated along a tube that connected it to my pancreas. This tube had become blocked and as a result I suffered a bleeding great bout of pancreatitis, not to be recommended. The main symptoms of this delightful little disease are excruciating pain, nausea, hallucinations (yes it got that bad) Jaundice, your pee turns a blood colour and the other stuff looks like clay.

Whilst I was in hospital I met quite a few characters. Joe, who had the same trouble, had the bed next to mine, his skin had turned a bright yellow and his eyes glowed in the dark, which came in very handy after lights out if I hadn’t finished reading my book.

A trainee Doctor made a hash of taking Joe’s blood one morning and after using a hundred or so needles and leaving the poor lads arm battered and bruised Joe told him to piss of and find someone who knew what there were doing. He scuttered away and came back several minutes later and informed me that he was ready to take mine.

I of course declined and reminded the young thug that he was supposed to find a replacement blood taker, as per Joe’s instructions. He smiled at me and said “oh no, it was you I was supposed to do, not Joe, I got you two mixed up”. I politely told him that this was not going to happen, I had been witness to the butchery in the next bed and wasn’t prepared to undergo the same violence.

The conversation then went something like this, “but” “N0” “but” “NO” “but” “I SAID NO” there was a short pause then “I’ve been practising on an orange”. Joe nicknamed him Dartanion and thankfully he never visited us again after that, but there were other less fortunate souls on that ward who underwent torture at his hand.

The next bed on the other side was occupied by a timid chap called Louis who hated to be called Lou, so of course we did. He had been a heavy smoker all his life and had suffered several Mio cardial infarctions (that’s heart attacks to you) his lungs were on their last legs, and he had had a leg removed a couple of years before. None of this made him give up smoking though, and I suppose you have to admire his tenacity in the face of such medical adversity.

This time he was in to have tests and x-rays to discover whether or not they were going to lop of his other leg. He wasn’t a happy chap and continually wore a hangdog expression, which was made worse one morning by the bollocking he received from a consultant surgeon about his smoking. He told Lou that his one good leg wasn’t good any more and would have to be amputated at the knee. We tried to comfort Lou as best we could, but failed miserably, “you don’t understand, I can’t stop smoking, I have tried, honest I have” he told us with tears in his eyes.

Then I suppose you will just have to keep on smoking Joe told him, “oh yeah then they will take more of my legs away, and then more” He burst into tears and sobbed “when will it stop” Probably when they get to your arse I said. Joe looked at me with thunder in his bright yellow eyes, and just for a second I thought I had gone too far. Then Lou burst out laughing, he rolled about on the bed clutching his belly, and suddenly the awkwardness had gone, we laughed with him. It saved the day and thankfully Lou didn’t have to have his leg removed that time, but he only lasted a couple of years, I’m told it was cancer of the lungs that finally got him and sent him to that big fag packet in the sky.

Stupid tricks.

I woke up in a pipe once, long time ago of course; I don’t do that sort of thing nowadays. I can’t remember exactly when it was but it must have been during my no fixed abode period, at a time when I was between wives. I know it was about then because it was one of the stupid tricks I got up to just before I got up to the most stupid trick of my whole life. All the other stupid tricks which by the way would take an IBM super computer to catalogue pale in comparison to the most stupid trick of my whole life. Which I will tell you about another time

The pipe was of the kind that carry water or sewage underground, thankfully it hadn’t yet been buried, it was still above ground on a building site somewhere in Manchester city centre. It was about twenty feet long and three foot in diameter. I don’t remember taking up residence, in fact I don’t remember the night before, or how I got there, But I do remember a chap in rather large boots with a red chest complaining to me that I was holding up work and could I please piss off. His language was a little more colourful than that and loud enough to wake the dead, which I surely would have been had he not spotted me fast asleep in his pipe.

I crawled out bleary eyed and stretched my arms and legs and must have looked for all the world like a holidaymaker greeting a new morning on his hotel balcony. This cavalier attitude to his remonstrating seemed to annoy him further because he put one of his large boots right up my arse. I decided to put as much distance between myself and the red chested large booted chap as I could, but this was easier said than done. One because the ground was a foot deep in mud so my feet were being sucked into it and I found it very difficult to walk let alone run, and two because I was feeling the effects of something other than a night of heavy drinking.

My journey from the pipe to what appeared to be the edge of the building site took some time, imagine wearing an old fashioned diving suit, having your legs tied together and walking up a down escalator and you will get the idea. As I neared the fence that surrounded the site I saw an old black woman in a rocking chair knitting and rocking back and forth to the sound of music. Don’t ask me where it came from, it was just there, I asked her where I was, she just stared at me and carried on knitting, I asked her again mentioning that I was rather the worse for wear and a little confused. She stopped knitting and looked me in the eye “are you married white boy” I replied that I probably wasn’t but could be, I wasn’t sure. She dropped the knitting and exposed her breasts, at which point I hurriedly walked away to the sound of her laughing loudly. I climbed through a gap in the fence and as I looked back noticed that she had gone, god knows where, there was nowhere to go.

I walked the streets for ages, I didn’t have a clue where I was, I reasoned that if I could get into the city centre I could find my bearings. I asked several passers by where I could catch a bus into Manchester, but they just recoiled and looked horrified. I gave up asking and instead studied the front of the buses for their destinations and numbers, none of which I recognised, I saw a café and decided to have a hot drink and revive myself before continuing what seemed to be a pointless journey. I didn’t even get a chance to order before the chap behind the bar screamed at me to get out, “we don’t serve your kind in here” he said this in a very thick foreign accent. I left, I was tired, I was getting nowhere and my legs were aching.

I walked a little further aware that people were staring at me, before giving up and sitting down on the step of a shop. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a scruffy looking chap advancing toward me looking very angry, “Oi, you” he snarled “this is my patch, clear of or I’ll kick yer arse” he grabbed me by the collar and yanked me up. I was beyond caring now and very tired and as I had already had my arse kicked that morning, wasn’t about to let it happen again.

He pulled his fist back to punch me, but tired as I was I wasn’t too tired to give him a Glasgow kiss, which connected very nicely and rearranged his conk. His eyes glazed over and still in the position he was in when I made contact, he slowly crumpled to the ground like a cardboard cut-out. By now we had attracted quite a large crowd and two rather stuffy looking policemen who completely ignored the lump on the ground and began firing questions at me. I didn’t really care, I couldn’t be bothered answering, it was all too much. I was just about to start crying (that sometimes works) when a familiar face pushed through the crowd and began talking very quickly to the coppers; it was an old friend of mine who had been passing on his way to work from the council depot. I couldn’t make out any of what was said, but it must have worked because the policeman gave me into familiar faces custody.

The crowd parted as I was led away by my friend and introduced to a vehicle you don’t see on our streets these days, It has a rounded top with sliding doors and smells to high heaven. The dustbin lorry, I was heaved into the back by my friend and his sidekick and transported at break neck speed to my parents house, they were horrified by my appearance, and devastated that the neighbours had seen me arrive home in a trash van. I was covered from head to toe in several different types of mud, as well as blood and a collection of leaves and twigs, not to mention the rubbish that I had acquired on my ride home.

I vaguely remember taking a six-hour bath and then sleeping for several days. The reason for all this was that whilst out with my friends one of them decided to spike my drinks, this he did several times unaware that another of my responsible friends had also had the same idea, but instead of using alcohol, he had used acid. The combined result of which was a Lewis Carol adventure that could have been the end of me. This was the third of three times I had taken acid, the other two were unfortunately just as unproductive, still its something to tell the grandkids when the batteries in their gameboys run down and they are BOOOOOORED.