Where’s Lenny McLean When You Need Him?

This post has been inspired by an article on the BBC News web site this week about a mother who, having arranged a birthday party for her young son, is now threatening legal action against another parent for his son’s failure to attend said party (and failure to advise he was otherwise engaged), thus leaving her out of pocket.

*****

I don’t want to worry my old school chums but… actually, in reality, I really do. I want to put the frighteners on all of you. I want to get Ronnie and Reggie Kray on yo’ ass. Two Smoking Barrels and all that shit.

‘Cos it turns out you all owe me money. Loads of it.

Yeah. You heard me. You’re all into me for… ooh, taking inflation into consideration, at least £300 each.

And don’t all sit there with that nonplussed innocent look on your faces. You all know exactly what for.

All those birthday parties I had.

That you never came to.

Oh, you’re all crying and bewailing those RSVPs now, aren’t you? I don’t care if your gran / pet had died or your folks were taking you on holiday to Cornwall or you were double booked or even – cheap shot – it was your own birthday.

The point is, I had a birthday party and you didn’t come. So basically my family had catered for you, exerted a financial outlay – balloon animal, crisps, chocolate, Vimto and party bag – and you never showed up. We spent that money – money which we could ill afford, I might add – and you basically came round and threw it straight down the drain by not actually coming round and eating the food and popping the balloon animal we’d set aside for you. If we’d known you weren’t coming we wouldn’t have booked the clown and the money could have been spent on another present for me.

Yeah. That’s right. You denied me a present at my own birthday party. Two in fact. The one you didn’t bring me (because you didn’t come) and the one I could have had bought for me if we hadn’t wasted all that money instead hiring Kiddy Fiddler The Clown purely for your ungrateful and unexercised entertainment.

What a horrible bunch of friends you are. Utterly dispicable. It’s only because I’m a decent friend that I’m not suing you for emotional cruelty.

And you wonder why I’ve never stayed in contact over the years or indeed can hardly recall any of your names?

Well, stick your apologies.

Just pay up. The invoice is in the post.

Birthday card optional.

Trumpety-Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump

I don’t consider my childhood to have been deprived but I’ve always been aware that there were some things that other people did, experiences other people had, that I missed out on.

I never had a birthday party. I never had a sleep over. And I never went to the circus.

Sure, back in the day, circus shows used to be shown on television, so I knew what a circus was and could extrapolate an imaginary experience from the visual I saw on the TV screen: people sitting in a ring beneath the humungous big top; the caged magnificence of the elephants and lions; the dazzling troupes of garishly dressed trapeze artists and the rowdy explosion of clowns with their falling apart car. But watching the spectacle from the familiar comfort of one’s own living room is not the same as being there in the flesh and feeling the crack of the Circus Master’s whip igniting the air in front of your face.

So when Billy Smart’s circus advertised their latest appearance in the nearby town of Warwick Karen and I decided we’d take our boys; effectively give them the experience I’d never had as well as right a wrong on my behalf.

And what can I say?

Circuses have plainly changed from those that I used to watch on the telly. The elephants and lions were gone. We didn’t even have poodles dancing on spinning balls. This is probably a good thing as the last thing one wants when going to a circus is a moral dilemma. The clowns and their custard pies and their ever-collapsing car had also bitten the dust. I daresay the pincer movement of Stephen King’s It and The Simpson’s Krusty had hastened the end of the traditional clown. Instead we had a physical comedian who, like a Mr Bean or a regular mime artist, “filled in” with pratfalls and childish sign language while the backroom boys hefted the safety nets and the props around between acts.

And despite the Circus Mistress – Miss Yasmin Smart no less – proclaiming the circus’s credentials from the heart of the big top and tracing her own lineage back to a Stetson wearing Billy Smart, I couldn’t help but notice the proliferation of Eastern European circus workers who filled every nook and cranny and made me think I was about to run into Roger Moore’s creepy 007 playing a dodgy version of snap with a simpering Jane Seymour. But hey, the circus performers themselves were an international lot – an Argentinian bolas wielder who looked like a long lost member of Kiss, a French foot juggler with the most amazing thighs I have ever seen (I swear to God she could have rolled a cigarette between her thighs and inserted the roach without using her fingers), a haughty looking trapeze artist troupe who looked like they’d rather be throwing knives around rather than each other and the “Xtreme Brothers” who proved their strongman credentials by hefting each other around in borderline-obscene three-man pyramids, the configuration of which often made the eyes goggle and one’s goolies water.

But I have to say I loved it.

I was actually at a real life circus and felt like a kid again.

And my boys? They took it all in their stride. In fact my youngest was more enamoured with the light up spinning windmill toy we bought him during the intermission rather than the trapeze artists who deliberately (in my opinion) missed a few catches in the hope that the resultant “ooohs” and “aaahs” would encourage him to break away from the hypnotic lure of his toy.

Not so*.

When he’s old enough to start benchmarking the tensile strength of the performers’ thighs by visual inspection alone, then they might stand a better chance of holding his attention.

Until then I can see why my own parents never bothered getting me tickets to the circus as a child…

*Though he did say afterwards that he thought [and I quote] "Billy Smarties' circus was the best circus in the world..." so something of the occasion must have made it through the windmill filter.

Sex With Professor Alice

Well, the CD player is already purring with the best of Barry White and I’ve placed scented candles at strategic locations around the bedroom so that the reflection in the mirrored ceiling is warm and arousing. I’ve got champagne on ice, rose petals on the pillows and even a specially scented ice cube to do that “9½ Weeks” thing should she request it. I’ve even flung a copy of Nessa Carey’s “The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology is Rewriting Our Understanding of Genetics, Disease and Inheritance” under the pillow just in case she’s up for a bit of post-coital research. Although hopefully it will be mid-sesh research and not post-coit; I am, after all, planning to perform all through the night.

I just can’t make up my mind between traditional white satin sheets or eezee-kleen black rubber… It’s so hard to decide. I mean one minute Professor Alice is all prim and proper like a prefect out of Mallory Towers and the next she’s like an attractively geeky love-elf out of… er… The Two Towers.

*sigh*

You can tell I’m nervous, can’t you? This has been on the cards for so long I’m in danger of exploding right here and now. I’ve wanted it for so long. Dreamt of it. Wrote of it. And then deleted what I’d written in case her lawyers ever discovered it. But finally it’s happening.

Sex with Professor Alice Roberts*.

I must admit I’m a little disconcerted that it’s being televised next Wednesday on BBC4 at 9pm. But hey, at least it’s after the watershed so I’m guessing she’s going to dispense with the camisole and may even slip into some science approved lingerie. And I accept it is for the sake of scientific research and not just for pleasure (though I mean to ensure there is plenty of the latter – and for Professor Alice too).

But even so. I’m looking forward to it.

She’s so coy, that Professor Alice. No hints or thinly veiled euphemisms. Not so much as a single flirty text let alone asking me out on a proper date. No, just thrusting it into the BBC programming schedule and trusting that I’d pick up on it; that I’d get the message.

Well, I have.

Professor Alice is presenting a programme about sex next week. And as sure as 2 plus 2 makes 4 and nucleic acids plus various proteins make the building blocks of life Professor Alice and I are gonna make lurve. Yeah yeah, I know it doesn’t mention me in the Radio Times but that’s just to prevent the press from camping out on my doorstep and putting Professor Alice off her vinegar strokes. And I know some of you think I am just hopelessly delusional and am reading far too much into a tiny synopsis printed in a TV magazine but I KNOW, OK? I KNOW in my heart that this is going to happen.

It’s all my birthdays and Christmases come at once. It’s the moment I have been angling and pushing for on this 'ere blog for at least 4 years.

And it’s finally all coming together. Just like me and Professor Alice, in fact.

So don’t spoil it for me.

Just tune in, shut up and watch. You may even learn something.

Just sayin’.

*wink* *wink*


*Sex: A Horizon Special: Wednesday 11th September, BBC4.

Des Schtroumpf

+++ WARNING +++ (EXCESSIVELY) MINORITY INTEREST POST +++

Yes we took the kids to see The Smurfs movie.

Yes I have a Smurf collection.

Coupled with my Lego obsession it possibly makes me the saddest person on the planet but given that it is my birthday today (42, thank you for asking) I believe I have immunity from derision for today at least.

I would like to point out that I am not jumping on the Smurf bandwagon here. I didn't think to myself, oooh, there's a Smurf movie coming out, let's invest in some merchandise which might be worth a bob or two on Antique's Roadshow in a year or two. My collection predates the Smurf movie by a number of years. In fact, when taking my first ever Smurf into consideration (given to me by a boyhood friend whose name forever escapes me - ungrateful, I know, but it was just a frigging Smurf for Heaven's sake; it wasn't like he asked me to marry him. Hmm. Note to self: I wonder if you can actually buy a 'Frigging Smurf'?) my collection is actually a good 30 odd years old.

I'm not sure where my fascination with Smurfs truly lies. I have vague recollections of seeing some of the cartoons as a kid. But even then I knew they were never really cool. But that was me all over. Not cool. Not ever. When other geeks my age were into 2000AD I was into The Smurfs and Peanuts (and, indeed, boast a decent collection of Charles M. Schultz's works).

I guess there is something soft, warm and comforting about the works of both Peyo (creator of The Smurfs) and Charles M. Schulz that appealed to me as a kid. I was always a wimp. More Walter The Softie than Dennis The Menace.

So did the Smurf movie rekindle warm feelings of childhood?

Not quite. It was sweet and schmaltzy but I've suffered far worst. The animation was cool. The kids loved it and found it funny. And Hank Azaria - he of the incredible cartoon voice - plays an absolute blinder as Gargamel... even if he does frequently slip into Moe from The Simpsons from time to time.

Whoa. Just re-read that last sentence and it plainly came out very wrong.

Will it rejuvenate the Smurf craze for the modern generation? I think not. I think The Smurfs have a limited appeal. They leave a lot of people cold. They leave a lot of people sneering, let's be honest. But they obviously tick a box of some kind for me so I will continue to collect.

I suspect there is a part of me desperately trying to hold onto to some sliver of childhood innocence that I never really possessed in the first place.

But so what?

It's my birthday today and we're taking the kids to see Cars 2 3D this afternoon. I'm regressing. I'm revisiting / reliving my childhood. There is something liberating about it. The time to be a grown-up will resinstate itself again all too soon, I suspect.

And before you ask, yes, I did get a Lego set for my birthday. I'm a happy boy.

My thanks to all of you who have sent birthday wishes on Facebook et al. You've made me feel Smurfing special.

Unlucky For Some

It’s the 21st Century. We throw ourselves around the world in great iron birds. We can communicate with someone on the other side of the globe in an instant by bouncing our voices off the myriad satellites that orbit our planet. We’re beginning to unravel the secrets of DNA. Our understanding of the quantum world is beginning to hasten in a new era of human enlightenment.

And yet we’re totally unable to rid ourselves of the most stupid of suspicions.

All week I have watched people grimace and convulse with the kind of facial tics that, a century ago, would have seen them thrown into a Victorian freak show at the merest mention of Friday 13th.

What? You are going to the dentist on Friday 13th? Are you mad? You’ll end up with a root canal and your tongue harpooned on the dentist drill? Or, worse still, stunned with Novocain while Dr Drillgood manhandles your boobs / moobs and etches his name across your pantie-line in teeth whitener!

You’re never flying on the 13th? Internal flight, be damned! You’ll be blown out of the sky by a shoe bomb or worse still find yourself bumped onto a Ryan Air flight with only Gary Glitter for company!

Are you crazy? You’re planning to tightrope walk across the top of the Clifton Suspension Bridge on Friday 13th wearing nothing but a pink peephole bra and bright red galoshes... etc, etc.

You get the picture.

What’s the big deal? It’s just another Goddamned day and just another Goddamned number. It doesn’t mean a damned thing. Why do people get so knicker-twisted over it? It’s like people enjoy the prospect of disaster or bad luck. Behind all the grimacing and gurning that Friday 13th provokes is a definite sunburst of joy that somebody just might fall off a ladder in front of you and spectacularly impale their gonads on a rollerdex... anything to break the tedium of another boring week at the office.

And I suspect that’s what’s behind it. A little something to break the monotony. The possibility that the bone grinding tedium of life might be temporarily broken up by the pig’s bladder of misadventure. As long as it happens to somebody else of course. Audience participation on the 13th is not to be welcomed.

But the 13th has never been unlucky for me. Never. I’ve never had a bad experience with the number 13. Not once. Not ever. I’m immune to it. Totally. And I put this immunity down to the fact that I was actually born on the 13th (of August).

I mean, how can the 13th ever be unlucky for me if it saw my pewling but beautiful form finally arrive in the world, glistening and wriggling and full of all this splendid potential?

Unlucky for the rest of you maybe...

;-)

Q: Where Do All The Little Toasters Go?

A: To Silicon Heaven.

My computer died over the weekend.

The secondary hard drive experienced some kind of coronary during a bout of game playing (that’ll teach me!) and went into catastrophic mechanical failure. In the process it managed to blow the network card, take out my museum-piece floppy disc drive and mangle parts of Windows and Internet Explorer.

Quite how all these components were ever interconnected is beyond me but my computer’s internal biology is now completely irrelevant.

My desktop buddy has been rendered a virtual vegetable as a consequence.

Internet access is impossible. No network card means no modem. Although the router is still working and I can gain access via my wife’s laptop downstairs I, nevertheless, feel cut off and isolated from the virtual world of the World Wide Web.

I can no longer surf as and when I see fit but must (quite rightly) await permission and book a time slot on the laptop.

The loss of the hard drive also means I have lost an immense amount of data and media that I had amassed over the last 10 years. Although I have always been pretty good about backing things up you know what it’s like... You get complacent. You get lazy. You put off until tomorrow what really should have been done today. I’ve undoubtedly lost stuff. Thankfully nothing major or essential but the loss of it still hurts.

The loss of my little electric friend has left me more than a little bereft.

I’d had my computer for 10 years and had built it myself to my own spec. It went from a single hard drive beastie to a high-end multi hard drive, disk burning, internet munching monster in the space of 2 years under my careful nurturing and tutelage.

But then I got married, had kids and, I admit, the computer got neglected. The upgrades petered out. I made do with what I had rather than buying shiny new add-ons. As a consequence, it began to slow. It began to struggle with newer programs. The processor speed began to under clock. It couldn’t keep up with what I wanted it to do let alone what the software was asking of it.

I guess that was the beginning of the end really. The day of reckoning was bound to come. And now it has finally arrived and my finger is poised over the switch to the life support machine. I am merely waiting until I have finished harvested its software organs and its data banks for any retrievables.

Call me heartless but I am already in the market for a new computer. A replacement. My wife, God bless her, has not only given me permission but has insisted that I treat myself. An upgrade is long, long overdue. Possibly my wife merely wants her laptop back.

So I will be going to the local computer shop this week to spec myself up a new high end, quad core machine that should be able to levitate off my desk with the sheer speed of its fans.

I feel strangely ambivalent. It’s money I’d rather not be spending right now but I cannot deny that the acquisition of a new computer is very exciting.

The only thing that truly gets me down is the days of work involved getting it all running properly... connecting the modem and router and the other peripheries... getting email and internet access re-established.... getting the software and drivers installed... ‘cos none of this ever runs smoothly. Plus I will have a brand new operating system to contend with: the much vaunted Windows 7 which, yes, I have heard good things about but I would still welcome other people’s opinions on it.

In the meantime I am building a funeral pyre for my poor crippled friend. His mask has fallen off and I have at last seen the face of Darth Vader. The Force has left him. The electronic wheezing is just getting on my wick.

It’s time for him to burn.

P.S. Another milestone. This is my 500th post! Thank you all for reading!

General Hospital & Major Cock-up

I have bored memories as a young child of having to sit through General Hospital because my mother used to enjoy watching it. That and Crown Court were the bane of the afternoons in my early years. I hated them but I do recall being faintly impressed with the dynamic efficiency of the hospital as represented on television. And that impression stayed with me for a long time. I long thought that hospitals were models of precision timing and perfectly coordinated activity.

It’s so disappointing as an adult to realize that like most things in the UK they actually run like two badly oiled bricks.

My granddad has been in the local hospital for most of the summer. He had a fall. Got a chest infection and a water infection. One thing after another and it seemed unlikely he’d ever come out again.

But coming out he is. This Tuesday after lunch apparently despite being unable to walk and therefore unable to care for himself.

He does however have all his marbles and has exercised his right to be sent home. Although some of the family are against this and would rather see him shoehorned into the nearest nursing home I’m of the opinion that as an adult he has a right to make his own decisions and die where he likes. And let’s be honest; that is what this is really about. Thankfully the law is with me on this. As he is fully compos mentis it is his decision and nobody else’s.

Getting him home however is proving to be a nightmare and this is where the badly oiled bricks come into it. I was plagued by phone calls all day Friday (which marred Tom’s 2nd birthday a little). First he was being sent home Wednesday. Then Monday. Then finally Tuesday after lunch. A care package was going to be put into place. Phew – very glad to hear that. 2 care workers 4 times a day will visit him. But before all this can occur he needs to have a hospital bed installed downstairs and a key safe put into the front porch so the care workers can gain access to him as and when.

Could I let them into the house to do all this?

Yes. No problem in theory.

Except that Saturday – the day when all this was supposed to occur – came and went with no sign of the bed arriving and Age Concern who handle the key safe side of things being shut all day.

It’s now Monday and I’m at work and cannot now just drop everything at an hour’s notice (the best the hospital can give me regarding the bed installation) to disappear for God knows how long while they shove a bed into my granddad’s dining room. And then possibly have to make a second journey to the house to meet with the Age Concern handyman (who also hasn’t got back to me yet) to get the key safe installed... because to coordinate the two together into one trip is, well, like trying to drive two badly oiled bricks up a hill.

It really feels like the hospital’s left arm doesn’t know what its right arm is doing... which isn’t what you want from a place whose primary function is to coordinate care...

*Sigh*

Thank God my granddad hasn’t been booked in for a tonsillectomy and an endoscopy... or there might be some very unusual organs in a pickle jar by now.

May I Orate Your Meal For You?

For my birthday last week Karen took me out for a fabulous lunch time meal at the Leamington branch of Café Rouge.

We’ve been to Café Rouge a number of times and for a restaurant chain they’re pretty damned good. Decent food, decent atmosphere and decent service. I’ve got no complaints.

But it’s a pity they don’t vet their clientele a little more.

We’d just despatched the starter when a young couple sat down at the table behind us. Graduate types. Young go-getters that type of thing.

The woman was fine. Softly spoken, quite sensible and socially sensitive from what I could hear. So quite what she was doing with Mr Soapbox Hooray Henry I don’t know.

He had one of those voices that could be used to drive ailing ships away from hidden coastal reefs. Imagine a rutting gnu that can enunciate in clear Home Counties English and you’re pretty much there.

Couple this natural propensity for volume with a youthfully inaccurate belief that everything – and I mean everything – he had to say had to be heard by everyone else within a 5 mile radius and you can imagine how the delicately romantic conversation that was taking place between me and Mrs Bloggertropolis was constantly peppered with the blunderbuss protestations from Mr Everybody Listen To Me.

“Oh ya, my last girlfriend, she just wanted too much from me, you know? Too much emotional stuff. The sex was great but I had to let her go... only thing I could do... I sometimes miss her but not much...”

“Ya, I’ve just come back from Africa... got off with a lovely girl there... blonde... very blonde, not a local girl... all my girlfriends are blonde in fact... I only ever go for blondes... white and blonde...”

“And the groom was like: I’d never known what love was until I met my wife and I was like, Oh God, this is atrociously wet, let’s hope the best man’s speech is better and then he stood up and was all like: ya, I’d never seen true love before until I saw these two together... and it was like awful, worse wedding ever, thank God for the free booze!”

A real charmer right? As it was he’d already blown his chances of getting into his female’s friend’s knickers in the first few seconds of their conversation with this absolutely classic opener:

“You’re looking really well – have you recently lost weight?”

By the end of the meal, his gargantuan sound bites had become the unasked for entertainment for a number of tables in our part of the restaurant and many a mirthful look was exchanged between complete strangers and ourselves as we masticated our dauphinoise potatoes.

He, however, was in complete ignorance. Which amazed me. How could he not realize how loud he was being? I’d be mortified if I thought I was being that boorish. I’m sure we’ve all done the youthful thing of recounting a joke or an anecdote a little too loudly in the mistaken belief that it’s comedy gold and a passing television producer might be in the vicinity who will want to push television stardom our way... but to roar an entire conversation?

Is there such a thing as the Town Crier gene?

Would I have been totally out or order if I’d performed an emergency tracheotomy with a fish fork?

Shout your answers to me from wherever you are; the Poulet Suprême au Roquefort is far too quiet for my taste.

Life Begins

At forty apparently.

I’ve heard this expression a number of times over the last 24 hours. My birthday yesterday has, of course, provoked, a number of responses from my friends which have ranged from “you’re only as old as the woman you feel” to “you poor old bugger”. I’m not sure in what light either of these apply to my wife.

By far though the most common has been “life begins at forty” or even (in-line with current fashion) “forty is the new twenty”.

Well, I certainly hope not as my twenties were absolutely crap. However this had little to do with my age and more to do with my wallflower attitude to life. I’m pleased to say I’m a bit more assertive and “go-getting” these days. So who knows? Maybe life begins will prove to be rather apt after all?

I certainly don’t feel any different. By different I, of course, mean decrepit and dysfunctional.

I don’t suddenly feel the full horrid weight of my forty years pressing down on me like a huge millstone of wasted opportunity and misdemeanour. My legs are not suddenly bowed with the sheer tonnage of my life up to his point.

No more than is normal for a full time working dad of two writing a novel in his spare time anyway.

But then it hasn’t really sunk in.

40? 40?

It’s just a number at the moment. I keep having to tell myself that it applies to me because mentally it’s just not sticking.

It took me a whole year to get used to being 39 so I doubt that 40 will be any different.

I’ll admit I’ve had a passing thought that maybe, just maybe it’s now time for me to grow up a bit and start acting more sensibly.

But then my next thought was yah-boo sucks to that.

I think being 40 is going to be a cinch.

Umbrella For A Sunny Day

“Umbrella” because the two components of this post are completely disparate but I’m going to lump them together ‘cos today is the day for writing about them both. The first part is a family oriented kiddie post, the second touches on the reading aloud of poetry. Take your pick, dear reader, or read ‘em both.

The eldest boy is celebrating his 8th birthday today. He came downstairs this morning to find the sofa stacked with presents – presents that his dad hastily wrapped last night while his mum suffered beneath the vicious malaise of a horrible cold. Every birthday / Christmas Karen and I always say “this time we’ll be more organized and get the presents wrapped early” and every time we play present wrapping chicken and wrap them at the very last minute.

Not that Ben minded. He’s had a good haul – loads of Lego (naturally), a Nintendo game, the ubiquitous Pokémon cards and a digital camera amongst the new treasures.

Tom’s reaction was very interesting. Last Christmas he still didn’t fully understand this “present opening malarkey” at all though had good fun shredding the discarded paper and cardboard.

Today however was very much a different kettle of fish. He seemed as excited by the presents as Ben was – lots of cooing and ooh-ing and a few attempts to eat the presents whilst still in their wrapping paper...

But once the gifts were unwrapped they were far more intriguing than the paper.

I sense a shift in consciousness here. Gone are the days when we could have palmed him off with an empty box or a bit of glittery paper... now he wants product! He’s joined the consumer race at last.

To help avoid any displays of jealousy or feelings of neglect we bought Tom a little present too. His current love is bus spotting whenever we are out and about in the car. He just loves them. Every time we point a bus out to him we elicit a shout of joy and the phrase: “Dus! Dus!” which is Tom’s pronunciation of the word “bus”.

Hence Tom’s present just had to be a big bright yellow Lego Duplo bus complete with passengers and luggage compartment which, if it has been opened and closed once, it has been opened and closed a hundred times already. He loves anything with a hinge does our Tom.

He has refused to let the damn thing go and has taken it into nursery with him. Woe betide the staff if they ever try and separate them...

Anyway the upshot is, I think Tom has decided he quite likes birthdays. Doesn’t matter if it’s his or not. Any birthday will do. Just as long as he acquires a bus.

Let’s hope I’m not having to negotiate with Midland Red when he turns 18...

And now for the poetry...

Janete over at Writer’s Blog has embedded a small movie into her latest post featuring photos she has taken during her travels. The soundtrack is Janete herself reading one of her amazing poems. It’s worth a click and a few minutes of your time savouring the experience.

What struck a chord with me was Janete’s comment about not liking her own voice. I expect most people feel the same way – possibly because we imagine our voices to sound somehow different to how they really are... sort of the same but different. The same but improved. Polished. Authoritative. Silkier. Movie star like.

It’s always depressing when you hear your voice played back to you and you realize you sound like a bin man from Walsall.

Not that Janete does, I hasten to add. I actually think she has a fabulous voice – really lovely – and it suits her poetry perfectly. Go and listen to it if you don’t believe me.

Mine, however, does. Or at least I think it does. About 15 years ago I had the opportunity to read out some of my poetry on a local radio programme broadcast by Coventry & Warwickshire BBC. It was to be pre-recorded and would be broadcast a week later... so, lucky me, I’d be able to listen to myself in the comfort of my own home.

For some reason, even though I’m Midlands born and bred, I had a fancy to sound like Ted Hughes. I loved his poetry and I loved to hear him reciting it. Such a rich, dark voice. And the Yorkshire accent lent his words an expressiveness and earthiness that added yet more depth and richness to a grasp of language that was already immeasurably deep and rich.

Oh to sound like that! I would have turned heads.

Now, don’t think for a minute that, when presented with the microphone, I launched into an awful cod-Yorkshire “ee bah gum it’s cold oop North int it” accent. I wasn’t that stupid. I’m not good at mimicking accents though can manage a passable Scots if I put my mind to it (but as my dad is part Scottish this is only right and proper).

I merely tried to speak clearly and authoritatively. With feeling and passion. With an ear for the words and the music of my poetry.

I swear to God I sounded like a Birmingham fish monger reading William Blake. Not a great mix.

It affected me so badly I didn’t write anything for nearly 12 months and, bar reading a 3rd prize winning poem at Warwick’s 2006 Warwick Words competition, have never read my work aloud again.

Beauty might be in the eye of the beholder but the ear has its part to play also.

Hawk!

No, I didn't spend Friday battling the evil forces of Voltan (aka The Dark One) alongside an elf and a giant bearing an uncanny resemblance to Bernard Bresslaw (on account of it really being Bernard Bresslaw) but instead spent it at Batsford, a little village just outside Moreton-in-the-Marsh, which features an arboretum and a falconry centre.

I've long had a passing interest in birds (cut the jokes please, I can see them coming a mile off), particularly raptors and after a visit there with the family last July my interest was duly noted by my wonderful wife, Karen. And later, while my back was turned (buying chocolate no doubt from the falconry shop), she secretly enrolled me on an "introduction to falconry" course for my birthday.

That glorious birthday occurred in August and it's taken us this long to finally confirm a date and actually get to grips with the raptors. We endured a couple of aborted attempts in the intervening months when we had to pull out at the eleventh hour due to the kids being ill (How do they know? How is their timing so spot on?) but it was a case of third time lucky.

The weather dawned dry and fair and the kids weren't at all consumptive... so off to school and nursery they went and Karen and I scooted off to Batsford to finally cash in my falconry voucher.

It was marvellous. As you will see from the photos below I got up close and personal with a number of birds - a kestrel, a falcon, a hawk, an owl and an eagle of foreign extraction who's exact geographical name I can't remember because I was so blown away by the whole experience.

There's something very calming about being so close to a bird - especially such large ones. I think on some level you calm yourself so as not to agitate the bird and then benefit yourself from the resultant avian zen-like state. I'm almost considering starting a new religion. The Birdies or something. Or possibly The Great Tits. Leave it with me. I need to mull this one over. Choose the wrong name and I'll be a laughing stock in spiritual circles...

But back to the falconry: after having numerous birds on my glove I ended up flying a beautiful falcon named Ben - oddly the same name as my eldest boy but a darn sight more obedient and easier to please: given a raw chicken foot to eat he was as happy as Larry...

If only all of life was this simple...

Haunted

My usual Friday blog post last week was dropped as, quite rightly, I was busy elsewhere ensuring that my wife, Karen, had as lovely a birthday as possible...

Part of this extravaganza of generosity and celebration entailed lunch at one of Warwick’s finest eating establishments – The Saxon Mill. If ever you’re around these parts I can recommend it. I won’t wax lyrical about the menu as, really, with the best will in the world, mere adjectives and metaphor can hardly replace the reality of eating food. Suffice it to say, you had to be there. And, no offence intended, I’m rather glad that you weren’t as it would have cramped my style and ruined the atmos somewhat...

But talking of atmos...

The Saxon Mill – being (surprise, surprise) a converted mill – is built over the River Leam. On the opposite bank stands what at one time would have been a very grand old house indeed: Guy’s Cliffe House.

The legends surrounding this building are numerous. And as varied and embellished as Chinese whispers. The one strand that runs through them all, however, is that the place is haunted. Haunted by a woman who – through being jilted / abandoned / widowed / whatever – threw herself into the River Leam far below and drowned. Quite when this occurred nobody really seems to know. 500 years ago... maybe more... medieval period some even say.

Then layered on top of this legend is another one. A newer one. The building was purportedly used at one time – again in some unspecified period of history – as the HQ for a local coven of witches and Satanists. They are supposed to have used the cellars and caves that the house is built upon to carry out their perverse rites – orgies, blood sacrifices, the lot. The Butlins of their day.

Nowadays the Mason’s own the property. Nothing unusual in this except why buy a building that nobody does anything with? About 20 years ago a major fire further gutted what was already a ruin and thus the building has (barely) stood... closed off to the public, free access granted only to the crows and pigeons that roost in it’s shambolic gables. Nobody “straight and true” has been seen there for years. Certainly not by daylight anyway. All very strange.

Anyway, after our meal Karen and I took a slow saunter along the river and viewed the house from the safety of the opposite bank. I say safety because Guy’s Cliffe House gives me the freaking willies.

Partly because of the legends and the hearsay and partly because of personal experience.

When I was 18 me and my good friend, Tris, being full of youthful bravado and foolhardiness decided to put the legends to the test. Mostly though I think we just wanted to cock a snook at the Masons and so climbed over the boundary wall and took a wonder through the grounds. As it was, even then (before the fire), the house was visibly unsafe and so we wisely steered clear of venturing within the crumbling walls but we did skirt the perimeter and work our way round to the cellars / caves at the back. To do this we followed what I assume hundred of years ago would have been the old river bed.

I recall it being jungled with massive leaves and vegetation which seemed to have grown elephantine in the August weather. It felt almost prehistoric and I remember feeling quite disconcerted and dwarfed by my surroundings. Maybe this merely added to the burgeoning sense of atmosphere – who knows? All I do know is that as we turned round to the back of the house the air itself seemed to grow black in a split second. We both experienced it and stopped dead in our tracks. I have never felt such an oppressive, furious, outraged atmosphere as I did that evening. The air seemed to increase in mass and waves of anger bore down on us like a nuclear wind. That and the distinct feeling that we were not at all welcome and should get the hell out of there immediately. We both flinched under a snarl of “get out!” mentally screamed at us from a source that appeared to have no shape or form. Neither of us had to discuss it. We turned tail and ran like something out of Scooby-doo, me bringing up the rear praying that nothing was pursuing me... because, let me tell you, at the time it felt like a real possibility.

We laughed about it afterwards and shrugged it off. It was an August evening, the sun was setting; it had merely dropped down behind the house and plunged the ground level into shadow. What jolly japes. Ho ho ho.

I’ve never been back but have often wondered about that evening many times over the intervening years.

I didn’t see anything coalescing out of the air but do remember the impression of something trying to. Maybe if we’d found more courage and stood our ground we would have seen something... an apparition, an orb of light, Derek Acorah in his cheap imitation gold jewellery... who knows.

All I know is the atmosphere was unquestionably real and it produced a very real reaction in us both.

Was it a ghost? Was it our minds playing tricks on us – using the rich food of local legend to fuel a waking dream?

Or is it as someone whose name I can’t remember once wrote: human memory exists in two places – in the hearts and minds of people; and in the buildings, stones and earth that house them?

Maybe a distraught young woman hundreds of years ago, dashing out her unendurable sorrow into a treacherous river, unwittingly impressed herself onto the stones of Guy’s Cliffe House and every now and then treats foolish young visitors to a sensory cinema show where the only tickets required are gullibility?

You’re guess is as good as mine.

Sleep well, people. Sleep well.

First And Last

Tom was one yesterday and we cremated my aunt.

And that, for me, has to be one of this year’s most unexpected sentences.

It was a day (to use a football analogy for the first and last time in my life) of two halves:

The first was lovely – Tom’s first birthday, Tom’s first experience of being given gifts to open and the last time he will ever receive birthday gifts without at all knowing quite why he’s been showered with them and without any hope or expectation of what they might be. Next year I suspect he will be a little more knowing, a little more sussed, and while that is fine and lovely too (and I can’t wait to see it) there was something very special indeed at witnessing his surprise and wonderment at this, his very first birthday.

And to use an old cliché, my aunt made her final journey – a slow, respectful last drive through beautiful October sunshine to the crematorium where a mere 4 years ago we buried her mother / my Nan. Last words and the last committal from the vicar and it was done. They say that each time you go to a funeral you remember all the funerals you’ve ever attended and everyone you’ve ever lost.

Well, let me tell you, it’s perfectly true.

Due to the ghosts of old family rows and resentments, the occasion was tense. Emotions were high. There were dark undercurrents and groundswells that only a true occultist would have been able to read. But nothing overt. And thankfully the event passed without a hard look or a snide comment from anybody. All as it should be. What use family arguments now? What use recriminations? Time to remember. But also time to let go and move on. Everybody has to deal with their own trouble. It’s best to wish them well and deal with your own.

It was good to get back home again afterwards, to the kids, to my favourite place on the sofa, to the next round of presents. To a precious normality.

Little boys with blue plastic diggers... what could be more happier and more right?

Birthdays are precious things.

I aim to be grateful for every single one.

Belatedly Batman

A week ago, as part of the spectacular birthday celebration that heralded my 39th birthday (apologies if the fireworks kept you awake) Karen took me to see the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight. I’d quite enjoyed Batman Begins – as superhero movies go it was nice ‘n’ dark, gritty and packed a hard hitting punch or two. But for me the story was too fragmented, too intent on ticking as many bat-boxes as possible within the classic Batman framework... it tried to do too much and felt frustrated and frustrating. So despite the hype it was with some trepidation that I settled into my seat to watch The Dark Knight.

I needn’t have worried. It totally blew me away.

The sets, the backdrops, the stunts, the action... all on target. The story – despite the length of the film – felt tight and compact (like a well defined six-pack). And the humour... ah the humour was so dark it felt beyond black. I actually felt a twinge of regret when it was all over.

Michael Caine was a joy to watch and I’d at last fully accepted the bat-voice without wondering at what point in the movie Bruce Wayne had smoked a hundred Columbian cigars... Gary Oldman too was effortlessly believable as Gordon. The man is such a chameleon – he manages to change his physicality in every film I’ve ever seen him. How else can he go from the emaciated Goth cool of Sirius Black to the fustiness of Gordon and yet still look like himself?

But all this is just the nuts and bolts of the movie, the framework – the skeleton – albeit a very impressive one. The flesh, the heart, however is The Joker. Was Heath Ledger as good as the hype? For me: yes. Definitely. All the clichés are at least meaningful and fresh – a commanding performance, hypnotic, mesmerizing. In any scene where he didn’t appear I found myself pining for him to pop up in front of the camera.

I liked the fact his performance doffed its cap to the classic Joker and yet also managed to contemporize it so fully. The lies, the tricks, the surety that he will always, always play you false, the certainty that even the truth from his lips will inevitably be a lie. My favourite part of the film was The Joker’s self-deprecating speech to Harvey Dent: he dismisses himself as a mad dog, too chaotic to plan, to organize, he merely acts on his every whim, it’s not personal... it is the police, Batman, the authorities who plan and plot, who connive and conspire.

It is of course another delicious lie but one that hints at an interesting subtext of the movie. The Joker is the most organized agent in the story. To tell a good joke, to perform an effective trick takes eons of planning, post production, preparation... It is The Joker who connives and conspires more effectively than anyone. The Joker allows himself to be captured by the police or at least plans ahead for it – how else explain his henchman with the bomb-phone sewn into his guts?

The mad dog, the man who acts on his whims is, of course, Harvey Dent. Stripped of his suit and tie, the façade of law and order, he merely becomes another one of the Joker’s slathering canines, maddened, hungry, blindly animalistic but leashed and very carefully directed. Controlled completely by The Joker.

But isn’t Batman himself also a creature of instinct and whim? Isn’t Batman too something of a mad dog? He reacts emotionally, personally to all of The Joker’s plots and machinations. He considers giving up his Bat alter ego on an emotional whim and returns to it without a second’s regret. His explosions of violence match those of The Joker and he is just as apt to change the rules of engagement to suit his current requirements... The Joker was correct when he told Batman that he completed him (though it was a corny line). The correlation between these two characters is intriguing and gives the film its distinctive resonance.

Where they go from here in the regretful absence of Heath Ledger is a mystery but I’m awaiting the next film with a pleasurable amount of excitement. Just what kind of morning will follow this dark night? I can’t wait to find out.

Summertime And The Leaving Ain’t Easy

I’m off from work for 10 whole days after today... and the original plan was to head west tomorrow morning at first light, journey for approximately 4 hours and then pitch our humungous 900 berth tent in the land of green valleys, male voice choirs and sheep.

Alas the weather reports for the week ahead are not good. They’re absolutely dire in fact. And though we are not usually put off by crap weather (being hardy English folk) our camping experiences in June left us rather indisposed to attempt camping once again in Monsoon conditions with a 7 year old and a young baby in tow.

So much as we love Wales, Wales is out.

Now the plan is to wing it. Day trips out to Legoland, The Heights Of Abraham, The Hadrian Exhibition at The British Museum among others. Plus drop-in visits to various family and friends who are scattered up and down the length and breadth of the country. I think Karen (my lovely wife) is also arranging a trip to see the new Batman movie at the cinema on my birthday next Wednesday too and possibly a slap-up meal while the kids are securely corralled by a babysitter.

So all in all, it’s not going to be a proper holiday this year. But as “not a proper holiday’s” go, it should be a good one.

Let’s hope so anyway...

Arsebook

Following a justified dig at online social networking utilities by Rol over at Sunset Over Slawit yesterday I’ve misspent valuable work time this morning thinking up the perfect antidote.

I’d like to patent the idea for an antisocial networking utility which would function along the same lines as Facebook except that instead of trying to accrue loads of friends onto your web profile the goal would be to lose as many as possible. A possible name for this online service could be Arsebook (which, ahem, has a certain ring to it). I’m sure somebody out there could come up with a suitably pert little logo and even build and manage the site for me... cos I really can’t be arsed.

Members can accrue arse points each time they lose an online friend – and maybe earn extra arse points if they actually lose a real life friend that they’ve actually met in the real physical world? You could also install various apps onto your profile page designed to snub, insult and drive away all the other members who are there solely to pimp their band, homemade porno pics, terrorist training camps, etc. And there could be a status box where you could type in the current state of your arseyness at regular intervals of the day so that any other Arsebook member happening across your profile will know that you are flying the flag of arsedom and are to be added to their ever growing list of non-online-friends. Arsetastic!

Personally I think it’s a winner.

By the way, for those of you who have read this far: this is my 300th post. Send the Moet to the usual address please, barman...

Birthdays, OAPS And Asbestos

The high life yesterday – well, as close to it as one can get on local authority wages. I lavished Karen with loads of pressies on account of it being her birthday (I shall be a gentleman and not tell how old) and took her for a wonderful meal at The Saxon Mill, a lovely pub / restaurant just outside Warwick. Tom accompanied us too though he declined the sumptuous menu and instead stuck with his own supply of bottled provisions. Good lad – already looking after his daddy’s wallet.

The low life today – back at work earning local authority wages to pay for the meal and the presents above. No sumptuous meal this lunchtime but instead an asbestos survey being carried out by a third party contractor. Our H&S bods ticking yet another H&S box. I doubt very much that they’ll find anything but it’s got my skin crawling just thinking about it. Not sure why. Does asbestos make you itch?

And the afternoon can only get better. I have about 5 “old dears” coming to see me for some PA system training. They’re members of a local “friends” group who regularly help out the gallery where I work with various fundraising events and organized talks. Sort of an octogenarian WI. Calendar Girls without Helen Mirren, Julie Walters or appetizing jugs of any sort.

For their meetings and talks they like to utilize our PA System – a relatively simple piece of kit that they merely need to switch on. Unfortunately, whether due to their venerable ages or their collective horn-rimmery, they manage to mess it up every single time and then complain that the PA system doesn’t work, blah blah blah, tea doesn’t taste like it used to, blah blah, aren’t policemen getting younger these days and you spring chickens never show us oldies any respect at all ever.

So. I am giving them a free training session today on how to flick a single switch from the OFF to the ON position.

Laugh if you must but it’s your council tax that’s paying for it.

Generations

Last week Karen and I were finally able to take Tom up to meet his great granddad. As some of you will know my granddad has been recovering from a recent spell of C Diff which had delayed the meeting for a good few weeks until everyone was sure my granddad was fully recovered.

Last Wednesday the two generations finally met. It was very emotional and my granddad had a good cry as he held Tom in his arms. Due to Macular Degeneration my granddad’s eyesight is virtually non existent but although he was unable to see Tom clearly he could at least hold him and we in turn got plenty of photographs of the momentous occasion.

My granddad now feels more at peace and quietly told me that now he’s held his great grandson he’s quite happy to “toddle off” and join my grandmother in the afterlife. There’s not a lot one can say to that – he’s been deeply unhappy since she died – but I did say I hoped he’d stick around for a little while longer. Maybe until Tom’s eighteenth birthday party so he can buy Tom his first drink.

At 87 that’s highly unlikely but you never know. Some people respond well to a bit of gentle prodding...

The Galloping Gormless

The Wild Gourmets is obviously an attempt by Channel 4 to carve a small right-on niche for itself in the wild food corner that has for the last decade – and for good reason – been ruled solely by the King of Nettle Leaf Tea himself, Ray Mears.

Unfortunately, The Wild Gourmets, Tommi Miers and Guy Grieve, fail to establish a half decent base camp let alone set themselves up in our hearts as great survivalist leaders of the future. Ray Mears they certainly ain’t.

For one thing they patently lack the respect and reverence with which Ray Mears treats every environment he happens to find himself in and despite Guy Grieve’s constant macho flexing of his hunter-gatherer muscles the couple lack the gentle gravitas with which Ray Mears is able to entertain, instruct, befriend and, most important of all, convince all who watch his programmes.

Guy Grieve and Tommi Miers are two guffawing posh school 6th formers, too fond of Eton Mess and too fond of gasping in awe at their own mediocre achievements to really bring viewers onside. When I caught their last show I found myself subconsciously willing them to fail, anything to wipe those smug, rich-city-type-in-the-country smiles off their faces.

Guy caught a pike; cue screams of adoration from Tommi: “Oh Guy, you’re a genius!”

“Think nothing of it bitch. Now cook my meal.” Cue Guy stripping off to his short and curlies and dousing himself in fresh, ice cold river water while his smarmy voice-over informs us that he swims every day in a river near his home – come snow, rain or shine – and so sub zero temperatures mean nothing at all to him. Ha! A mite bracing is all! Tis good for the circulation don’t you know. And it makes my nips stand on end like a couple of magnificently sexy wing-nuts! Ok. He didn’t actually say any of that but he did strip off naked and give himself a “camp shower” in full view of the camera crew. Camp shower? Yeah right. That’s what I thought too. It seems to be something of a motif for Guy and I suspect he’ll be flashing his bum crack in every single programme of the current series until a lady’s top shelf magazine asks him to do a photo centrespread for them armed only with his wing-nuts and his shining, freshly polished wood axe.

What really annoys me about Tommi and Guy though is their take-take-take approach to living off the land. Twice now they’ve availed themselves of the vegetable and fruit gardens of huge houses that have just happened to be nearby (how is that “wild” food?) – given permission to take one of two items of produce they have proceeded to descend like a couple of starving locusts and help themselves to whatever they could get their finely manicured hands on. In the first episode Tommi even made light of the fact that she was essentially stealing.

Where is the respect in that?

Their attitude disgusts me. They galumph about the countryside with nothing but self-puffing arrogance and greed pouring from their mouths. Ray Mears always stresses how important it is to put something back into the environment – whether it be breaking camp in such a way that you leave no trace of yourself behind, or utilizing natural resources in such a way that the environment actually benefits from your having been there – there is very much a give-and-take ethos to Ray. He’s aware of the fine balance of both human life and the environment and the need to maintain them.

Guy and Tommi are only aware of their bank balances and the desire to acquire a quick hit of kudos from white collar business directors who like to take their management teams paint balling at the weekends to create the illusion of camaraderie. They respect nothing but their own temporary self aggrandizement. They see the environment as just something to be manipulated and played with in order to garner a free meal. They’re about as far removed from true hunter-gatherers as it’s possible to be. There’s no spirituality in what they’re doing at all and it shows.

Kit them out in khakis and a couple of pith helmets and they’ll have found their true calling.

“I say, Tommi – fancy bagging a tiger?”

Geez. The things you see in the countryside when you haven’t got a gun...


P.S. Bloggertropolis is now one year old! Hurrah! Soon be on solid food...!

Birthday Boy

Yesterday saw yours truly hit the ripe old age of 38.

Yes. I know. You’re all reeling in shock. “38!” I hear you cry. “But how can that be when your writing is always so youthful and (what’s the word you kids use?) rad?”

Well, it’s time to come clean. I’m a 69 boy and proud of it.

Erm. Let me rephrase that. I was born in the year 1969 and am proud of it. I’m proud to have cut my teeth (quite literally) in the space age. I’m old enough to remember black and white TV that closed down for the night at 12 o’clock. I can recall glam rock, punk, New Wave, Shoe-gazing and grunge long before they all stepped up to the plate yet again in the 21st Century. I can remember Penny Chews and Rhubarb & Custard sweets. I chortled at Hong Kong Phooey and Top Cat. I guffawed at Rentaghost and Chorlton & The Wheelies. I fancied Daphne from Scooby-doo. And Cheryl Ladd from Charlie’s Angels.

And 30 odd years later nothing much has changed.

Well. Apart from the fact that my hair is turning grey and I become a grumpy old git when I hear what passes for music on the radio these days. Bah humbug. Who told that Calvin Harris chappie he could sing, eh?

Anyway, I had a terrific day – Karen and I both had the day off work and she treated me to a fabulous Thai meal in Stratford. I was also showered in gifts – the most notable being a beautiful 7.1 Megapixel camera which knocks the spots of my old one by miles. I was also overwhelmed to find the Life On Mars and Rome box sets among my birthday bounty along with Hot Fuzz and The Last King Of Scotland. I have some terrific viewing ahead of me. Karen’s done me proud (erm, let me rephrase that... er, oh yeah; I’ve done that joke, haven’t I?).

Karen also treated me to various stylish articles of clothing and a couple of survival handbooks by the god of nettle-tea and mushroom sticking plasters himself, Ray Mears. The accoutrements to my life are complete.

Global warming can bring it on.

I’m ready for it.