Bollywood piss up

Tuesday was my birthday so of course I had the odd Strawberry Dachary after which I downed the best part of a bottle of vodka, not all at once of course I paced myself over several hours. The outcome was the same however, I was wrecked and totally unable to consume the chilli Doretoes and cheese provided for me by my charming host at something like five in the morning. I stayed the night (I don’t drink and drive) got up late of course to find myself alone in the house as my host had gone to work.

After a quick coffee I locked up and left only to find that I had left my phone behind. This turned out to be a good move because obviously work couldn’t get hold of me, and boy did they try (twenty five missed calls) so I spent the rest of the day in the garden enjoying the sun and a hair of the dog, several hairs actually.

There was a time when I could have carried on drinking right through to the next day and beyond, but those days have long gone and with each birthday that passes my ability to tolerate large amounts of alcohol declines. It’s good in one way because it costs less to get drunk these days. Now I don’t want you thinking that I have a drink problem, or maybe I do but just don’t realise it, however I only drink perhaps twice a month, sometimes three times its not regular thing. I know some people who can’t get through the day without a drink and mid week drinking to them is just practise for the weekend booz-up.

The company I work for has just bought another company that buys sells and distributes wines and beer, you wont have heard of it but one of the lines is Bollywood beer, made in Germany, but labelled as though it were made in India. It has a very attractive Indian lady dancing on the label. In the next few weeks it will be finding its way into Indian restaurants all over England. Give it a try, its four and a half proof and doesn’t taste at all bad, it’s a little like a light lager and is very moorish.

I have a party to go to soon and with this in mind I asked my MD how much a couple of cases would cost me. I knew it would be cost price or lower but I was quite surprised to hear him say “Take as much as you want sport” BIG MISTAKE. So the car was loaded up and with my back bumper dragging along the ground I made my way home with the booty.

The party will be an all day affair and the chap hosting it has asked me to provide some entertainment, I think he would have drawn the line at his and hers strippers, so instead I have ordered a bouncy castle. It should be fun bouncing up and down with complete strangers, but even more fun as the day wears on watching the more inebriated ones trying to look cool as the they fall off it.

I’m not sure whether to wear my bunny suit for this bash, I will have to see what the weather is going to be like, it might be a hot day and pound to a pinch of human waste I would end up walking around in my shorts. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Celebrity rip off

It seems these days that the only things kids will play with need some kind of power source or they are not interested. Not so when I was a lad (I can hear the groans) the only power source we needed was imagination, ah well, things change, or as the Lone Ranger used to say “All things change but truth, and that truth alone lives on forever” handsome words from a handsome hero.

About the time I was seven years old I loved the Lone Ranger, I had a Lone Ranger hat, a Lone Ranger gun and a Lone Ranger mask, you guessed it, I was the Lone Ranger at least in my imagination. So you will understand how thrilled I was to learn that he was coming to Manchester and for a short time would be appearing at Woolworth's store in the city centre.

My Father promised to take me on the proviso that I behaved myself for the run up to this monumental event. I of course swore my dying oath that I would and apparently was as good as my word. The week before the occasion dragged for me, it was all I could think of, I practised the speech I was going to make, I polished my gun and I learned word for word the Lone Rangers creed, well you never know, he might have asked me questions.

The night before was absolute torture, I couldn't sleep, it was worse than Christmas eve and that's bad enough for any kid. But the morning came eventually and I started to get ready to meet my hero. I couldn't eat breakfast and everybody bar myself seemed to be moving very slowly, didn't they understand how important this was? We need to get going. Eventually my Dad was ready, we left the house and boarded the tram to Manchester.

As it rattled along Hyde road I looked out of the window at people going about their business and wondered how they could possibly carry on as normal when you know who was in town, nobody seemed excited at all. As we approached Ardwick round-about the tram jerked to a halt outside the Hippodrome, the trailing arm that connected it to the power line had come off, a common occurrence in those days. “Oh no, we will be late” I looked at my Dad beseeching him to do something. He told me not to worry, it wouldn't take long to put the arm back on the line (They had a long pole with a hook on for this) and we would be in plenty of time to get a good place.

I wasn't quite sure what he meant by a good place, why would we need a good place, the way I saw it was, we went, we met him along with Silver his horse and Tonto his trusty friend, we would chat for a while, he might even invite me back to America to meet all the other cowboys when he found out how big a fan I was. Disappointment was inevitable, and it wasn't long coming, as the tram made its noisy way into Piccadilly I could see there was a huge crowd waiting outside Woolworths, hundreds of little boys like myself all Lone Rangered up with hat, and gun, and mask, and all dying to meet the man himself.

I couldn't see how I was going to meet him with all these people here, I could feel a big sob welling up in my chest and threatening to kill my excitement stone dead when suddenly I felt by Dads big hands grab me from behind and hoist me high into the air as he sat me on his shoulders. Then with me out of the way of any danger he pushed his way through the crowd ignoring any complaints, until we reached the front. There in front of us was a cordoned off area in front of the main doors where the Lone Ranger would emerge no doubt riding Silver and reigning him back on two legs and shouting Hi Ho Silver, Awaaaaaayyy.

Wrong again, and this the biggest disappointment of all. Some of you may know that in the TV series the Lone Ranger was played by Clayton Moor, and despite the mask, his face was unmistakeable, as was his voice. The rotund bloke that emerged horseless from Wollworths doors was by no stretch of even a kids imagination Clayton Moor and the little short, fat guy dressed as an Indian who stood next to him was most definitely not Tonto.

I couldn't understand why everyone was clapping and shouting, couldn't they see we had been duped, they were imposters. I was too angry to cry, I even wished that I had had real bullets in my gun, which by the way was a far superior replica than the one the bogus Lone Ranger was carrying.
Its perhaps as well that they wasn't real because at that moment I would have shown just how bad a little bleeder I could be.

The journey home was for the most part spent in silence, my Dad asked me if I enjoyed myself. Of course I told him that I had, I didn't want to burst his bubble, he had seemed as excited as all the kids when Fat man and Plonko had emerged from Woolworths, so I kept my mouth shut.
And shut it stayed until one night many years later as my Dad, and my Brother and I enjoyed a pint at our local, the subject of the Lone Ranger came up, during a pub quiz. “Remember the time I took you to see him in town when you was a kid?” my Father asked. I spilled the beans, all the pent up emotion and mental scaring from that twisted day of celebrity theft came flooding back to me, Oh yes, I made the most of it, it was Oscar winning acting.

My Father looked at me and said “What a bugger, I didn't think you had noticed, Ah well, it got us out of the house for a few hours” I told him of my murderous thoughts, of how as I sat on his shoulders I could gladly have let off a few rounds at the lump in the blue suit wearing a mask and pretending to be the best cowboy there ever was.

Later he told me that he was glad I hadn't said anything at the time, “It would have made me sad to know that you were” he patted me on the back and together we staggered and sang as we made our way home.

The happy burglar.

When I was in my late teens I appeared in a sexually explicit art film called “The robbers” it was shot in black and white on sixteen millimeter film, with no sound. Later voices with French accents were dubbed in. It had a budget of about three quid and you could tell. The cast consisted of a friend and myself along with a young lady whose name I cant remember. My pal and I were recruited by a chap called Bob who sold ice cream from a van and was quite well known in the Gorton area of Manchester. I remember he plucked his eyebrows a lot, wore an Alice band to keep his hair back and spoke with a lisp. He was a sort of get you anything man, and he could, for a price be it tickets to a show, half a side of lamb, car radio, or even the full car.

Oh I know what your thinking but I was young, impulsive, ambitious, skint and despite all the talk of a permissive society with free love on every corner, I can assure you the sixties were anything but that, well my sixties anyway. So the chance to have some fun, perhaps even become famous and get paid for it was an offer I couldn't refuse. Beside which the brag factor for appearing in this type of film was off the scale.

In those days the actors (I use the term loosely) always wore something to hide their identity, in the young ladies case it was a ball mask, whilst my friend and I who were burglars wore a black mask and a stripy jersey, (Didn't all burglars?) we looked like two bumble bee's in flat caps. The whole thing was shot in an attic flat in Longsight which had a skylight, it was very dingy and smelled quite badly, but I'm a trooper, a complete professional so I didn't let any of this put me off. Our heroin sat at a dressing table in her boudoir preparing for the ball. My friend and I appeared at the skylight guns in hand and leered at her for a while before jumping through and frightening the poor girl to death.

I managed to make quite a reasonable job of this bit despite spraining my ankle badly, which is why later in this love epic my grimaces and face contortions are down to the pain rather than enthusiastic love making on my part. The guns played an important role in the proceedings, we waved them about menacingly and of course the heroin having no choice submitted grudgingly to our demands. My friend and I didn't know it at the time but the masks had been a last minute thought by the guy making the film. He had cut them from a dog blanket he found in the flat, they were very uncomfortable, itchy and it goes without saying smelled of dog.

I gave the performance of my life, despite having one ankle larger than the other, having to wave a gun around and suffering immense discomfort from a badly fitting dog blanket that I was having an allergic reaction to. On top of which I was sweating profusely (acting can do that to you) the mask eventually slipped down to my neck at one point getting stuck in my mouth. My face for days after had an angry rash in the shape of a burglars mask, I also had a rash on another part of my body which the mask never saw, still trying to work that one out.

It was shot in one take, with a couple of extra pretend bits, like I said it was a small budget, in fact before the camera rolled the director chappy hammered into us the fact that there wasn't a great deal of film and it had to be right first time. The young ladies acting was reminiscent of the silent film era, lots of clasped hands, imploring, and putting her arm to her forehead, you would think we were going to tie her to a railway line and leave her for dead, instead of just robbing her.

I saw the finished article once and I have to say I wasn't impressed, my friend however was and he secured a copy which years later he had transferred to video. I know this because I saw him recently and we talked about the incident over a drink. He seems quite proud of his short film career and intends to get the video transferred to DVD. He asked me if I would like a copy, I declined although I am curious and may change my mind about that. Who knows it might finish up on you tube.

Hot chicken sandwich and Poutine

Well this is it, my last packet of StHubert Bar-B-Q sauce, I used it this Sunday to treat my daughter and her children to Poutine and a hot chicken sandwich. I was introduced to this culinary delight by a friend of mine some time ago. She used to send me red cross parcels of this sauce because you can't get it in this country. Notice how the writing on the packet is in two languages, French and English, also notice how the French version always comes first and the type set is bigger, sometimes only minutely bigger but always bigger. Its the same with the instructions on the back, this kind of thinking applies to all things in Quebec be they road signs, shop signs any kind of written information really, and who betide you if you transgress, hefty fines are handed out to anyone not conforming to this policy. But thats frogs for you, always trying to force themselves on people, Algeria, French Indo china, all the way across Africa, they are almost as bad as the English for that.

Still they do make a great Bar-B-Q sauce, the best actually, I have tried to find something comparable in this country and I have to say I have failed. There are sauces out there that although not as good as StHubert are very tasty and enjoyable, but so far nothing has come close. And so the last packet along with a really tender chicken was consumed with a very dry hoc and as the weekend was a scorcher we enjoyed all al fresco.

You have to try Poutine, French Canadians eat it like we eat fish and chips, all you need is a plate of chips or wedges, with cheese curd on top (Try to get Frommage Beaucronne) then pour the sauce over all. Its delicious. Hot chicken sandwich is just as mouth watering and although I think I have the recipe wrong, its still close, for this you need roasted chicken, breast is best, between two rounds of very lightly toasted crunchy bread and pour the sauce over it. It seems strange eating a sandwich with a knife and fork but unless you want sticky fingers you have to. Try it, you will want to shake my hand.

Sun & Youth

This is my favorite time of the year, the winter is behind us and summer is almost here. That dead period between Christmas and easter has past and the rest of the year stretches out before us holding so much promise. Call me an optimist but the run up to summer always gives me the feeling that this year something good will happen. Usually it never does, but every now and again it will and that is why I remain an optimist.

As a boy growing up in Manchester it seemed to me that even the dark back to back terraced houses grimy with the soot of industry couldn't escape the effect of sunlight, I would sit on the pavement outside my house, my back against the wall and feel the warmth from the bricks burning my back through the fair isle jumper that according to my Mother I never wanted to take off.

Through half closed eyes I would watch the shimmering heat rise up from the road and try to guess which pool of tar would be the first to melt and form black bubbles that would get bigger and then pop. I liked to lay face down on the pavement letting my body absorb the heat from the ground. With my eyes that close to the stone slabs, I could see streaks of gold in the sandstone and tiny creatures crawling around busy with who knows what. Years later I would find myself in another country half way across the world, lay full length with my face pressed close to the ground under a much hotter sun but in less happier circumstances and be reminded of these sweltering days outside my house.

I was ten years old when the family moved to a better house in a nicer area, indoor toilet and a bath, hot and cold running water, a bedroom of my own. But best of all a garden, not that I like gardening, I don't, I just like gardens.

That same year I spent the summer with relatives half way up the Pennine mountains, it was a glorious time made more glorious by the presence of Catherine, a girl who lived at the other end of the village, who always seemed to be running errands for people. I would sit on the wall outside the village pub and watch her going to and from the shop. When she walked she danced and skipped and if she wasn't smiling happily she would be singing. As she danced her long blonde hair would flick and bob, sometimes the wind would catch it and blow it around her head and shoulders, but so fine was it that it would fall back perfectly as though it had just been brushed.

Each day I promised myself that I would talk to her, but I didn't want to make a fool of myself and risk not being able to watch her skip through summer, so I said nothing, I just sat on my wall and marveled at her sweetness. Now and again when she passed by she would look across at me and smile. Just the faintest of smiles almost mocking me, but I treasured each one and every night as I lay in bed I would re-run them in my head like an old movie.

One day I decided to explore beyond the village and after a short walk found myself in a large sloping field with thigh high grass and wild flowers. It was early afternoon and the sun was beating down. I lay on my back, hands behind my head in front of a dry stone wall, and did what I do best, day dream. As insects buzzed in the hot summer air I looked up at a clear blue sky and imagined Catherine beside me smiling.

I dozed off and woke a little time later to someone shaking my shoulder, I could feel something brushing against my face, it was soft blonde hair, as my eyes focused I realized it was Catherine who was shaking me awake. "Wake up, Wake up, you will get sunburned" I sat up rubbing my eyes not so much from being asleep but because there she was inches from me, touching me, talking to me. When I had gained my composure I spluttered my thanks and asked her how she had found me.
"I didn't find you, I followed you" she said smiling. I was confused, "but I've been here for hours" I said. "I know, I was just watching you, like you have been watching me"

I was embarrassed and turned as red as I would have had I been burnt by the sun. I struggled to get out of this but came up with nothing. "Don't worry" she said "Your just a boy, thats what boys do" I avoided her eyes feeling guilty. She laughed "Don't be shy, I like you looking at me, you think I'm pretty don't you?" I mumbled that I thought she was beautiful. "Ok then, you can hold my hand" she said, she took hold of my hand as she lay down beside me and locked her fingers in mine.

We lay there in the hot summer sun for hours talking and laughing, I remember how perfect she looked, how when she came close to me I could smell strawberries, I recall how her white summer dress showed off her young budding figure and how she bit her bottom lip when she was thoughtful. I remember the shock when she asked me if I wanted to kiss her, and the relief when she didn't wait for an answer and put her lips on mine. I felt the power that youth has surge through me for as long as the kiss lasted, it seemed like hours but it could only have been seconds.

Most of all I remember how proud I felt that this girl was my friend. She became my friend and stayed my friend throughout that summer, and every warm day we spent in that field, or roaming others, when it rained we walked higher into the hills to watch nature protest and as we watched we made plans for our future that of course never came to be.

Inevitably summer turned to autumn and as the first leaves fell I returned to our new house and my new school. We kept in touch for years after, as time went by the letters became more infrequent and finally stopped altogether when she went to university. I'm glad that I never went back to see her, I think it would have been a disappointment, and the ruin of a wonderful memory.

Some years later I found myself at a dinner dance in a posh hotel in Manchester, the dinner having been eaten I made my way to the bar for a G & T. I was on my second drink when I noticed a very attractive woman in evening dress talking to a man who seemed a little annoyed. He looked across at me several times before downing his drink and leaving. When I looked at the woman again she smiled and raised her glass to me, I looked away decided to finish my drink and go.

Before I could do so the woman had walked over to me and as I turned to leave she said "You have been watching me haven't you" I said that I most certainly hadn't, sure that there was going to be trouble. She threw her head back and laughed, "Don't worry, thats what boys do" I was puzzled, she laughed again "You haven't got a clue who I am have you David" I apologized, "I'm sorry no I haven't" She smiled knowingly and for an instant I thought I did recognize her, "Its Catherine, have I changed that much" and there she was again, more beautiful than I remembered and chiding me again for staring at her.

We spent the rest of the evening dancing and talking over times gone by, and for a short time I felt like that boy again so many years before in a sloping field bedazzled by a perfect girl who smelled of strawberries. But just as that summer ended, so did the evening. As the guests spilled out of the hotel we walked slowly to her car.

I thanked her for a wonderful evening and suggested we do it again sometime, she bit her bottom lip and looked thoughtful, smiling she said "I don't think that would be a good idea" then she kissed me and was gone.

Another cock-up.

I went to a painting party last night, I assumed when invited that it would be a civilised night of drinking fine wine, eating vol u vonts and perhaps even giving my opinion on the merits of a painting or two. I really should listen when people speak to me, had I done so I would have worn something more appropriate for the event. There I was looking like George Clooney at the Oscars whilst everybody else had donned old jeans and worn tops.

Not a good start, I think my host thought that I had dressed up just to get out of redecorating her daughter’s bedroom on purpose. One or two of the other guests thought that too I think until I started to strip off and turn my clothes inside out. Its not an easy task getting dressed from the outside in and whilst I struggled the man of the house disappeared into another bedroom and eventually came out with some shorts and a very loud shirt for me to wear.

Thus attired I set about creating with paint, my job was to paint the picture rail that ran around the room, probably because I was the tallest. As I skilfully cut in and laid of the paint like a pro being careful not to get paint anywhere but where it should be, The person given the task of painting the skirting board was lashing it on with a trowel.

I hadn’t done more than about three feet of rail when she came barging past me on hands and knees flicking paint everywhere. She had used the biggest brush she could find in order to get it done so that she could go downstairs and begin some serious drinking. She painted in a clockwise direction, whilst I travelled in an anti clockwise direction, the theory being that we couldn’t get in each other’s way. This worked fine until in a frenzy of paint and whirling brushes she triumphantly jumped to her feet shouting, “DONE”

Her head caught the underneath of the paint pot I was holding and it shot like a missile into the air covering the wall, the window, the floor and me with nearly a pint of Dulux’s best. She looked at me as though I were some kind of insect and said “Bloody hell can’t you watch what your doing” “honestly”
She then disappeared downstairs to inform our host that the strange geezer upstairs had made a right mess.

Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have argued about it, but as my host started to berate me for being sloppy, I saw red and let her have it. She could see by the way the skirting had been painted that perhaps it wasn’t my fault after all, but knowing me as she did she beseeched me not to make any more of it with the offending nasty person, and I of course promised not to say anything.

Painting was abandoned for drinking and after cleaning myself up I joined the others downstairs, by this time quite a few others had arrived and the drinking part of the party was in full swing. Many were outside enjoying the last sun of the day in the garden. I sat down enjoying my drink and a selection of mini food. Two chairs away from me sat the mad painter woman. She glared at me, I glared back, she got up and went into the kitchen to refresh her drink and whilst she was gone I emptied a can of lager, a chicken sandwich and the last of my sausage roll into her handbag.

I made good my escape apologising to my host for leaving so early, but I needed a shower because I felt sticky from the paint bath earlier and I reeked of turps. The next time I am invited to a party I will definitely enquire as to what the celebrations are for.