I think I may have the answer to it all......
If we build plenty of council houses, enough so there is no longer a shortage [we may as well, there are plenty of unemployed builders who would otherwise be claiming benefits], then charge low rents, this would have the effect of reducing private rents and therefore the amount of housing benefit the government has to pay out. And if people can live more cheaply then there would be less need to pay large wages to keep peoples standard of living up [hear me out first!], meaning that goods made in the UK would be cheaper and would sell more. There would be more jobs, and less reason to stay on benefits. Money would be generated in manufacturing [by trade], where it would do far more good than it currently does in the hands of rich landlords [money generated by taxing those of us in work]........oh and this means taxes can be lower as well once the houses are paid for. Simples
Monday 22 November 2010
Sunday 7 November 2010
Sunday 26 September 2010
A Gardening Calendar
17
A Gardening Calendar
I have to admit that I am not the worlds best gardener and unless I write things down I tend to forget that they need doing. I am sure that there are many people out there with the same sort of problem. With this in mind I have developed a simple month by month guide to gardening tasks to assist those of you who really have not got a clue.
January:-
Not a lot to do in January, Just clear the snow off the more delicate plants such as the Chlamydia and ensure that any early shoots of Spondylitis and Orchitis which may be just starting to show are protected from the worst of the frosts.
February:-
A general tidy up this month and ensure that your Trachea is firmly mounted ready for your climbing plants such as the Phymosis and Vulvitis.
March:-
If you have fruit trees, check them during March for diseases, in particular if you have a Cherry, check carefully for any signs of Balinitis or Aphids such as Corpal crabs. If you have any signs of the latter then you will almost certainly need to check around the Clitoris for similar signs. Suitable treatments are readily available from most garden stores, left untreated these can devastate any summer displays.
April:-
Proper gardening starts in April. Visit your local garden store and purchase some seeds such as Genitalia or the rarer Aspermia and spread these out carefully in seed boxes ready for planting out later in the year.
May:-
If you are growing your own vegetables, remember that these will always do better in a greenhouse or under a colon. If you are using the latter method remember that your plants will be more prone to pests such as Threadworm.
June:-
Throw away the pathetic results of your seed growing and go back to the garden store to buy some healthy plants. Once you become more experienced at growing plants from seeds, you will realise that this is an utterly futile exercise and you will be able to miss out the seed box bit altogether and simply buy healthy plants in the first place.
July:-
Mow the grass and sit back in the garden furniture, have a beer, and simply enjoy the wonderful colours of the Genitalia all around you. Do not be too disappointed if the Aspermia is a flop, it rarely comes to anything.
August:-
By now you will be fed up of mowing the lawn, so buy one of those 12ft diameter quick set pools, and place it in the middle of the grass. Not only will this reduce the area of the lawn by about 100 square feet, but it will render the rest of the grass un-mowable since the cuttings will get in the water.
September:-
There will usually be a ban on watering the garden by now due to a shortage of water. No matter, use the water from the pool. I find the easiest way is to remove the bung and let the water do it’s job.
October:-
By now it will have rained every day since you released the water from the pool. This will have rotted all the vegetables. Never mind, put them on the compost heap, they make better compost than food anyway.
November:-
Another clear up month. Sweep up all the leaves and pile them in the middle of the lawn in the bald muddy patch left behind by the pool. Have a garden fire, what the heck, it can’t get any worse. Encourage the neighbours to come around with some of their rubbish then they can’t complain about the all the flaky burnt bits all over their car paint.
December:-Make a plan this month to decide what to move around in early spring, but don’t forget that certain plants such as the Clitoris prefer shade and to be kept moist. Enjoy the winter delights such as Rhynophyma and Myxoedema.
A Gardening Calendar
I have to admit that I am not the worlds best gardener and unless I write things down I tend to forget that they need doing. I am sure that there are many people out there with the same sort of problem. With this in mind I have developed a simple month by month guide to gardening tasks to assist those of you who really have not got a clue.
January:-
Not a lot to do in January, Just clear the snow off the more delicate plants such as the Chlamydia and ensure that any early shoots of Spondylitis and Orchitis which may be just starting to show are protected from the worst of the frosts.
February:-
A general tidy up this month and ensure that your Trachea is firmly mounted ready for your climbing plants such as the Phymosis and Vulvitis.
March:-
If you have fruit trees, check them during March for diseases, in particular if you have a Cherry, check carefully for any signs of Balinitis or Aphids such as Corpal crabs. If you have any signs of the latter then you will almost certainly need to check around the Clitoris for similar signs. Suitable treatments are readily available from most garden stores, left untreated these can devastate any summer displays.
April:-
Proper gardening starts in April. Visit your local garden store and purchase some seeds such as Genitalia or the rarer Aspermia and spread these out carefully in seed boxes ready for planting out later in the year.
May:-
If you are growing your own vegetables, remember that these will always do better in a greenhouse or under a colon. If you are using the latter method remember that your plants will be more prone to pests such as Threadworm.
June:-
Throw away the pathetic results of your seed growing and go back to the garden store to buy some healthy plants. Once you become more experienced at growing plants from seeds, you will realise that this is an utterly futile exercise and you will be able to miss out the seed box bit altogether and simply buy healthy plants in the first place.
July:-
Mow the grass and sit back in the garden furniture, have a beer, and simply enjoy the wonderful colours of the Genitalia all around you. Do not be too disappointed if the Aspermia is a flop, it rarely comes to anything.
August:-
By now you will be fed up of mowing the lawn, so buy one of those 12ft diameter quick set pools, and place it in the middle of the grass. Not only will this reduce the area of the lawn by about 100 square feet, but it will render the rest of the grass un-mowable since the cuttings will get in the water.
September:-
There will usually be a ban on watering the garden by now due to a shortage of water. No matter, use the water from the pool. I find the easiest way is to remove the bung and let the water do it’s job.
October:-
By now it will have rained every day since you released the water from the pool. This will have rotted all the vegetables. Never mind, put them on the compost heap, they make better compost than food anyway.
November:-
Another clear up month. Sweep up all the leaves and pile them in the middle of the lawn in the bald muddy patch left behind by the pool. Have a garden fire, what the heck, it can’t get any worse. Encourage the neighbours to come around with some of their rubbish then they can’t complain about the all the flaky burnt bits all over their car paint.
December:-Make a plan this month to decide what to move around in early spring, but don’t forget that certain plants such as the Clitoris prefer shade and to be kept moist. Enjoy the winter delights such as Rhynophyma and Myxoedema.
Saturday 25 September 2010
Ed Milliband
So......Ed Milliband is going to lead the Labour party..........His brother Glenn is going back to playing music!!
Thursday 2 September 2010
Saturday 28 August 2010
Oh no!
Oh the shame!
Oh dear!
Aaaaaaaaargh!
Just got my royalty cheque for first quarter of 2010...................£2.45
It gets worse!.....................
Someone is selling new copies of Memoirs of an Ordinary Man through Amazon.com for $1.45
[I whispered that]
Oh no!
Oh the shame!
Oh dear!
............................Mortified!
Oh the shame!
Oh dear!
Aaaaaaaaargh!
Just got my royalty cheque for first quarter of 2010...................£2.45
It gets worse!.....................
Someone is selling new copies of Memoirs of an Ordinary Man through Amazon.com for $1.45
[I whispered that]
Oh no!
Oh the shame!
Oh dear!
............................Mortified!
Tuesday 8 June 2010
Monday 19 April 2010
Why did I bother
I sometimes get round to thinking about why I bother to write. I had always thought that I could write something that people would enjoy reading, so I toyed with all sorts of ideas about disaster scenarios, ghostly tales, heroic deeds etc. and none of them inspired to the point of actually making me sit down and write. Then my best mate got his leg caught up in the rope around the dinghy he was trying to get into and we laughed about him floundering about all day. It occurred to me that we were real life versions of the characters in Last of the Summer Wine and that I should write about things that I know best - my friends, family, and yours truly. After all I had no shortage of silly happenings to wrie about! So I wrote the first book and the publisher said, "It looks like you have a book, but..............have you used anyone's real name?" After I had answered in the affirmative I was shot down in flames. "You can't do it!", she said.
OK, I thought, so if I couldn't use real names, how can I think of names for everyone without them sounding silly? Terry Wogan's breakfast show was on the radio, and the names that his correspondents used gave me the answer, Thank you everyone, the Seymore Butt's, Ophelia Legge's of this world, you gave me a book I could actually publish!
OK, I thought, so if I couldn't use real names, how can I think of names for everyone without them sounding silly? Terry Wogan's breakfast show was on the radio, and the names that his correspondents used gave me the answer, Thank you everyone, the Seymore Butt's, Ophelia Legge's of this world, you gave me a book I could actually publish!
Thursday 15 April 2010
Chapter 1 of my second book
1
Friday the Thirteenth
I have been lucky that for most of my working life I have lived within easy driving distance of my place of work. Some of my journeys have been as short as fifteen or so minutes, door to door, which I consider to be a real luxury. A journey this short is however, by no means a guarantee that everything will go smoothly, indeed, with the way my luck normally runs, I count myself lucky if a week goes by without a crisis of one sort or another. I am not superstitious, but my journey to work on one particular Friday the thirteenth stands out by a mile as being a bad trip.
At that time we ran a Cortina Estate, a great big American looking box of a car, not exactly the tidiest example of the type, but nevertheless a serviceable family motor. On this particular morning I set off on an epic journey to travel the six miles to work, this was to be one of the last trips the Cortina ever made.
I got into the car and looked at the fuel gauge. As it often was, desperate! Not even enough to travel the five miles to the nearest garage on the route to work. I decided that the safe option was to go into town first, get a couple of litres in, and then backtrack to work, much further but safer than running out of fuel. In the event I travelled about three quarters of a mile and spluttered to a halt. A quick look in the boot confirmed my fear that I hadn’t put the petrol container in, so I set off back home at a run.
One serious rummage in the shed at the back of heaps of decrepit garden tools, push bikes and spiders revealed a decent petrol can. Leaving the devastation behind me I ran over to the bus stop and waited. The bus was suitably late but I had not even got on board before the driver stopped my progress.
“’Scuse me sir”, he started in a brilliant imitation of a traffic cop, “you can’t come on here with that!”
“But there is nothing in it” I protested
“Could be fumes” he continued
“It’s never been used!” In frustration I removed the cap to reveal a smell of plastic. “Here have a smell”
“You can’t come in here with that! It’s against Company rules, sorry sir I have a timetable to keep to.”
The doors closed in my face, and off the bus trundled off, devoid of paying passengers. “Timetable to keep indeed!” I set off back down the road at a jog, carrying my plastic container. As I passed the car I took a moment to growl at it for using far too much fuel, and continued on my way.
Having by now covered a mile and a half, I passed through the Bus Station, which was by now starting to fill up with unruly school kids. There at the far side was the bus, parked up with the jobs-worth driver relaxing on board. I was so incensed that I couldn’t resist the temptation to give the recumbent bus driver a single finger salute, he didn’t notice, he was too busy reading the morning paper before he did his next circuit, which would of course be suitably late and just in time to bring people into town to miss all the connections to Leeds and Bradford. Leaving behind the assembled throng, I legged it up Crossgate and along Bondgate to the petrol station. Filling the tub and paying for it gave me a chance to catch my breath, just enough to give me strength to jog back as far as the Bus Station, but petrol is amazingly heavy and it didn’t take long before I was down to a walking pace. I didn’t bother with the finger at the bus driver, now waiting at the stand. I continued walking a bit, jogging a bit, stopping to swap hands. The bus came by, blew his horn and attracted my attention, whereupon he returned my one fingered salute, perhaps the guy was more observant than I had been giving him credit for.
The bits of jogging between walks were becoming shorter, the changes of arms more frequent, but eventually, almost exhausted, I was back at the Cortina, and in seconds the container was in use.
The bus came past and gave another toot, this time the driver seemed to be pointing at the car, rather than outer space. I finished the filling job before going to the driver’s side to see what the fuss was about. Someone had taken a great side swipe at the rear door of the car, continuing forward until they had hit the doorpost between front and rear door. There was a split at the base of the post where the metal had torn. A great swathe of blue paint down the side of the car clearly indicated the colour of the vehicle that had done the damage. In frustration I kicked the tyre of the car. With a loud ‘plock’ the sole of my shoe came off almost to the heel. By now, almost at boiling point, I jumped in the drivers seat, put the key in the ignition and turned. Nothing! Worse than that I was now sitting holding half the ignition key in my hand, the other half was in the ignition, and it didn’t take long to determine that this was going to resist all attempts at being extracted using my fingernails.
I spent a few minutes collecting my thoughts, I had a pair of long nose pliers up at home which might just remove the stump of the key. No longer able to run I adopted a sort of an uneven skip in an attempt to keep the sole of my shoe from folding up on itself and causing me to fall flat on my face.
Once home, I quickly got together a set of suitable equipment: a pair of long nose pliers, the tweezers out of Jackie’s make up case and a steak knife out of a wooden block in the kitchen. Armed with this motley collection and a pair of fresh shoes, I ran back down to the car, the day was warming up nicely and I was getting a bit hot and uncomfortable by now, but I was beginning to get desperate, pining for the office, and this spurred me on. A considerable amount of teasing later I had the offending part of the key in the palm of my hand.
A disappointed kind of realisation came overcame me very, very slowly, so slowly that the grinding of cranial cogs was given time to gather speed and rusty pennies were beginning to drop into a virtual bottomless pit of the mind. I sat back in the driver’s seat, and wondered what on earth had possessed me when I failed to pick up the spare keys from by the wooden knife block.
I began to feel a little drained as I walked slowly back to the house. I had time to figure out that I would have been at work by now if I had left the car at home and walked, I would not have had to pay for petrol or carry the ridiculously heavy stuff a mile an a half, and furthermore the chances of the car being side swiped by a hit and run driver were almost nil whilst it was in the drive. After yet another round trip of one and a half miles I was in the car and it was running.
I had not run out of bad luck yet.
By now I was very, very late for work and I have to say that now that I had got rolling, I hammered it a bit on the way to the office. As I went over the hump back bridge near Denton Hall, I was sure that I saw the car bonnet twitch, but before I had even had chance to stop and check, The bonnet lifted and completely blocked my field of vision. I was still travelling at about fifty miles an hour on a narrow road with deep ditches at either side, but using a combination of peering through the gap between the bonnet and the engine compartment, and looking through the driver’s side window to see my position on the road and an awful lot of good luck [which, to be honest considering the way the morning had gone to press, it was about time I had some], I managed to bring the car to a halt without hitting anything or disappearing into one of the ditches. I was out of the car very quickly, I needed to check my position on the road, and look at the damage and in any case, by now the inside of the car smelt really badly of farts.
The bonnet had lifted and continued until about two thirds of the way up its length it had made contact with the roof of the car above the windscreen. The upper end of the bonnet had continued to rotate around the hinge, and had folded flat against the roof. When I say flat this is a relative term because nothing was anywhere near being flat anymore. The roof had a huge dent in it. Amazingly the windscreen was intact, this was probably due to the fact that my insurance would cover the screen without me losing my no claims.
After a struggle I managed to lower the bonnet back down to somewhere near it’s allotted position. With it forced down as far as I could manage by tying a rope to it, it had a front end which was several inches higher than it should have been. It was also sporting a nice pair of ailerons which would have looked good on a fighter plane, but at the hinge end of a Cortina bonnet looked frankly bizarre.
The Cortina limped wearily to the office, it gave me time to ponder on how I was going to explain that it had taken over three and a half hours to travel the six miles to work, and also time to ponder over the fact that I had set off in the family car and was now driving around in what could only be considered utter wreckage. Sadly the most valuable thing remaining about the car was just under five litres of petrol.
I apologised for my lateness to Roger Priest, the drawing office manager, but part way through my explanation, he appeared to develop an involuntary shudder of enormous proportions, like hiccoughs delivered from a machine gun. He walked off and I saw him remove his handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his eyes as he disappeared into his office. I had only seen the shudder once before, when he overheard me telling Colin Byrds that I thought the Thorn Birds was a story about an ‘orny theologist, so I knew it was Roger’s silent laugh. He never questioned my explanation, nor was there any suggestion that I would have to make the time up, he must have thought that I had suffered enough.
Saturday morning, I travelled down to the police station to report the fact that my car had been side swiped. Surely there was something that could be done, after all the paint colour was very distinctive and clearly visible, and somewhere there would be a blue car, sporting a similar amount of yellow paint, forensics would easily be able to match the two, and I might just get something from the insurance.
I have to say the reaction that I got from the police was a little disappointing. Having explained what had happened and filled in the appropriate forms, we walked out into the car park to look at the damaged door and doorpost. A frown overtook the policeman’s entire visage. He stopped walking.
“Can I suggest, sir”, he began in a surly voice, “that you remove your vehicle from this car park, before a policeman sees it!” He tucked the papers under his arm and rotated around on one of his heels.
“Do you not think that you would be able to help?” I asked naively
“I could organise a tow truck if you like, sir, but as for finding out who has scratched your erm, vehicle, I really think that we may put it quite low on our list. Do you see what I mean?”
“I think I understand.” I groaned. I got in the car and made my way home.
Back at home and one cup of tea down my neck, I came to the decision that I needed to cut my losses, visit the scrap yard, and invest the proceeds in another motor.
I rattled into ‘Head’s’ scrap yard and was soon parked up, and heading down to the steel container that served as the office. Shaun emerged, I was relieved, he was a bit more generous and far easier to deal with than his brother.
“Nah then!” he grunted, “I’m on wi summat. Tha’l atta see ar lad”. My heart sank, Dick was much harder to deal with than Shaun. I saw the surprise on Dick’s face as we approached the car.
“Write off then?” he questioned
“No it’s still a runner” I protested
“Gerrit fired up then, I’ll ‘av a listen”
The engine behaved and fired up straight away.
“Turn’t bloody thing off”, shouted Dick, “I’ve ‘erd enough! Nah then lad, I’ll tek it off yer ands”
“’ow much?” I asked in a slightly broader than normal accent in order to fit in.
“Nay lad, tha wonnt expectin’ owt wo tha?”
My broad accent started to fade, “Well I thought maybe a few quid” I whimpered.
“Worth bugger all ter me, tek it away!”
I pondered for several nanoseconds on the prospect of running out of fuel before reaching the petrol station and handed over the keys. Dick produced an enormous wad of notes from his pocket and peeled off a spectacularly manky fiver.
“’Ere a’ some bus fare.”
“Got a lift thanks.” As the words came out I wondered if I could possibly be more stupid. Dick stretched the rubber band to allow his precious fiver to be added back into the wad. “I need a beer though!”, I quipped, thinking quickly in an attempt to rescue the situation.
I left with the fiver feeling somewhat deflated.
Friday the Thirteenth
I have been lucky that for most of my working life I have lived within easy driving distance of my place of work. Some of my journeys have been as short as fifteen or so minutes, door to door, which I consider to be a real luxury. A journey this short is however, by no means a guarantee that everything will go smoothly, indeed, with the way my luck normally runs, I count myself lucky if a week goes by without a crisis of one sort or another. I am not superstitious, but my journey to work on one particular Friday the thirteenth stands out by a mile as being a bad trip.
At that time we ran a Cortina Estate, a great big American looking box of a car, not exactly the tidiest example of the type, but nevertheless a serviceable family motor. On this particular morning I set off on an epic journey to travel the six miles to work, this was to be one of the last trips the Cortina ever made.
I got into the car and looked at the fuel gauge. As it often was, desperate! Not even enough to travel the five miles to the nearest garage on the route to work. I decided that the safe option was to go into town first, get a couple of litres in, and then backtrack to work, much further but safer than running out of fuel. In the event I travelled about three quarters of a mile and spluttered to a halt. A quick look in the boot confirmed my fear that I hadn’t put the petrol container in, so I set off back home at a run.
One serious rummage in the shed at the back of heaps of decrepit garden tools, push bikes and spiders revealed a decent petrol can. Leaving the devastation behind me I ran over to the bus stop and waited. The bus was suitably late but I had not even got on board before the driver stopped my progress.
“’Scuse me sir”, he started in a brilliant imitation of a traffic cop, “you can’t come on here with that!”
“But there is nothing in it” I protested
“Could be fumes” he continued
“It’s never been used!” In frustration I removed the cap to reveal a smell of plastic. “Here have a smell”
“You can’t come in here with that! It’s against Company rules, sorry sir I have a timetable to keep to.”
The doors closed in my face, and off the bus trundled off, devoid of paying passengers. “Timetable to keep indeed!” I set off back down the road at a jog, carrying my plastic container. As I passed the car I took a moment to growl at it for using far too much fuel, and continued on my way.
Having by now covered a mile and a half, I passed through the Bus Station, which was by now starting to fill up with unruly school kids. There at the far side was the bus, parked up with the jobs-worth driver relaxing on board. I was so incensed that I couldn’t resist the temptation to give the recumbent bus driver a single finger salute, he didn’t notice, he was too busy reading the morning paper before he did his next circuit, which would of course be suitably late and just in time to bring people into town to miss all the connections to Leeds and Bradford. Leaving behind the assembled throng, I legged it up Crossgate and along Bondgate to the petrol station. Filling the tub and paying for it gave me a chance to catch my breath, just enough to give me strength to jog back as far as the Bus Station, but petrol is amazingly heavy and it didn’t take long before I was down to a walking pace. I didn’t bother with the finger at the bus driver, now waiting at the stand. I continued walking a bit, jogging a bit, stopping to swap hands. The bus came by, blew his horn and attracted my attention, whereupon he returned my one fingered salute, perhaps the guy was more observant than I had been giving him credit for.
The bits of jogging between walks were becoming shorter, the changes of arms more frequent, but eventually, almost exhausted, I was back at the Cortina, and in seconds the container was in use.
The bus came past and gave another toot, this time the driver seemed to be pointing at the car, rather than outer space. I finished the filling job before going to the driver’s side to see what the fuss was about. Someone had taken a great side swipe at the rear door of the car, continuing forward until they had hit the doorpost between front and rear door. There was a split at the base of the post where the metal had torn. A great swathe of blue paint down the side of the car clearly indicated the colour of the vehicle that had done the damage. In frustration I kicked the tyre of the car. With a loud ‘plock’ the sole of my shoe came off almost to the heel. By now, almost at boiling point, I jumped in the drivers seat, put the key in the ignition and turned. Nothing! Worse than that I was now sitting holding half the ignition key in my hand, the other half was in the ignition, and it didn’t take long to determine that this was going to resist all attempts at being extracted using my fingernails.
I spent a few minutes collecting my thoughts, I had a pair of long nose pliers up at home which might just remove the stump of the key. No longer able to run I adopted a sort of an uneven skip in an attempt to keep the sole of my shoe from folding up on itself and causing me to fall flat on my face.
Once home, I quickly got together a set of suitable equipment: a pair of long nose pliers, the tweezers out of Jackie’s make up case and a steak knife out of a wooden block in the kitchen. Armed with this motley collection and a pair of fresh shoes, I ran back down to the car, the day was warming up nicely and I was getting a bit hot and uncomfortable by now, but I was beginning to get desperate, pining for the office, and this spurred me on. A considerable amount of teasing later I had the offending part of the key in the palm of my hand.
A disappointed kind of realisation came overcame me very, very slowly, so slowly that the grinding of cranial cogs was given time to gather speed and rusty pennies were beginning to drop into a virtual bottomless pit of the mind. I sat back in the driver’s seat, and wondered what on earth had possessed me when I failed to pick up the spare keys from by the wooden knife block.
I began to feel a little drained as I walked slowly back to the house. I had time to figure out that I would have been at work by now if I had left the car at home and walked, I would not have had to pay for petrol or carry the ridiculously heavy stuff a mile an a half, and furthermore the chances of the car being side swiped by a hit and run driver were almost nil whilst it was in the drive. After yet another round trip of one and a half miles I was in the car and it was running.
I had not run out of bad luck yet.
By now I was very, very late for work and I have to say that now that I had got rolling, I hammered it a bit on the way to the office. As I went over the hump back bridge near Denton Hall, I was sure that I saw the car bonnet twitch, but before I had even had chance to stop and check, The bonnet lifted and completely blocked my field of vision. I was still travelling at about fifty miles an hour on a narrow road with deep ditches at either side, but using a combination of peering through the gap between the bonnet and the engine compartment, and looking through the driver’s side window to see my position on the road and an awful lot of good luck [which, to be honest considering the way the morning had gone to press, it was about time I had some], I managed to bring the car to a halt without hitting anything or disappearing into one of the ditches. I was out of the car very quickly, I needed to check my position on the road, and look at the damage and in any case, by now the inside of the car smelt really badly of farts.
The bonnet had lifted and continued until about two thirds of the way up its length it had made contact with the roof of the car above the windscreen. The upper end of the bonnet had continued to rotate around the hinge, and had folded flat against the roof. When I say flat this is a relative term because nothing was anywhere near being flat anymore. The roof had a huge dent in it. Amazingly the windscreen was intact, this was probably due to the fact that my insurance would cover the screen without me losing my no claims.
After a struggle I managed to lower the bonnet back down to somewhere near it’s allotted position. With it forced down as far as I could manage by tying a rope to it, it had a front end which was several inches higher than it should have been. It was also sporting a nice pair of ailerons which would have looked good on a fighter plane, but at the hinge end of a Cortina bonnet looked frankly bizarre.
The Cortina limped wearily to the office, it gave me time to ponder on how I was going to explain that it had taken over three and a half hours to travel the six miles to work, and also time to ponder over the fact that I had set off in the family car and was now driving around in what could only be considered utter wreckage. Sadly the most valuable thing remaining about the car was just under five litres of petrol.
I apologised for my lateness to Roger Priest, the drawing office manager, but part way through my explanation, he appeared to develop an involuntary shudder of enormous proportions, like hiccoughs delivered from a machine gun. He walked off and I saw him remove his handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his eyes as he disappeared into his office. I had only seen the shudder once before, when he overheard me telling Colin Byrds that I thought the Thorn Birds was a story about an ‘orny theologist, so I knew it was Roger’s silent laugh. He never questioned my explanation, nor was there any suggestion that I would have to make the time up, he must have thought that I had suffered enough.
Saturday morning, I travelled down to the police station to report the fact that my car had been side swiped. Surely there was something that could be done, after all the paint colour was very distinctive and clearly visible, and somewhere there would be a blue car, sporting a similar amount of yellow paint, forensics would easily be able to match the two, and I might just get something from the insurance.
I have to say the reaction that I got from the police was a little disappointing. Having explained what had happened and filled in the appropriate forms, we walked out into the car park to look at the damaged door and doorpost. A frown overtook the policeman’s entire visage. He stopped walking.
“Can I suggest, sir”, he began in a surly voice, “that you remove your vehicle from this car park, before a policeman sees it!” He tucked the papers under his arm and rotated around on one of his heels.
“Do you not think that you would be able to help?” I asked naively
“I could organise a tow truck if you like, sir, but as for finding out who has scratched your erm, vehicle, I really think that we may put it quite low on our list. Do you see what I mean?”
“I think I understand.” I groaned. I got in the car and made my way home.
Back at home and one cup of tea down my neck, I came to the decision that I needed to cut my losses, visit the scrap yard, and invest the proceeds in another motor.
I rattled into ‘Head’s’ scrap yard and was soon parked up, and heading down to the steel container that served as the office. Shaun emerged, I was relieved, he was a bit more generous and far easier to deal with than his brother.
“Nah then!” he grunted, “I’m on wi summat. Tha’l atta see ar lad”. My heart sank, Dick was much harder to deal with than Shaun. I saw the surprise on Dick’s face as we approached the car.
“Write off then?” he questioned
“No it’s still a runner” I protested
“Gerrit fired up then, I’ll ‘av a listen”
The engine behaved and fired up straight away.
“Turn’t bloody thing off”, shouted Dick, “I’ve ‘erd enough! Nah then lad, I’ll tek it off yer ands”
“’ow much?” I asked in a slightly broader than normal accent in order to fit in.
“Nay lad, tha wonnt expectin’ owt wo tha?”
My broad accent started to fade, “Well I thought maybe a few quid” I whimpered.
“Worth bugger all ter me, tek it away!”
I pondered for several nanoseconds on the prospect of running out of fuel before reaching the petrol station and handed over the keys. Dick produced an enormous wad of notes from his pocket and peeled off a spectacularly manky fiver.
“’Ere a’ some bus fare.”
“Got a lift thanks.” As the words came out I wondered if I could possibly be more stupid. Dick stretched the rubber band to allow his precious fiver to be added back into the wad. “I need a beer though!”, I quipped, thinking quickly in an attempt to rescue the situation.
I left with the fiver feeling somewhat deflated.
Friday 5 March 2010
Summat Else
Summat else
Yorkshire folk are proud of their native ‘tongue’. Lets face it there are still places in Yorkshire where the accent is so thick that it is somewhere between dialect and a Yorkshire language. We [the holiday four] have on occasions used this fact to no avail whatsoever, but had great fun laiking about with it.
We had planned a trip to Brittany, and as usual we drove, got the ferry and then took a steady run down through France. I had found us farmhouse lodgings from the internet, near a place called Dol De Bretagne. We had called in at Mont St Michel and so arrived at the farmhouse quite late. As we pulled up we saw the daughter of the farmer, who was about twenty sitting on the doorstep, smoking. At the side of her was a bucket containing every cigarette butt that she had discarded since she was twelve. She did not speak English, nor did her parents. We were shown our rooms.
A deeply domed, small round brass light switch illuminated a forty watt bulb, which hung in a heavy beige lampshade with brown tassels. The room was very darkly decorated, with bare floorboards stained in a dark oak colour. An ancient bed, about three feet tall with huge dark oak ends, stood in the middle of the room, adorned with sheets and dark brown hairy looking blankets, and covered with a brown candlewick bedspread. The wallpaper, which was changing colour with extreme age, was a rather fetching green and beige pattern of vertical stripes about two inches wide. Huge dark oak wardrobes stood at either side of the bed, and under the shuttered window was a dressing table with a bowl and a huge ornate water jug. I wondered for a second if there would be an ancient chamber pot under the bed, to make the room qualify for en suite, but there was a door off to the left which led into a Victorian bathroom, with a very old but at least a proper sit down lavatory. The flush was facilitated via a battered lead pipe feeding down from a wooden box. Dawn and Tim’s room was similar in décor and had a door on the right leading into an identical bathroom to ours. So identical that the battered lead pipe had identical dints in it. Clearly there would have to be a system of knocks to gain entry for late night pees.
We did not hang about, we did what we needed to do and headed off to Dol to find a pub.
In Stewarts Bar we ordered drinks and were quickly joined by a local called Jan Konit. Jan was a character, a Breton, he insisted in speaking English to us as he “Didn’t like the bloody French” and anyway he had “Learnt our bloody language very bloody well” and he was “going to make sure he damned well bloody used it” Bizarrely, Jan produced a battered photograph from his pocket of the Queen presenting him with some sort of medal. He was obviously very proud of his encounter with “your bloody Queen” but he would not explain and we did not push it. I did wonder however if he had had a conversation with her.
It was the feast of St Michael and locals were going around the bars with food and distributing it to everyone. We had a wonderful evening.
Waking the following morning we opened the shutters and found we were looking out on to a cornfield that stretched for miles. You could visualise tin-hatted Tommy’s coming out of the corn, and I wondered if the room had been redecorated since those days. I concluded that perhaps it hadn’t.
A hearty breakfast of home made jam and home made bread later we were on our way, heading for Pont Aven. Once we were booked in and installed in our caravan we went down into Pont Aven village for a Crepe. I saw something on the menu that I had never had before and so I ordered it. I did think it was a little strange when the waitress asked me if I knew what andouiette was, to which I replied that I thought it was some sort of sausage.
The crepe arrived, covered in pigs intestines. Note to self- throw away that handy little French English Pocket Dictionary.
The evening found us in the bar at the camp site we looked at was on offer, and then had a discussion about what to get, and then about how to order it. I went to the bar and in my awful French ordered three beers and a cider and then something in my head clicked and I said to the barman “Tha mun avail thissen o summat anorl”
“Na then” ,came the reply “yer English is ok, yer French is crap., and I’ll ‘av a Stella ta” I never used the French again at this bar as it was staffed entirely by Brits, all of whom could speak French (although some better than others). We nicknamed the barman who served us ‘Morley’ because that is where he was from. The fact that not a single one of the bar-staff was French was much to the disgust of the French customers, who really took exception to it. Marvellous! I did order the odd drink in broad Yorkshire just for the hell of it.
Yorkshire folk are proud of their native ‘tongue’. Lets face it there are still places in Yorkshire where the accent is so thick that it is somewhere between dialect and a Yorkshire language. We [the holiday four] have on occasions used this fact to no avail whatsoever, but had great fun laiking about with it.
We had planned a trip to Brittany, and as usual we drove, got the ferry and then took a steady run down through France. I had found us farmhouse lodgings from the internet, near a place called Dol De Bretagne. We had called in at Mont St Michel and so arrived at the farmhouse quite late. As we pulled up we saw the daughter of the farmer, who was about twenty sitting on the doorstep, smoking. At the side of her was a bucket containing every cigarette butt that she had discarded since she was twelve. She did not speak English, nor did her parents. We were shown our rooms.
A deeply domed, small round brass light switch illuminated a forty watt bulb, which hung in a heavy beige lampshade with brown tassels. The room was very darkly decorated, with bare floorboards stained in a dark oak colour. An ancient bed, about three feet tall with huge dark oak ends, stood in the middle of the room, adorned with sheets and dark brown hairy looking blankets, and covered with a brown candlewick bedspread. The wallpaper, which was changing colour with extreme age, was a rather fetching green and beige pattern of vertical stripes about two inches wide. Huge dark oak wardrobes stood at either side of the bed, and under the shuttered window was a dressing table with a bowl and a huge ornate water jug. I wondered for a second if there would be an ancient chamber pot under the bed, to make the room qualify for en suite, but there was a door off to the left which led into a Victorian bathroom, with a very old but at least a proper sit down lavatory. The flush was facilitated via a battered lead pipe feeding down from a wooden box. Dawn and Tim’s room was similar in décor and had a door on the right leading into an identical bathroom to ours. So identical that the battered lead pipe had identical dints in it. Clearly there would have to be a system of knocks to gain entry for late night pees.
We did not hang about, we did what we needed to do and headed off to Dol to find a pub.
In Stewarts Bar we ordered drinks and were quickly joined by a local called Jan Konit. Jan was a character, a Breton, he insisted in speaking English to us as he “Didn’t like the bloody French” and anyway he had “Learnt our bloody language very bloody well” and he was “going to make sure he damned well bloody used it” Bizarrely, Jan produced a battered photograph from his pocket of the Queen presenting him with some sort of medal. He was obviously very proud of his encounter with “your bloody Queen” but he would not explain and we did not push it. I did wonder however if he had had a conversation with her.
It was the feast of St Michael and locals were going around the bars with food and distributing it to everyone. We had a wonderful evening.
Waking the following morning we opened the shutters and found we were looking out on to a cornfield that stretched for miles. You could visualise tin-hatted Tommy’s coming out of the corn, and I wondered if the room had been redecorated since those days. I concluded that perhaps it hadn’t.
A hearty breakfast of home made jam and home made bread later we were on our way, heading for Pont Aven. Once we were booked in and installed in our caravan we went down into Pont Aven village for a Crepe. I saw something on the menu that I had never had before and so I ordered it. I did think it was a little strange when the waitress asked me if I knew what andouiette was, to which I replied that I thought it was some sort of sausage.
The crepe arrived, covered in pigs intestines. Note to self- throw away that handy little French English Pocket Dictionary.
The evening found us in the bar at the camp site we looked at was on offer, and then had a discussion about what to get, and then about how to order it. I went to the bar and in my awful French ordered three beers and a cider and then something in my head clicked and I said to the barman “Tha mun avail thissen o summat anorl”
“Na then” ,came the reply “yer English is ok, yer French is crap., and I’ll ‘av a Stella ta” I never used the French again at this bar as it was staffed entirely by Brits, all of whom could speak French (although some better than others). We nicknamed the barman who served us ‘Morley’ because that is where he was from. The fact that not a single one of the bar-staff was French was much to the disgust of the French customers, who really took exception to it. Marvellous! I did order the odd drink in broad Yorkshire just for the hell of it.
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