A re-post for remembrance sunday

Most people will not know this but the wife and I are on, what some would call, a weird kind of quest.  We are intending to visit every racecourse in England. Its not that we are big gamblers or even like horses particularly (we don’t) we just like the spectacle of it and the colour and noise.  Of course whilst we are at a racecourse we do have a bet on the races but its never usually much, £5 or £10 only.  If we win the bet we are overjoyed but if we lose we are not particularly bothered.  Having a bet on the race gives us an interest in the actual race and its outcome. But as I say, win or lose its still the same thrill watching ‘our’ horse.  

Going to a race meeting also means travelling away from home for a few days and that is as much a part of the fun as anything else.  We get to see other beautiful, interesting and different parts of the country. There are a surprisingly large number of official racetracks in England.  In total (including flat and jumps racing) there are 51 spread fairly evenly all over the country.  You can find a full list on Wikepedia. The furthest track South is at Newton Abbot in Devon and the furthest track North is in Newcastle, Tyne and Wear.  The track at Newton Abbot is the closest to where we live (Penzance) although it is almost the same distance from here to another track at Exeter.  So far on our ‘mission’ we have only managed 13 tracks in total so still another 38 to go!

Hopefully once we get to retirement age (not long now!)  we will have more time to spare and should be able to knock them all off eventually and pass the ‘winning post’.

On our latest trip, last weekend, we had booked a few days at a Pontins up near Weston-Super-Mare and a night in Bath in a B & B.  We had tickets for the race meeting at Wincanton.  We had a great few days and even managed to win a few quid at the track.  If you ever have the idea of having a few days in a chalet at Pontins DO NOT do it even if, like us, you can get get it a bit cheaper after collecting those bloody coupons in the Sun. Honestly the one we stayed at Brean was the worst place we have ever stayed.  We absolutely love Caravan parks as that type of holiday reminds me of the fantastic holidays we had as kids.  We have probably been to 10 or 15 caravan parks all over the Southwest all of which have been absolutely brilliant.  The parks we have been to before have been clean and tidy, well equipped and the staff have have been lovely and friendly.  Sadly at Pontins this is not the case.  The chalets are absolutely filthy (we asked to be moved from a disgusting one and we went to a slightly less disgusting one) , have very badly maintained appliances, furniture you only normally see in a skip and the TV’s they have in them stopped being made in 1990 (that is a fact). The whole park is in a terrible state and its sad to see as I always thought of Pontins as one of the major players.  They aren’t anymore.  Laughingly they had security controlling the entrance gates. As if any one would try to come in to that dump who wasn’t actually staying there.  I thought the security was more likely there to keep us in like in a concentration camp!  Don’t go to Pontins EVER.  The only highlight of our stay there was our day at the races at Wincanton.

After our adventures at Pontins we went up to Bath and stayed in a lovely B & B just out of town.  During the day we went on one of those open top buses that take you on a tour of the City.  It was interesting commentary and it was nice to see some of the architecture from the top of a bus but they charged us £15 EACH for a one hour ride.  I think that’s taking the piss a bit!  Maybe if you were a Japanese or American tourist it wouldn’t bother you but it does seem like a lot of money to me. Anyway the missus didn’t care because as soon as we got off the bus she found her way to the shoppers paradise that is Primark.  Of course I didn’t go in, I preferred to sit out in the rain on a bench for an hour with a takeaway cup of tea rather that be dragged round a massive clothes shop and being asked every five minutes “do you like this one?..”.  Bollocks to that. I’d rather sit outside and watch the tramps, beggars, winos and weirdos along with the Japanese tourists trying to shelter from the liquid sunshine coming from the sky.

 

After leaving Bath in the morning we set off for home.  I had estimated the journey would take about three hours but I hadn’t accounted for a couple of road closures due to an accident on one route and some Sunday roadworks on another.  The journey was due to be be pretty straightforward but due to the problems already mentioned I had to rely on the sat nav to get us home.  Of course the sat-nav-lady is such a smart arse bitch that the route home, although  complicated, was just a case  of following her staccato  instructions.

Because our route home was quite ‘off piste’ we ended up going through towns and villages that I had never been to.  It was actually quite nice to see other places some of which were quite picturesque. On our journey we went through a village called Rodney Stoke.  As we went through I noticed that the sign welcoming people into the village actually said “Rodney Stoke, a Thankful village”. I had never seen anything like that on a village sign before.

What was that about I thought and I was puzzling over it still half an hour later when we we went through a village called Shapwick.  Unbelievably the sign on entering the village said ” Welcome to Shapwick, a Thankful village”. There was also a sign pointing to a church and the Thankful Village Memorial.

Two villages half an hour apart and about 30 miles apart both with the same mysterious message on the village entrance sign. How weird and puzzling and interesting. The word memorial on the second sign was a clue and I vaguely remembered reading something ages ago about the first world war and Thankful villages.  I couldn’t wait to get home and solve the mystery.When we eventually got home I was straight on the computer and onto Wikipedia.

 

The term Thankful village does indeed refer to the First World War.  When the war was on all of the able bodied men of each village went off to fight in the war and there was terrible carnage and unprecedented massive loss of life.  Unbelievably there were 51 (out of about 15,000) villages in England & Wales where ALL of the men that went off to war came home again afterwards. There is a page on Wikipedia which lists them all and interestingly, of the 51 villages listed 8 of them are in Somerset (which we were driving through for quite a while), and I have now seen two off them.   There is only one in Cornwall, Herodsfoot.  Even more incredibly there are 14 villages where all the men came home from both the first and second world wars.  Herodsfoot is one of those.  The Thankful villages are fairly evenly spread throughout England & Wales (there are NONE in Ireland or Scotland).  For example there is one not  far from Milton Keynes where my Mum used to live.  It is called Stoke Hammond.

 

 

Lest we forget.

 

 

The life and times of my wonderful mother, Sheila Cusick.

Sadly, on the 10th of May this year my wonderful mother, Sheila Cusick, passed away at home in Milton Keynes aged 77. The saddest day of my life.

Mum had battled with serious heart problems for a long time and her heart finally gave out for the last time whilst she was in her own bed at home.  Her final moments were spent where she would have wanted to have spent them i.e. at home and not in some lonely, cold and impersonal hospital. She had her things and her memories and family photographs all around her.  No more pain and suffering for her,only peace. ♥

I used to write a blog regularly with silly stories and things that I had noticed around me. Mum used to read my postings when her health was better and they always made her laugh and we would chat about it during our regular Sunday telephone conversation.  After she passed away I was looking through old stuff including pictures and family tree stuff on my computer when I realised that I have not written anything for over a year.  I used to really enjoy writing my nonsense and I realised I had missed doing it.  So as a tribute to my mum I am going to start writing again. This first ‘revival’ post is going to be  different to the ones in the past and ones still to come. You don’t have to read this if you don’t want to but I felt that I had to write it out as I found it helped me to get through the grief a bit easier.  When I started to write this post I thought it was going to be reasonably short but as I have gone on it’s got longer and longer but it is hard for me to apologise for the length as Mum had a long and interesting life.  Read what you can. This posting is really for my benefit but others might find it interesting.

This post is intended to be a sort of “This is your life” about my Mum. For younger readers “This is your life” was a TV Show originally hosted by genial Irishman  Eamonn Andrews.  He would surprise a ‘celebrity’ and get all of their friends of family into a studio to talk about their lives. There are no ‘surprises’ as such in this posting it is a chronological laying out of her life. I try to use humour in my writings not because I don’t take things seriously but because its just the way I am.  My Mum taught me to laugh at problems and things that upset me and I continue to this day.

Most of what I know about mums early life has been pieced together over many years through conversations with her and by looking up documents and old family photographs.  Knowing where I came from has always been very important for me so I have for the last 20 years or so done quite a lot of family history research some of which is relevant here.  The hardest part about piecing things together has been the fact that as most of the relevant events were a long time ago the majority of the ‘participants’ are no longer with us.  Of those that are, some are not as forthcoming as I would like but they have their own reasons for this and it has never been my intention to upset any apple carts or bring any skeletons out of any cupboards, if indeed there are any. Skeletons I mean, not cupboards! There are always cupboards. Some FACTS are easy to verify as I have certificates evidencing births, deaths and marriages but the bare facts never tell the whole story. Anyway I have done my best with what follows . . . . . . .

Mum was born on 14th August 1938, a Sunday.  That made her a Leo for those that follow that sort of mumbo-jumbo. I don’t understand Astrology so I know nothing of the supposed traits of a Leo but I do know that the symbol for Leo is a lion.  That is definitely accurate.  Mum was brave and fearless her whole life. If you ARE interested in Astrology this is a link to an Astrology page with information about Leo’s. Napoleon Bonaparte was  a Leo as was Fidel Castro and The Queen mother (god bless her!).

Uncle George in RAF uniform

Roseberry street, Keighley

Mum was the youngest of 4 children born to my Grandfather George Carter and my Grandmother Mary Emma Carter (Docksey). The eldest child of the family, my Uncle George (Jnr) was born on 16th April 1920 when the family lived in Roseberry Street, Keighley, Yorkshire.  At this time my Grandfather was described as working as a ‘Dock Labourer (ex army’). During the Second World War Uncle George was stationed at RAF Cardington in a unit responsible for the barrage balloons positioned around the country (but mainly in London) which were to designed to ward off German planes. You can see the massive sheds they used (near Bedford) as you drive up the M1 Motorway.  RAF Cardington was also famous for being the home of the R101, the massive airship. Uncle George died in Lincoln in 1982. Mums mother Mary was from the Keighley area and when they first married she (Mary, my Grandmother) and her husband George(Snr) my Grandfather, lived with Mary’s family, the Docksey’s. The actual name of the village they lived in was called Oakworth.  They lived at 5 Roseberry Terrace. Oakworth is famous as being the setting and filming location of the film The Railway Children, which is one of my all time favourites. I have never discovered exactly where George Carter Senior (my Grandfather) was from.  Both his first and surname are very, very common and there are literally thousands of George Carters born in the UK around that time.  He and my Grandmother married in Tynemouth in 1917 when he was stationed at an army camp nearby.  That is a LONG way (107 miles) from Keighley so that part of the story is definitely a mystery. We will never know for sure how Mary met George and why they were not married closer to her home in Keighley.  It is most likely that my Grandfather was from the local area (Keighley) and that is where they met but decided to get married near where he was stationed.

Camden St, Grimsby

Cheeky bricks!

The second child born to the family was my lovely Aunt Rosemary. I only met her a few times but the family resemblance was striking.  She and her husband Ernest were both very nice people. Rosemary was born on 28th May 1925 but by this time the Carter family were living at 81 Camden Street in Grimsby.
My grandfather was at the time said to be a bricklayers labourer.  I have no idea why the family had moved to Grimsby, but I assume it was for work reasons. That was a move of about 100 miles. Aunt Rosemary died in Leeds in December 1990.

Thamesmead

The third child of the family was my Aunt Heather. Aunt Heather was born in Lincoln in late 1933.  The Carter family were by now living at 56 Arboretum Avenue, Lincoln.  A move of only 36 miles this time.  Again I guess that was for work reasons but I cannot be sure as I do not know what job my Grandfather was doing in 1933. Arboretum Avenue is now quite a smart part of Lincoln as it is fairly close to the cathedral. Heather and her family now live in Thamesmead, South East London, having moved there from Willesden (NW London) in 1973.

Lincoln cathedral

The last child of the family was of course my dear Mother, Sheila. She was, like her sister Heather, born at home in Arboretum Avenue, Lincoln. This is, judging by the picture taken from Google Earth, a VERY steep road. That would have kept the young sisters fit going up and down that every day to and from school.

Aboretum Avenue….Looks a bit steep!

Mums birthplace. Green door.

When Mum was still quite young (its very hard to say exactly when) there seems to have been some sort of family dispute. Certainly a big falling out of some kind.  The reasons behind it will now never be known. I would guess that whatever happened would have been before 1940.  I say this because in 1940 George Junior was intending to get married.  At that time, to get married you had to be “of full age” (21) or have parental consent.  George was only 20 when he married but lied on his forms stating that he was 21.  This must have been because he couldn’t or wouldn’t get parental consent. There is no other explanation I can think of as to why he would have lied and risked getting in trouble with the authorities.  He had a difficult choice but as his wife (to be) was pregnant there was no other way. The families were living quite close to each (when George was not at Cardington). I have had a conversation with a cousin of mine, Barbara, one of Uncle George’s children who sort of knew something about that (her dad had sort of mentioned it in vague terms) and certainly knew that her father did not get on with his father.  Barbara had never met her Grandfather or her (my) Grandmother. The real truth is not even relevant now but is buried somewhere in the past.

Then at some unknown date the family moved again, this time back to Yorkshire. I asked my mum about this quite a few times because until the last couple of years she had not mentioned this at all.  I was quite shocked as I had always thought that she had moved to London direct from Lincoln. She said she really couldn’t remember when this was so I have to assume she was quite young. I cannot be certain when it was but it was after February 1946 as that is the when her sister Rosemary married Ernest Winters and moved to Durham Street, Leeds.  Mum remembered that when she, her sister Heather and her mum and dad moved to Newcastle Street, Leeds (the street next to and running parallel to Durham Street) Rosemary and Ernest were already living there. If it WAS 1946 mum would have been 8. In the picture of Durham street (where Rosemary lived) if you look closely to the right of the pub is the start of Newcastle Street, where mum lived.

Durham Street, Leeds

Mum went to school close to the family home at Burley C E School close to Kirkstall Lane, which ran at 9o degrees across the bottom of her road.  She would have left that school at age 11                (I assume?) but I have no idea where she went after that or which school her older sister Heather went to.  She may have gone to a senior school but I don’t think she did, certainly she said she couldn’t remember doing so.  Just another unsolvable mystery. The next major event in her life was very dramatic…………………

The above is the earliest photograph I can find of mum.  There is no date on the back but I am guessing that mum was about 6 and Aunt Heather was about 10 or 11.  This would make it around 1944 when the family were living in Lincoln.  The writing on the picture is by my Grandmother.  Mums writing was almost identical.

In 1950 my Grandmother, Aunt Heather and Mum arrive in London.  No Grandfather with them! I have no idea what has caused this massive split in the family and it is unlikely that I will ever know. But as they say the truth is out there so never say never. In 1950 Mum was 12 and her sister Heather was 17.  My Grandmother would have been 58.  Whatever it was that happened must of been serious as I doubt a 58 year old woman would leave her home and up-sticks to London with two children one of whom was only 12 without very good reason.  It feels like some kind of escape but as I have already said I don’t know what actually made her decide to leave Yorkshire. Uncle George was in Lincoln and Aunt Margaret stayed in Leeds. Maybe they had just had enough of the frozen North, brrrrrrrr!

The frozen North!

Mackay House, White City Estate

When the three of them arrived in the big scary city of London I guess they were homeless and destitute.  For a while they had an address in North Wharf Road, Paddington.  Eventually they moved and settled on the White City estate in West London.  The block they lived in was called Mackay House which overlooked Loftus Road home of QPR Football Club.

1952

1952

1953

1954

1954

1954

1955

The pictures above have all been scanned from Mum’s collection and all have the dates (helpfully!) on the back.  Some of the dates are in Mums’ writing others were dated by her Mum my Nanny.  I think the most interesting picture is the one in 1954 where she is sat on the edge of an outdoor swimming pool aged 16.  I have checked other old photographs from the era and it is definitely the swimming pool that was once on the White City estate.  The pool opened in 1923 and didn’t get closed down and demolished until 1979.  It was massively popular in the 50’s and 60’s.

Bloemfontein-lido, White City Estate 1955

After Mum left school at 14 she had a few short term part-time jobs but when she was 18 she started work in a leather goods shop in Acton.  I don’t know the name of the shop but she carried on working there until 1961 when she was 23.

The next major event in Mums life was meeting my father George WC Cusick.  They met in early 1961 at the then World famous Hammersmith Palais, the nightclub in the area of its era.  All the youngsters went there and all of the music stars of the time played there. The Palais finally closed in 2007 with Kasabian being amongst the last performers. My Dad was living in the Ladbroke Grove area at the time so it would probably have been a regular haunt for him and his friends.  I have no idea really how often either of them actually did go there but anyway they did meet, fell in love and got married at Kensington Registry Office 09 December 1961.  They both look very young in the wedding day photograph below (and happy!). Mum and Dad were both born in 1938 so they were both 23 when they married.  I have only included this photo because I think Mum looks absolutely terrific in it. Young, pretty and happy.

Mum & Dad wedding day

When they first married, Mum and dad lived at 6 Bosworth Road, London W10 which is not far from Ladbroke Grove and the World famous Portobello Road Market.  It was Dads family home with his mother, Jean (Clarke) my Paternal Grandmother.  My paternal Grandfather George Walter Cusick died of food poisoning in 1944 when Dad was 6. I don’t really remember Dad’s Mum as she died in 1969 when I was six and I understand she spent at least the last year of her life in Tooting Bec Mental hospital as she suffered from Alzheimers disease.  Mum never said it to me as such but reading between the lines of what she did say I don’t think Mum and her got on.  Mind you it was an old run down house which originally had no electricity (lighting by town gas) and only an outside toilet.  Typical of the area in that era. Also it was soon to become quite crowded in the house! . . . . . . . . .

On 5th of June 1962 my sister Anita was born at Queen Charlottes Hospital, Hammersmith.  I followed on June 30th 1963 and brother Steven arrived September 19th 1964.  By now Mum definitely has her hands (very) full!!! Steven and I were also born at Queen Charlottes.  It must have been very difficult for Mum living in that tiny, run down house with 3 babies.  When Steven was born Anita was only just two.  I don’t know how she did it.  She was amazing.  The family had to get out of there and after a brief stay at Princedale House on the 18th floor(!) which is in Westborne Park the family of 5 moved into Whitstable house, London W10 on the more manageable 4th floor.

Whitstable house

If this was a blog about MY life I would now be waxing lyrically about how great it was growing up there.  We all had great times there I and I really wish I could turn the clock back and do it all again.  This isn’t about me so I’ll carry on with Mum’s story.  The flat compared to Bosworth Road was massive.  Mum and Dad had a double room, Anita had a single room to herself and Steven and I shared a bedroom.  Mum  has told me about all sorts of adventures we all got up to including me climbing out of the balcony with some sheets and getting caught (luckily!) by the neighbour below (remember we were on the 4th floor), Anita climbed a quite high wall in the small play area at the front of the building then slid down it wearing her chin away and Steven had the front door slammed (by accident) on two of his fingers nearly chopping them off!  Good times, hahaha!

Things changed again on 20th March 1969 when my beautiful baby brother, Peter arrived on the scene.  I very clearly remember going with Dad to the hospital to pick him and Mum up. Marvin Gaye  I heard it through the grapevine was on the radio.  The flat had suddenly got a bit more crowded.  When Peter pops was old enough to not be in his cot he moved into the  bedroom with myself and Steven.  Three single beds in that room did not leave a lot of room for anything else and Mum wisely invested in bunk beds.  I was up top and Steven was down below.  Peter had his own bed but if he got lonely in the night would often share either mine of Stevens bed.  These years were the greatest times of my life. All six of us were very happy.  Sadly nothing stays the same for ever and life moves on.

Nannys grave

Sadly in November 1972 my lovely Nanny passed away and I know Mum really missed her.  Of course at the time I was sad and I did miss her as well but I couldn’t understand the sadness completely.  I can now.  You can prepare for a sad event for years but when it actually arrives it is a 10 times worse than you could have imagined.  Mum must have felt something similar to what I am feeling now, a feeling of complete loss, grief  and still not believing that the thing you knew would happen has actually happened.  Nanny is buried in the cemetery at Kensal Rise.  Nanny’s passing precipitated Aunt Heathers move to Thamesmead mentioned earlier.

In February 1976 all six of us moved out of London a bit to Copley Close in Hanwell, Ealing.  Copley Close was a brand new housing estate and we were in number 201 a lovely 4 bed-roomed house with a small garden at both front and back.  The house was in a square of identical houses with a large communal ‘green’ in the middle.  In April 1976 things changed MASSIVELY for Mum and us 4 kids.  My Dad decided he could not resist the charms of a blond Scandinavian 20 years his junior and decided that the grass was greener on the other side and left the family home.  This was, of course, for Mum a devastating event.  Even putting her feelings for my Dad to one side she was faced with bringing up 4 youngish children on her own. This must of been a terrible and scary time for her but I don’t remember her ever complaining about it or running around screaming or panicking or even really slagging my dad off.  She just got on with it because she had to.  She dedicated the whole of her life to her children and I and my siblings will never forget that.  Her courage and determination and hard work got us all through those hard years.  I have no idea how she did it but I don’t remember ever being hungry or having no clothes to wear.  Considering my idiot of a Dad had refused to pay any sort of maintenance this was quite a miracle. I know Aunt Heather helped out where she could and we were all grateful for that.  The only upside to 1976 was that it was the Summer that never ended.  Everyday was hot from about May until September.  Hosepipe bans and standpipes were the norm that year.

Phew what a scorcher!

 

After most of the family grew up and moved out Mum moved not far and had some lovely years in her 1st floor maisonette in Homefarm Road, Hanwell.  She had good neighbours and still had our beautiful family dog, Prince with her.  The only issue I really remember her complaining about in Homefarm Road was the noise that the foxes, particularly the cubs, made in her garden.  She became a bit obsessed with them and tried all sorts to try and kill them off.  I remember bleach going down the hole she thought they lived in as well as concrete.  I don’t think it worked.

Mum loved the sea and always had a yearning to live near it and so in 2003 she moved to Hayle in the far West Of Cornwall.  This was quite near where I lived so I was very happy with that.  Christine and I took her all over Cornwall to different beaches and towns and she loved it.  Her favourite town was Porthleven near Helston.  It had a lovely little harbour and the bakers there sold the best pasties she said she’d ever had.  She also loved Lamorna Cove and Penberth Cove.  At Flambards, which is a tourist attraction, she was absolutely thrilled to see an exhibit they had entitled ‘Victorian Village’.  It was a very detailed recreation of a Victorian village including sweet shops, chemists, needle-workers rooms and a post office.  It was very interesting but I used to tease her that she liked the the Victorian village because it reminded her of her childhood!  Hahahahah! She was not amused! Still we did take her more than once so she cant have been that upset.

In 2005 when her health stated to fail she moved up to Milton Keynes to be near the majority of the family and more particularly my sister, Anita, who looked after her really well.  It helped me too as I didn’t have to worry about her, I knew she was in good hands.  Mum never lost her love of the sea though and her flat in Milton Keynes was adorned with several dramatic pictures of the sea.

Porthleven

Mum had various address in the Milton Keynes area but eventually ended up in a lovely bungalow at Corfe Crescent.  She has really happy times there despite her worsening health problems.  She joined various local groups and regularly went on organised coach trips all around the country including Blackpool, Scarborough (her favourite), Brighton, The lake District and various others. Everywhere she went she sent me a postcard (even if it was only a day trip).  I still have ALL of them, they are a treasured memory of her.  She always wrote something funny on the back.  She once sent me a postcard depicting a public swimming pool in Brighton that neither I or her had actually visited. The funniest coach trip day was when Mum and her friends had booked to go to Weymouth.  She was very excited about going there she told me because she had never been there before.  The coach sets off and the driver is noticed displaying some very odd bvehaviour.  He stops a couple of times for no apparent reason gets out leaving the engine running and disappears into bushes for 10 minutes with no explanation given.When the coach eventually arrives at the seaside the passengers get out and discover…..they are in Weston Super Mare and NOT Weymouth! Those two places are not even close to one another, they are 80 miles apart and on different coasts.  Mums postcard simply said “went to wrong place, still had a lovely time”, hahahah!

Not even close!

 

Amongst Mums lovely neighbours in Corfe Crescent was her wonderful friend Kathy Nolan.  Kathy and Mum had some right good laughs and some great times.  Mum spent quite a bit of time in and out of hospital and Kathy always looked after her flat, made sure she got some milk and food in for Mums return and just generally looked out for her.  I know Mum loved her and I will always be grateful to Kathy for making Mums’s last five years such good fun. Thank you Kath.

The wonderful Kath Nolan

 

Call the doctor there’s a pickle about

Last Monday I was sitting in my Taxi on the rank having my lunch during some quiet time. It was about 1 o’clock so about right for some nosebag. The Mrs had made me two absolutely lovely rolls filled with some roast lamb that was left over from Sunday lunch at mother in laws the day before.  To my absolute delight she had covered (literally COVERED) the meat in Piccalilli.  If you have never tried Piccalilli you are missing out and must have had a sheltered childhood. It is a relish of chopped pickled vegetables (mainly Cauliflower)  and spices (mainly Mustard and Turmeric).

It is the absolute KING  of pickles and improves the taste of any cold meat 10 fold.  The Turmeric gives it a very bright yellow colour.  Turmeric is used in curry a lot, in particular, Chicken Korma, mainly to provide the colour.

There was so much Piccalilli on the rolls that I got myself in a bit of a mess.  It was all over my hands and more particularly all over my face.  Just as that happened my step daughter and her friend pulled up alongside me in a car.  I was quite embarrassed (which is unusual for me) for them to see me wearing Piccalilli as clowns make up!  It was on my lips, chin, both cheeks and my nose.  I dabbed a bit on my forehead for good measure.

Anyway, at about three thirty I needed a wee so I went down to the public toilets by the Scillonian quay.  I started to wee into the trough and nonchalantly looked down into the trough and saw the most yellow wee that I had ever seen, and it was coming out of ME!  It was as yellow as a waxed lemon (I don’t really know what a waxed lemon is but it sounded somehow more yellow than an ‘ordinary’ lemon).  I was immediately worried.  Discoloured wee, particularly yellow wee, is a sign that something is medically wrong.  Dehydration is a strong possibility as is a bacterial infection.  All sorts of disastrous consequences were going through my mind.  Strangely though I felt completely fine and hadn’t had any other symptoms.

I went back and sat in the taxi and contemplated calling the doctor for an appointment. I got busy after that so I never got around to making the call and went home at six. When I arrived  home I went to the toilet again.  Unbelievably and scarily my wee was STILL yellow.  I called the mrs in for her to inspect it.  She agreed it was MIGHTY yellow.  Definitely got to call the doctor now.  But wait . . . . . .it came to me all of a sudden, could it be that the Piccalilli that I ate for my lunch had somehow stained my wee?  It was the only explanation, I felt fine and everything else was normal. Naturally, given the amount of cups of tea that I drink, I needed another wee later in the evening.  I paid very close attention to my urinary discharge but all was fine, it was back to normal.  Phew!

I think the manufacturers of Piccalilli should be forced to put labels on their product warning consumers about this potential problem.  Something along the lines of………..

“This product is absolutely delicious and will enhance the flavour of any cold meat but please be aware that it will temporarily MAKE YOUR PISS YELLOW, please do not panic if this happens!”.

Still not smoking by the way, 3 weeks today!  Nice.

Smoking, up in smoke?

I have great and quite possibly very surprising and unbelievable news! I have not smoked a cigarette now for (as I write this) 177 hours, that’s just over seven days (one whole week and a little bit) for those not good at the maths stuff. I can scarcely believe it myself.  

I have been smoking since I was about 15 which is over 35 years ago now.  That is a long time and a hell of a lot of fags.  As I have got older my addiction has got worse and until I stopped last week I was up to about 40 a day.  I haven’t always smoked that many but if you were to average out my smoking to say 30 a day for 35 years that comes to a massive number of cigarettes smoked.  I’ll work it out for you . . . . . .

35 x 365 x 30 = 383,250.  Over 380 thousand fags. Blimey! Is that enough to fill an Olympic sized swimming pool? I have no idea but you would definitely need a big room to store them all in if you purchased them in advance.  Surprisingly, if you laid the fags I have smoked end to end it would only be a chain of about a disappointing 25 miles, which is only about the distance from Penzance to Truro.

I am not going to work out what that has cost me over the years because if i did I would probably start crying.  Quite a few years ago a stop smoking counsellor asked me what car I drove.  When I replied that I had a Ford Escort she said that if I had not smoked I could have bought a Ferrari.  I asked her if she had ever smoked and when she replied that she had not I asked her what car SHE drove.  I laughed out loud when she said that she drove a Ford Fiesta.  Me wanting to stop smoking has had NOTHING to do with money.

So why have I decided to try very hard to stop smoking?  One word, my health.  Ok that’s two words, but who’s counting.  The bleeding things are f**king killing me.  They have been ever since I started but its been a very slow process which I couldn’t notice on a day to day basis.  When I first started out on the smoking ‘road’ I never thought I would still be smoking at 50. I convinced myself that I could stop at anytime.  Well I didn’t and like all addictions it has got gradually worse over the years and now (before last week) I thought I would never stop.

Recently I have been quite scared about how out of breath I have been getting doing even the smallest thing.  Walking from the bedroom to the bathroom would leave me feeling a little bit wheezy.  Walking up through town (with a fag on the go), which is slightly uphill, would exhaust me and I would have to stop every fifty yards or so and lean on the railings there getting my breath back and pretending that I wanted to stop just to admire the view (there isn’t one!). I felt like an old man.  I might be 51 but that is not considered by most people to be OLD!!

My mrs suffers from Asthma.  Most of the time it is under control because every night she has a go on her ‘puffer’ (ventolin) and carries a puffer around during the day to stave off any daytime attack.  Occasionally though, usually after she has has a bad cold or chest infection, she has a serious Asthma attack and she has to go up to the hospital to be plumbed into an ‘iron lung’ (or is it a nebuliser?) and receives a high dose of medicine to calm the attack. When she is having a bad attack she finds it very hard to breathe and starts to panic which no doubt makes things worse.  Well, I often have days where I have a great deal of trouble breathing and it is extremely worrying and scary. If I had even a partly blocked nose due to a cold or whatever very little oxygen was getting into my lungs. Pathetically when I was having problems breathing properly I would get scared and light up a fag.  It was laughable really.  Of course my breathing problems are self inflicted but that didn’t make it any less scary.

 

 

Anyway all that is hopefully behind me now.  I have a vape pen which has a liquid in it which contains nicotine so when I inhale the heated vapour from it I get a small hit of nicotine but without all the crap that gets inhaled when a cigarette is smoked, tar, various poisonous chemicals, carcinogens etc. Because of my years of smoking my lungs are very weak and will take a while to recover so I do not have much ‘lung power’ so I find the vape pen a little bit  difficult and can only use it occasionally.  As things go along I think I will come to rely on it much more.  Because of this I have looked for other solutions to my nicotine addiction problem.  I have found the best thing for me is Nicotine chewing gum.  I use it a lot.  There are some problems with it though.  Firstly chewing all day is quite hard work!  My jaws do ache quite a bit at the end of the day.  I have checked on the internet and discovered that chewing gum uses about 11 calories per hour, which on a standard 16 hour day totals up to be 176 calories, which is about the calorific value of a pork pie (nice!), so at least I am getting some exercise and helping to control my weight, HAHAHAH!

The second problem with the gum is having to take it out of my mouth when drinking anything (mainly tea in my case).  I have to put it on the side of the desk or the dashboard of the car whilst doing the drinking.  When I then put it back in my gob its all cold and hard and it usually leaves a residue on whatever surface I placed it.  The last problem is just one of disposal.  Gum is quite disgusting stuff.  I cant just chuck it on the floor or even put it down the bog, I have to make sure I always have something to hand to wrap it up in before throwing it away. I have trouble being that organised.

Anyway hopefully I have finally broken free of the smoking problem and can look forward to my lungs and general health improving.  I’ll keep you posted.

 

National National day

Strange title you might think but there is a reason for it.  Let me explain.  Almost every day on the radio and the television I hear that (for example)  “today is National Pie day” or “today is National Autism day” or the dreaded “today is National no smoking day”.  Well the one truly National day that doesn’t get described that way is “National Grand National” day.  Love it or hate it it the Grand National is an event that grips the nation.  Blanket coverage on the television, radio and newspapers.  The Sun (and others) provide a ‘National sweepstakes kit’.  It seems everybody gets involved. Old ladies placing 25p each way on half a dozen horses. Massive queues at the bookies. Its been like this since I can remember.  Donkeys years in fact, and funnily enough it seems that some of the runners I have bet on over the years have run like donkeys.

 

The down side to Grand National day is the day after when my Facebook feed is full of people going on about how its cruel to the horses as they are forced to run and jump, they are drugged and whipped and then when there racing career is over they are sent to the slaughterhouse to make dog food.  Most of the things said are inaccurate. Ranting and making false statements only weakens the overall case for those that are anti horse racing.   I don’t particularly like horses (although I do like to bet on them occasionally).   They are big scary things who are very willful and unpredictable.  I have ridden a horse only twice but both times I absolutely crapped myself.  I had no control.  There was no steering wheel, no brakes, no seatbelt and no radio(!).  The horse basically went wherever it wanted to at whatever speed it fancied.  Never again will I climb aboard.  It will probably upset horse owners if I say that horses are a bit mental, but to me it seems they are.

Even though I don’t like horses I wouldn’t want a horse nor any other animal to be deliberately or unnecessarily harmed.  The horses that run in the Grand National are not ordinary horses.  They are not like the horses you might see standing around in fields or working at a local riding stable.  You wont see these pulling a carriage containing a bride or groom or pulling a dray full of beer or in the past delivering milk. These are horses that have been bred to run and jump for more than 150 years.  All these horses want to do is run and jump, its genetics.  Its what they do.  Good evidence for that is the fact that if the jockey falls off the horse during the race the horse will usually carry on running and will also jump the fences and not go round them which they easily could.  They do this not because they are pack animals as is often stated but instead they do it because they like it.

happy-horse

There is an article in my newsfeed today written by PETA , a basically American organisation concerned with animal welfare. It is entitled “8 things they don’t tell you about horse racing”.  You can read the full article here, if you really want to.  Most of the points they make are just pathetic attempts at sensationalism.  For anti PETA material on the web try this or this.  I am making no comment about either of these two sites nor PETA‘s own site.  Make your own mind up.  All I will say is that if any organisation has a particular viewpoint it will look for anything that reinforces its own views and magnify them but I think people are not stupid and can discover the truth for themselves if they look beyond the sensational headlines.  People need to take a balanced view.

The thing that is often been brought up is that the horses are forced to jump the fences.  Well anybody that has ever had anything to do with horses will tell you that if the horse doesn’t want to do something no amount of cajoling will make it do it.  A fit and in-training steeplechase horse weighs 500kgs.  You will not be able to force it to do anything it doesn’t want to do.  My own limited experience with horses have proved that to me.

Horses do unfortunately get killed or injured when racing but despite what you might have heard its not a massive number. Modern steeplechase races have an average of just over 4 equine fatalities for every 1,000 horses taking part, according to the British Horseracing Authority.  By my maths that’s 0.4%.  A relatively small number.  The Grand National has received a lot of bad press over horse fatalities over the years because it is a massively high-profile event but changes have been made in recent years.  Some of the bigger fences have been reduced in height and at Beechers Brook one of the historically more dangerous fences the landing side ditch has been filled in and its overall height has been much reduced.

In the past virtually any horse could be entered for the race (like The Pie in National Velvet, haha!), but these days its much harder to get a horse in the race.  Each horse must be of high quality, it must have finished in the first 3 places in a good quality National Hunt race, must be rated at over 120 (a measure of ability compared to over horses, 120 is a very high rating) and be aged 7 years or more (racing horses are at their peak for national hunt between 6 and 10). If you had low quality horses in a race as tough as this there would definitely be more injuries and fatalities.

Red Rum

There can only be a maximum of 40 runners in the race, there has been as much as 66 in the race in the past although that was was many years ago.

Sometimes the jockeys ‘whip’ their horse.  If you were to look at a slow motion film of a horse race  you would see that the jockey is just swinging the whip and not actually hitting the horse. Thoroughbred horses mark very easily so it it is easy to see how many times that they have been hit.

The Jockey Club and other organisations stipulate that any more than three actual strikes and you are fined and eliminated from the race. If a horse is marked when he gets in, the jockey can face fines and elimination because the horse has been hit too hard.  The whip i s vital in helping the jockey ‘steer’ the horse. Some would say there is nothing wrong with a good whipping!

After all is said and done steeplechasing is a dangerous sport but the horses are bred for, they like to do it and thankfully they have a reasonably low risk of being killed. The top horses after looked after very well when not racing but if you drove around the countryside you would see horses all over the place who are badly treated and neglected having originally been bought as ‘pets’.

We humans  first domesticated horses over 4000 years ago and they have served us very well, including the estimated 8 million horses worldwide that were killed during the first world war.

war horse memorial

 

 

 

 

The Chinese are coming.

It has been so quiet on the taxi front recently I haven’t really had much to write about for weeks now.  Fewer customers equals fewer opportunities for fun and frivolity and strange conversations!  Hopefully with Easter coming we should get much busier. Last year we were literally overrun with Chinese people.  They were probably not ALL Chinese but without meaning to sound racist I couldn’t tell if they were from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam or wherever. Lets just say that there were a LOT of people from Asia in Penzance last Easter. I have no idea why.  As far as I know we are not ‘twinned’ with anywhere in the Far East but you never know.

Penzance prom?

The Asians I transported last year were not good tippers.  In fact they don’t tip at all. They like to agree a price with you for a journey in advance and will pay you exactly what was agreed.  You just need to be aware of that from the start so that you can adjust your ‘price’ accordingly.  They generally don’t want to go from Tesco to the high street they usually want to go to St Michaels Mount , Porthcurno , Lands End or St. Ives. or some other place which would be a good fare.  So I say to the good people of China (or wherever) 欢迎来到彭赞斯, which means “Welcome to Penzance” in Mandarin.

I noticed this week that the Government has announced that the National minimum wage has risen to £6.50 per hour.  Is this a good time to mention that this week I earned £5.11, yes that’s FIVE POUNDS ELEVEN PENCE per hour. Last week, perhaps unbelievably, it was even worse.  I dream about reaching the dizzy heights of the minimum wage.  This time next year Rodney we will NOT be millionaires.

Me next year?

The last thing for this posting is about a newspaper clipping I spotted on Facebook last week.  It is from the Star newspaper.  I laughed at lot at this.  Hope you enjoy it too.

Hahahahahaha!

In case you cant read it here is the text of the article:

“A taxi driver was tricked out of a £140 fare by a mannequin. The cabbie was hailed for a late night journey from Brighton train station to London by three men who agreed a fee.  He dropped the first man off 50 miles later.  At the next stop the second man gave the destination for the third man who was ‘asleep’.  But at the final address the driver tried to wake up the passenger only to find it was a fully clothed tailors dummy! . . . . . . . . . . . .”

Nice story.

I think maybe next time the driver in question might ask for the fare in advance.

twins

I don’t know if any of the good people of Penzance have noticed that a new sign appeared a couple of weeks ago at the Eastern entrance to the town, just by the three tunnels.  This is a photograph of it.

Look at the sign at the entrance of almost any town or village and you’ll spot a phrase on a sign that goes something like this: “Twinned with <interesting-sounding place>, <country across the water>”. Maybe you’ve always been curious about that interesting-sounding place. Maybe you’ve visited, and met the people, possibly even had some fun.

Town twinning, as an official relationship-builder, started in Europe after the second world war. The idea was simple: repair damaged relationships between France, Germany and the UK. Find towns that suffered during the wars and pair them. Then encourage people from these areas to meet, mix and get along. That’s why town twinning – at its core – is a good and important thing.

The first recorded modern twinning agreement was between Keighley (West Yorkshire) and Poix-du-Nord in Nord, France, in 1920 following the end of the First World War.This was initially referred to as an adoption of the French town.

In case you cant read the sign above, at the entrance to a small town in the far West of England, the first town listed as being twinned with Penzance is Bendigo, Australia.  I kid you not. AUSTRALIA!! I have had a look on Wikipedia and Bendigo does look like a nice town with some historic Cornish mining links but come on, its 12000 miles away. Not going to be easy to visit, “meet, mix and get along”!  

The same could be said of the one at the bottom, Nevada City, California.  Yes, CALIFORNIA!  Again looking at that towns Wikipedia entry it looks a fine place with once again some links to Cornish mining going back to the gold and silver rushes of the mid 19th century. It is 5400 miles away!  Not exactly touching distance.

According to the sign the middle two towns twinned with Penzance are , Concarneau Brittany, France, and Cuxhaven in Germany.  Both of these are lovely little towns and are not very far away and are also twinned more in the spirit of the original post-war idea.

Now the point of my posting is not to knock the idea of twinning but I think if we are to be twinned with far flung places it is just pointless.  The chances of reasonable numbers of Penzance people meeting with their “twins”, exchanging ideas and having fun are remote.

If the people who come up with these ideas are not careful things could quite easily get out of hand.  In 2009, Swindon – the Wiltshire industrial town often used as a synonym for prosaic suburbia – agreed to twin with Walt Disney World in Florida. Seven years previously, Wincanton in Somerset went one stage further by twinning with Ankh-Morpork, an entirely fictional city that appears in the fantasy novels of Terry Pratchett.  In that spirit maybe Penzance could be twinned with the mythical city of Atlantis or the destroyed city of Troy?

Man Up

I am going to use this weeks posting to have a bit of a rant about parking, general ignoring of road signs and shocking driving that I witness in Penzance EVERY single day. It drives me absolutely crackers.  I am not saying that my driving is perfect (it isn’t) but I have been driving for over 30 years and I now drive a lot of miles each week in my taxi so I am entitled to think that I am reasonably competent.

Most people that drive around our town are good drivers.  They are courteous to other road users (including pedestrians), they obey road signs and don’t park in ridiculous places.  However there are what appears to be a growing number of drivers who are not like that. Some drivers seem unaware of other road users (including pedestrians), don’t notice road signs or markings and think that they can park anywhere.  They seem to live in a bubble of self centered ignorant bliss.  Take this sign for example . . .

There is one of these at the top of Market Jew Street.  It means the ONLY vehicles that can go down that road are (unsurprisingly) Bicycles, Buses and Taxis.  It seems that quite a lot of people either don’t see it or don’t know what it means.  During the day (and not just during the busy tourist season) lots of cars routinely ignore the sign and sail down Market Jew Street.  The other day I counted four vehicles in a row coming down the road towards me which were neither bus, taxi or bicycle.  A few times in the past I have flagged cars down and told them that they are not allowed down that road but I have given up now as I don’t really want any more abuse and thinly veiled threats of violence.  The police or the Parking Enforcement Officers (these used to be called traffic wardens) should clamp down on this.  And there is no allowance for disabled drivers either, they also CANNOT drive down Market Jew Street. They like all drivers are allowed to drive UP the road.

 

Market Jew Street itself is an absolute shambles when it comes to parking.  It is slightly confusing as up the road there are some single yellow line parts, some double yellow line parts, some disabled spaces and some loading bays.  There are also a couple of bits without any markings whatsoever. It doesn’t seem to matter, however, to some drivers what the regulations are, they will just park ANYWHERE that that their car will fit.  Just in case anyone doesn’t know, the double yellow lines means you cant park at any time and the single yellow lines mean that you can only park at certain times. The times are clearly shown on a metal sign.  In Market Jew Street it is double yellow lines all the way up to Tesco Express.  Between Tesco Express and Poundland it is a single yellow line and then back to double yellows again. On the way up there are zig zag lines for the zebra crossing and at the top end there is a loading bay at the coop. After that its more zig zags for the second crossing then you are at the junction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

All day long, every single day, Market Jew Street is absolutely choked with parked cars along every inch of it.  Drivers just ignore both double and single yellow lines.  I see EVERY day a car parked on the zig zag lines at both zebra crossings.  My favourite is cars parking on the double yellow lines outside the post office which just happens to be bang opposite the bus stop.  When a fairly well loaded bus comes down the road and stops at the bus stop to let passengers on and off, because of the illegally parked car Market Jew street comes to a complete standstill with no vehicles able to go up nor down the road.  Its not the bus drivers fault, he is at a bus stop, it is the fault of the idiot driver who parked where he/she did.  Putting on flashing hazards lights does NOT make it all ok!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now you would think that Cornwall Council are aware of the problems in Market Jew Street and have dispatched at least three Parking Enforcement Officers to the town to keep the traffic moving. Well amazingly they have! Unfortunately you will not see them patrolling Market Jew Street to aid traffic flow because they will be hanging around in the Council Car parks trying to ticket drivers who have not “Paid and displayed” or have over stayed their paid period.  Or they might be skulking around the back streets of Penzance finding people who have parked whilst they are at work and have inadvertently got a wheel on a single yellow line. Nice easy work and much more preferable to trudging up and down the main shopping thoroughfare of Penzance where they might have to have contact with drivers and possibly receive some criticism or negative comments.  Perhaps even swearing or the threat of violence! They need to man up and do the job they are paid for.

And when did it become unfashionable or uncool to indicate?  A while ago I started tooting my horn every time someone turned ahead of me without indicating but as I was tooting about twenty times a day I just stopped.  It was pointless.  Not indicating is just plain lazy, is dangerous and has a negative affect on traffic flow, particularly at roundabouts.  How hard can it be?

Ding Dong

 

We are still in the midst of post Christmas, no money and poor weather January so not much to report on the taxi front this week so I was looking around for something to write about. Earlier on I could hear the Mrs yaffling on about something in the background and I wasn’t really listening (as usual) until my ears pricked up when she said that I should read the instructions for the nail machine she bought at Christmas.  I have no real idea what this thing does but I’m sure that in ‘lady world’ its a MUST have item. Here is a picture of what I am calling ‘The nail thingy’.  Below I have reproduced the installation instructions that came with the product word for word.

 

The installation procedure:

1.1 step: please send the product in your hand and then open the package and put package inside the bubble bag here.

1.2 the second step: the phototherapy machine over, smoke baffle, bottom. Then take out the lamp “remember to take the lamp to gently to prevent fragmentation” lamp.

1.3 step third: four jack will come up with a tube inserted in the machine inside, inserted on both sides of the tube first, then plug the middle.  Metal interface place the lamp to plug with your fingers pinch (remember not to seize the lamp); judgment is plugged in tight standards is silver metal parts are inserted into the lamp root, not leak outside, that is installed, can electrify.

Not surprisingly the product was bought over the internet and shipped from China. Google translate is good but not that good, obviously. If you can understand from that what you are supposed to do you are much cleverer than I.

The only other  thing I want to mention is a taxi job I had on Saturday night.  I was, together with another vehicle, to pick up 10 young girls and bring them into town.  The pick up address was Wheal Whistle, DING DONG.  I only mention it because its an interesting sounding name and for some reason makes me laugh every time I hear it.  

Slightly older readers will remember that “Ding Dong” was the catchphrase of Leslie Phillips of “Carry on . . . . ” fame. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV0lKD3KPsc

For those of you actually interested in what Ding Dong actually is, read the wikipedia article about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ding_Dong_mines

New Year new me?

Quite a busy night on the taxis this New Years Eve.  I finished at three but I could easily have carried on until four, five or even six! There were apparently still people wandering around town at 6 in the morning looking for a taxi to take them home.  In the main the people I was picking up until 3 were still able to talk and let me know where they wanted to go!  There were however plenty of people I avoided picking up IE drove right past because they just looked too drunk.  Here are some pictures  which illustrate some of the sights I saw . . . .

 

 

 

 

 

Quite early on in the night I received a message to go and pick up a group of seven from “a pub in Crowlas or Ludgvan”.  Bit vague that!  Luckily each place only has one pub and the two places are only about a mile apart.  I started with the Star in Crowlas.

This pub is popular with the village locals and is a real ale pub but at that time of night it was very quiet.  I went in and mooched about for five minutes and couldn’t find a party of seven who were waiting for a taxi so I left. I was a bit distracted as I walked out thinking about going up to the other pub (in Ludgvan) so I didnt notice the small step on the way out. I tripped and lost my balance but instead of just falling over and accepting my inevitable fate I carried on moving forward desperately trying to regain my balance.  I was moving quite quickly at about a 45 degree angle.  I could see the road approaching rapidly so I gave in and fell forward and hit the pavement very hard.  I grazed my knee and badly grazed and bruised my elbow.

My damaged elbow!

As if that wasn’t bad enough, as I was lying on the ground two passing ladies came up to me and one of them said “are you alright mate?”, “I tripped over coming out of the pub” I replied weakly, “Oh” she said “I thought you had got thrown out because of the angle you came out at”.  HaBloodyHa.

 

 

 

 

Also it might have looked a bit dodgy seeing a person apparently thrown out of a pub, fall over and then get in and drive a taxi!

As for the title of this posting “A new year a new me?”, well its not going to happen.  I am quite harpy with who I am.  I could probably do with giving up smoking (planning to do this soon), lose some weight (unbelievably I have put on over a stone this year!, fact hunt), eat a bit healthier and continue to refrain from binge drinking but none of those things will make me a better person (or a worse person if unachieved).  When looking at a New Year people often focus on all the things they want to change about themselves but overlook all of the positive things they have achieved in the preceding year.  Not me, I’ll stay just as I am thank you.

Happy New Year to all.

 

Smug is me.

Its that time of year again. Christmas I mean. The time for “peace and goodwill to all mankind” or so says the the definitive guide to these things, the bible.  Well looking at the pictures and videos of some of the scenes at the shops on ‘black Friday’ you wouldn’t see much peace or goodwill there. It was more like ‘black EYE Friday’!

 

Its another one of those stupid ideas some of our retailers have copied from America in order to generate some sales.  Some people were literally fighting over electrical products reduced by £20 or so and they were brands I had never heard of. Complete Madness! It wasn’t even nearly Xmas.  

Most years I go out and do my Xmas shopping on almost the last possible day.  I only have to buy for the wife as she does all the ‘real’ shopping for everyone else in the family.  I usually start with 3 or 4 pints of Stella in a high street pub and then stumble randomly around town in a panicky kind of way desperately trying to come up with some good ideas for presents.

 

I just hate that kind of shopping (or in fact ANY kind of shopping!).  People jostle you all the time, there are massive queues at the checkouts and it really feels like an unwanted struggle and there is certainly no joy in it.  This year, however, things have been very different.

This year I am Mr Organised.  I spent about 4 hours on a Saturday afternoon drinking tea, smoking fags, watching the mighty Chelsea FC on the TV and shopping on the internet.  I would think of something I thought the wife might like, research what products were the best, find the best price and then hit the ‘go to checkout’ button. Easy peasy lemon squeezy! I AM THE MAN!!

On the following Tuesday ALL of my many orders arrived at my home without any problems or fuss. Mind you I had stayed away from the big sites like Amazon etc.

I have just gotta hope that ‘she who must be obeyed‘ likes what I bought.  Like most years I wont have got it completely right but at least I got it wrong in the comfort of my own home!  I am entitled to feel  like a “Smug Bastard!”, and I do.

Happy Christmas everybody.

Mastermind

Another quiet week this week during the build-up to Christmas.  It seems people are not going out at the moment probably as they are too busy rushing around buying things for people they don’t necessarily like but feel that they must buy them ‘something’! People also buy those boxes of 40 cheap Christmas cards and send one to everyone they have ever met just in case they receive one from that person. No thought about what card would suit one person over another. Just random. Completely pointless.

I worked at Penwith College a few years back and I probably had about 100 colleagues working there.  Every year I would receive 60 or 70 Xmas cards from the staff.  I would dutifully open them, say thank you and then write out a card for them. Then I would take the (frankly rubbish) card home and place it on the yards of cotton we had pinned to the walls displaying it for all to see. After a couple of years of this I had had enough.  The last year I worked there, whenever someone game me a card I would put the envelope unopened at the end of my desk saying coyly that I would look forward to opening it later.  By the time we got to Xmas eve I had a pile of around 50 unopened envelopes!  n the way out of my office in the evening I slid the pile straight into the bin!  Hahahahah!  Unfortunately after I had left someone noticed my bulging bin and when I came back in the new year I received a lot of criticism and in some cases anger at my actions.  Some people are just as bit too over-sensitive.

All I could say was that if next year they felt liking spending 10p on me in the form of a card perhaps they might consider not doing that but instead put the 10p in a charity box and just wish me a happy xmas.  That year I bought no cards. Zero. Zilch. Nada. But I did put £10 into the Sally Army box. Same again this year.

 

The only other thing I want to share in this posting is about a customer I had this week who made me laugh.  I picked him up from the Coop, going to Madron, about 10 minutes away.  He was about 60 and seemed quite normal at first.  We chatted about the weather (as usual) and other light topics.

I had the radio on in the taxi, radio 2. Suddenly he says “I love music me, I’m brilliant at pop quizzes”. He went on to say that he had been on Mastermind with specialist subject being pop music.  Unfortunately he followed this up with “It wasn’t the mastermind from the telly,the proper one,  it was another one, I got 9 out of 10 and also won a medal!”  Hmmm. He told me he was going to apply to enter PopMaster on Radio 2.  Just as we arrived at our destination on the radio comes “You to me are everything” by the Real Thing (one of my favourite songs).  Up pipes matey “…thats Eddie Grant that is!”.  Say no more.

Hear it here

and Eddy Grant here

 

sprechen Deutsch?

I haven’t written anything on this site for ages and I used to really enjoy it so I have decided to restart my musings.  I am still driving a taxi for A Cars but its a quiet time of year what with Christmas coming so I haven’t been massively busy but I do have a couple of stories I wanted to write down before I forget them (my memory is getting worse with age!).

The first ‘incident’ happened on a Saturday night.  I went to a local pub to collect a regular customer and his wheelchair using mother.  I have picked them up plenty of times.  It was a short journey which would last about two minutes up to a care home where mother lived.

In my vehicle the front passenger seat is a ‘flip up’ seat like you get in a cinema. Its default position is flipped up. Anyway I pulled up, got my wheelchair ramp out and went into the pub to collect my customers.  I wheeled mother up the ramp with the help of her son and secured the wheelchair ready to set off.  When I pick these customers up they are usually both quite drunk but this particular day I noticed that the son was more pissed than usual.

 

I went around the front of the vehicle and got in the drivers seat.  The front passenger seat was up (as usual) and my bag containing my flask and sandwiches was on the floor under where the seat would be when folded down.

 

The son then got in the passenger door but unfortunately he had forgotten and somehow didn’t notice that it was indeed a flip up seat! He got straight in and sat on my bag.  Ooops!  He was so drunk he hadn’t noticed that he was sitting not on a chair but instead on a bag.  I decided not to say anything and managed to stifle my laughter with a sneaky fake cough.  The journey was only a couple of minutes and after about a minute the son turned to me and said “this seats a bit low isn’t it?”. HaHaHa.  I said to him “your on my bag you twit, its a fold down seat”  I think he expected me to stop at that point so he could sort himself out.  Of course, I didn’t!  When we arrived at the destination I think he was a bit embarrassed and gave me a £5 tip, probably in the hope that I wouldn’t tell anyone what had happened.  Obviously that didn’t work!

 

 

 

 

 

The other ‘incident’ I wanted to mention concerned an old lady I picked up from a pub in the afternoon.  I didn’t know this but apparently help-the-aged run education classes from a function room at the back of the pub.  The lady came out with a walker (zimmer frame) but didn’t need any help getting in (or negotiating the flip-up seat!).  She could walk fine she just used the frame for confidence and to keep the nagging family happy.

In the course of the journey it turns out she was 95 but she was as bright as a button.

 

During the journey I asked her what she was doing in a pub at lunchtime.  Her reply was that she was learning German!  I said to her in astonishment “why are you learning German?”. I thought maybe she was thinking of travelling there.  Her reply shut me up . . . . . . . . .”because I did French last year”.  That will teach me to underestimate the oldies.

Saturday night [not] at the movies

As you may (or may not) know I am currently filling my time and earning a few (very few!) quid by driving a taxi around the mean streets of Penzance. I am working for A Cars, a well established and well known firm of local taxis. I usually only work during the day, Mon-Fri but not Thursday. However, to (allegedly) supplement my income, I have also been working on Saturday nights, 6pm – 3am.

The two types of shifts i.e. weekdays and Saturday nights couldn’t be any more different.

In the day time I do a lot of picking up of old ladies from supermarkets, dropping kids off at schools and taking people to the station or the hospital. Customers are usually very friendly relaxed and grateful for the ride home.  They tend to be where they say they are when they call for the taxi and are clear where it is they want to go. I help them in and out with there shopping or cases and all is calm.

They often want to have a little chat about the weather or some other very light topic and the journeys are usually short and enjoyable for both parties.  Saturday nights are not like that.

Picking up from pubs is the worst.  Here is a typical example from this Saturday.

A call is received in my office at 11.25.  Punter wants picking up from a pub in Newlyn at 11.30. He says he will be waiting outside the pub.  He wants to go into Penzance town centre.  I am radioed with the job.  I estimate total time for the job to be less than 10 minutes freeing me up nicely for another pick-up planned for 11.45 in Penzance town centre.

I arrive at the pub at 11.29, nobody waiting outside but as I am a minute early I wait.  Six minutes go by, nothing happening. I get out of the precariously parked taxi and go into the pub. Unusually in the pub there are a total of four people.  Two people behind the bar and two VERY old geezers with a table full of drinks in front of them.  “Taxi” I call out, “no” they say.  I try the (very disinterested) bar staff and ask if anyone has ordered a taxi, “no idea” they say.  OK I think that’s enough.  I leave the pub and get back in the taxi.  I am about to pull off (ooer missus!) when a youngish chap who is clearly drunk runs up to the taxi saying “Are you a taxi?”.  After I point out to him that I have the word TAXI in massive letters printed down the side of the vehicle and a bright ‘TAXI’ light on the top he says “OK good, be back in a minute”.  Even though I am a bit frustrated I am also glad that my ‘fare’ is here and we shall soon be on our way.

Ten minutes go by and I never see the youngish man again.  He has vanished, possibly abducted by aliens or fallen down a mine shaft or into the harbour. It is now 11.50 and not only have I not acquired this ‘fare’ my 11.45 punter has also disappeared when I get to where he should be, at 11.55.  Probably got into a different taxi, cant blame him.

Pub pickups are always a problem.  Here are some traits of these pick ups:

• When the customer says he will be waiting outside the pub at the specified time, he wont be. Guaranteed.
• Whatever pub you will go to for the pick-up will (normally) happen to be the busiest pub in town that night and so is absolutely jam packed with people, even though it is usually a very quiet pub.
• On your way into the massively busy pub nobody, but nobody including the bar staff has heard of a person with the name you are looking for so you have to spend 10 minutes trying to track him down.
• When you find the customer he will have a full pint in his hand and have a table full of drinks in front of him.
• He will insist on finishing every last drop before he is ready to leave. So you have to stand there looking like a lemon whilst he does this.
• OK so now he’s ready, progress. But strangely, on the way out of the pub where nobody knew the customer on your way in, it seems EVERYBODY knows him and wants to stop and have a chat/hug/handshake with him.  Maybe get his mobile number as well which will entail him trying to remember how to work his ‘phone.
• Finally we’re out of the pub.  Where does he want to go?  Two or three minutes to decide destination.
• On the journey the customer will want to have a very in depth conversation about football or he will talk about the problems he is having with his girlfriend coming close to tears at a couple of points.
• We arrive after a five minute journey (could have walked?)!  Now we have to have another five minutes whilst he searches through all of his pockets trying to come up with the exact money for the fare.  Eventually he will just give me a £10 note anyway.
• Another minute to say goodbye to me about 10 times and then he’s off.  I am free!

Anyway that is just how it is on a Saturday.  The whole evening is just filled with scenes that usually only appear in the movies.  Dramas, problems, delays and frustration. Maybe I should not work on a Saturday and go to the cinema instead.

Worse than childbirth?

Yesterday I tore some of my intercostal muscles. In case you dont know where or what they are they read on.

Intercostal muscles are several groups of  muscles that run between the ribs, and help form and move the chest wall. The intercostal muscles are mainly involved in the mechanical aspect of breathing. These muscles help expand and shrink the size of the chest cavity when you breathe.

Athletes involved in sports involving lots of twisting often get this type of injury but I managed to tear the muscles by coughing whilst twisting round. The act of twisting your upper body stretches the intercostal muscles and the cough stretched them to breaking point.  I have torn one at the front just below by nipples and the other is in about the same position at the back.

When it first happened it was incredibly painful.  I screamed out, dropped to one knee, went very pale and felt sick.  I thought I would actually pass out.  I have had loads of injuries and accidents over the years but this was one of the most painful incidents that I can remember.

Not too long ago I fell head first through TWO glass doors (not easy to do as they were 10 yeards apart!) and had large shards of glass sticking out of my head.  That incident hurt nowhere near as much as this although it has to be said that when I went through the glass I was drunk!  Here is a quote from an online medical forum

“I can honestly say it felt worse than childbirth”

 

I find that surprising and an unlikely thing to be true but as I have never given birth (and being a male am unlikely to ever do) I cant be certain but it sure did hurt.

Going forward I have been given painkillers and told to rest but unlike other muscles resting your intercostal muscles is not really possible as without them you will not breathe! I think I will carry on with the breathing and just live with the pain.  Probably a bit better in a few days.

 

 

lottery chaos?

A group of about 15 people who work together in a supermarket near to me have just won half a million pounds (£500,000) on the UK lottery. That works out to around about £30,000 each.  A nice win. Its not a life changing amount though. Or is it?

Now, if you were working full time in the supermarket then you would probably not give up your job if you won that amount.  You might treat yourself to a smart new car and/or an exotic holiday but you certainly wouldn’t feel that you could retire.  You would still have the drudgery of working every day.

However, if you were only working at the supermarket part-time, and a lot of supermarket workers are part-time, then that would put a different light on things.  Maybe, if you were earning lets say £150 a week, you WOULD consider giving the job up.  After all that £30,000 would equate to about 3 and a half years wages!

In both cases the lottery winner has to make a decision. Carry on working or quit.  I am not sure what I would do. I probably wont ever have to make that decision, but here’s hoping!

Now imagine that the same group of workers had won not £500,000 but instead had won £5,000,000 which would equate to about £300,000 EACH.  That is a quite possible scenario.  The decision about carrying on working or not would be a no-brainer for the 15 shop workers.  The problem in this scenario would shift to be the store managements problem.

Imagine the chaos that would ensue if suddenly 15 of your workers won £300,000 each and left their jobs.  Who would run the store?  I reckon all over this country there are management committees constantly worrying that one day their staff will win big on the lottery and leave.   I wonder if you can get insurance for that?

Lastly I wanted to say that last week I won £2 on a lottery card.  This win did not change my life!

time, where does it go?

“Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.”

The question is often asked why we never have any spare time in modern life, in spite of a glut of “labour-saving” inventions and the growth of production efficiencies. I constantly hear people complain that there are” not enough hours in the day” to do everything.

Does the fact that we never seem to have ‘enough’ time relate to all the hours we spend at work? Unlikely as the Office For National Statistics records this type of data and a look at their website reveals that in 1913 (just before the first world war) the average worker spent 56 hours a week at work whereas a worker in 2000 would spend on average only 38 hours a week at work. That is a difference of 18 hours a week (or calculated over a year, over 900 hours less)!

One irrefutable fact we might recall is that we all have exactly 24 hours in every day, which is 1,440 minutes or 86,400 seconds. What we choose to do with them is what makes the difference, how we prioritize the things and people we want to spend our “time” on.

Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein and every other clever, productive or inventive person you might call to remember.

To finish off this post there is a link to a music track on You Tube (genre Trance), although its not really very Trance like stuff, but she has a great voice and goes on about ‘not enough time’ quite a lot! Cosmic Gate FT Emma Hewitt – Not Enough Time

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elRtbyxAlNE

Tourists, dont you just love ’em

I know there have been plenty of rants about holidaymakers before but I just wanted to get this off my chest.

I haven’t done this for a while but for the last two days I have had the joy of driving into Penzance and walking up and down the main shopping street, Market Jew Street.

Upto the middle of July I drove in and out of town two or three times a day.  The journey from my house each way took less than 5 minutes and was usually incident free. Because of all the holiday traffic yesterday driving in took me 25 minutes and another 25 minutes on the way out.  It is less than a MILE!  Cars everywhere and mostly all driving in a pretty random fashion. Cars came at me from all sorts of odd directions and angles.  Or stopped suddenly. Or turned across me unexpectedly it was like being on the bumper cars at the funfair.  It was amazing that I did not see an actual crash but there were quite a few near misses.

Driving up Market Jew Street, which is one way (unless you are a taxi or a bus), I was nearly rammed two or three times by  confused looking holidaymakers. All the while I had to watch out for pedestrians who had decided it would be a good idea to just wander out into the road without looking in any direction but straight ahead, to get over to a shop on the other side of the road.

When I eventually found a parking place I ventured on foot down the shopping street.  I wanted to walk from the top almost right down to the bottom.  Normally this would be a comfortable 5 min stroll.  It took me 15 minutes!

People on holiday do strange things when walking in front of you.  They decide it will OK to walk V E R Y   S L O W L Y  three abreast so that you are forced to take your life in your hands and step onto the road which is full of kamikaze holiday drivers. Or as you walk up behind them and slightly change direction to go past them they decide to swerve into your path.  Three times today someone decided to slam on their emergency walking brakes and stop dead in front of me forcing me to crash into them. Maybe they think that the people of Penzance are ‘crash test dummies’?

The worst incident yesterday though was a tourist who decided to turn very quickly across my path whilst wearing a massive rucksack which caught me square on the shoulder, ouch!  I looked at the man expecting an apology but there was no reaction, a complete poker face, I don’t think he even knew what had happened.

Now of course I have been on holiday many times but I am CERTAIN that I don’t behave in this way.  Maybe I do, who knows?  But I certainly hope not.  It seems that the tourists I have come across in the last couple of days are either drunk (unlikely) or have decided to leave their brains and common sense at home.

Obviously I realise that people coming on holiday to Penzance is good for the local economy but I just wish they would pay attention to their surroundings and not walk around in a bubble?

phrases

I like to try and write something everyday.  The thought processes involved keep me calm and stop me thinking ridiculous things.  So I sat down today and thought I would write something.

Unfortunately my mind was a bit jumbled and nothing interesting would come. So I decided that I would wander into the kitchen and make something to eat.  I have made cheese sandwiches using ALL of the cheese in the house and ALL of the bread.  As I did this possibly selfish thing a phrase my mother used to say ‘popped’ into my head. . . . . . .”you will eat me out of house and home”.

At that point I started to wonder about where that phrase and other strange phrases that we all use everyday come from, so I did a bit of research.

The phrase

Eaten out of house and home

sounds like quite a modern saying but in fact it comes from Shakespeares Henry IV part 2 (1597).

When I looked further into these types of phrases it became apparent that dear old Will Shakespeare is responsible for loads of phrases and sayings we use.  He is in fact credited with giving us 135 popular phrases including:

• A dish fit for the gods
• A fools paradise
• A foregone conclusion
• A sorry sight
• All that glitters is not gold
• As dead as a doornail
• Beast with two backs
• Discretion is the better part of valour
• Fair play
• Green eyed monster
• Good riddance
• I have not slept one wink

All of these phrases are very well known and used all he time and sound quite modern so it is amazing to think that they didn’t exist in the English language until Shakespeare wrote them down in the late 16th century. Lots of people say they don’t like Shakespeare and haven’t read any of his work so the fact that we use his ‘words’ very often is quite ironic.

As today is Bank Holiday Monday in the UK, some readers may be recovering from a heavy night of drinking and may be contemplating “a hair of the dog” to aid their recovery.  What does this phrase actually mean I wondered? So I tackled some more research.

The fuller version of this phrase i.e. “the hair of the dog that bit me”, gives more of a clue to the source of the name of this supposed hangover cure.  That derivation is from the medieaval belief that when someone was bitten by a rabid dog a cure could be made by applying the same dog’s hair to the infected wound.  How many people managed to get bitten again when trying to approach the aforesaid dog to acquire the hair to achieve this completely useless remedy isn’t known.

There are loads of other well known phrases we use all the time that have ancient origins, look some up for your self.

Failed your exams?

Students, have you got worse grades for your exams than you or your parents and teachers were expecting/hoping for?  Cant do your A levels now or attend university?

Well if you have ITS YOUR OWN FAULT!

Now I don’t mean its your own fault because you haven’t done enough revision and didn’t pay enough attention during the school year, or that your just plain thick, no its your own fault because you haven’t spent enough time down the pub!

At this point in this posting your teachers and parents reading this will be horrified and in denial. How can it be that the fool writing this is saying that you have messed up your exams by not going to the pub?  They will be blaming themselves.  They think they should have supported you more.  They could have given you more one to one tuition.  They could have explained things better. None of that is accurate, all they had to do was take you to THE PUB! Here is an explanation of why . .  . . . . . . . . .

Trying to learn stuff from books and by listening to teachers is hard and boring.  That type of learning is difficult because t doesn’t feel real.  The only way to learn stuff is to use knowledge in practical ways. Lets take a look at a couple of typical school/college subjects and see what the pub has to offer.

MATHS– loads of practical uses for maths in the pub.

First off you have your traditional pub games.  Darts for example.  In darts you have to do rapid adding up calculations involving three numbers in your head and then do some subtraction on the scoreboard.  You also need to be able to work out instantly what you need to throw in order to get the required score e.g. 139? Easy, its treble 20 (60), treble 19 (57) and then double 11.  Piece of cake for an experienced pub goer, much harder in a classroom.

When playing pool you need a rudimentary understanding of angles.  And if your playing a game of poker in the pub the required calculations are enormous as you try to work out the odds of ‘hitting’ the card you need, calculating the percentage of winning and deciding what to bet compared to whats in the pot.  Those calculations are done instantly by seasoned pub poker players.

Then you have more advanced mathematical topics. If on a tight budget you might try to work out which drinks to buy based on the cheapest price per alcoholic unit. Thats not easy to work out because drinks in pubs are not sold that way.

For example which is better:

Pint of Stella at £3.20 abv 5.2%  OR

Pint of Fosters at £2.60 abv 4.4% ?

Marginally, the Stella is better value in the volume-of-alcohol-per-pound stakes. These are things that you need to know. Being able to work this out correctly will bring you up to a very good mathematical standard.

Ok thats enough of maths, lets think about a different subject.

Local History- everyday in every pub you will find a group of people, usually older men, having an in depth conversation about local history.  All you have to do is listen (whilst drinking of course) and join in if you want to.  They will try to remember what buildings were before their current use, who owned which shop and what happened to them and they will also talk about historical local events like murders, fires and domestic gossip.  Loads can be gleaned by the eager student from these conversations particularly if you need to complete a local history project for school or college.  These conversations invariably drift and around and go off on tangents and if you listen long enough you will probably get a good Geography lesson as well.

By visiting the pub you will also gain all the social skills that you will ever need in life. I dont think ‘social skills’ is a subject taught in schools but maybe it should be because it will touch every area of your life. If you had gone to the pub you will have learnt about conflict management, fight dynamics (if you haven’t mastered conflict management yet), round-buying etiquette and not to get involved in ‘domestics’.

Heres an example of a domestic:

If you went to the pub more you would know how sometimes pubs just fall quiet for a moment or two. The couple having an argument at the bar of a pub I was running found this out to their cost when the pub fell silent just as the bloke shouted to his girlfriend ‘I shaved my arse for you!!!’.

Theres a lesson for us all there! 

So anyway you have messed up your exams but maybe its not too late for you.  If your doing resits try GOING TO THE PUB MORE!

A good kisser

I have been married for 18 years, to the same woman, remarkable some would say in this day and age.  I don’t know how she has put up with me all this time, I’m just lucky I guess! 

Anyway what this means is I don’t have to worry about ‘dating’, thank god.  I can still, just about, remember being single and how awkward I felt talking to someone of the opposite sex, and I am not a shy person.

In the old days, when I was a young man, everybody either met their partners at work or in a pub or at a disco (for younger readers read ‘nightclub’).  But these days it seems with everybody apparently having ‘busy’ lives, internet dating is the way forward.  There are statistics available for the USA which are quite startling.

• There are 54 million ‘single’ people in the US
• 40 million of those single people have used and internet dating site (close to 80%!)
• In the US the online dating industry is worth over $1 billion
• The biggest US site is E-Harmony, which has an application form with over 400 questions.  That is a LOT of questions! You would have to be pretty keen to fill that out.
• The split between male and female internet dating site users is approximately 50%, which is handy

In the UK the stats are harder to track down but there are an estimated 9 million UK members of online dating sites.  The largest membership sites in the UK are Zoosk (which started as a Facebook application), Match (also a US site), E Harmony (US again) and Elite singles (aimed at business professionals).

This is all well and good but what did singles do before the internet came along?  Well lonely hearts adverts were placed in newspapers and magazines. Because adverts were often charged by the letter ‘daters’ invented a language which was the fore runner of ‘text speak’.  Things like WLTM (would like to meet), NK (no kids), GSOH (good sense of humour) and many others. Unfathomable to those not in the ‘know’.

This route is still used today by a lot of people.  My local paper, The Cornishman, has TWO separate pages of lonely hearts ads.  There is a ‘normal’ one and a separate one for FARMERS!  Presumably ladies only respond to adverts in the second section if they fancy becoming a farmers wife, ha ha!

It also used to be reasonably common for people to advertise themselves on little cards in newsagents windows although I doubt whether anyone would dream of doing that now. But that particular dating route is what set me of thinking about this post.  I was somehow recently reminded of something I had seen on a little card in a newsagents shop window in Ledbury (Herefordshire) about 6 years ago.  I cant remember the exact wording but the card said something along these lines . . . . . .

“I am a single local man, 5 foot 10 aged 40 with dark hair and working locally. I would like to meet a lady for a relationship.  Age and looks are unimportant, personality is what I am interested in”.

Then there was one further line which, even though it is at the end, seems to me to be the MOST important requirement . . . . . . . .

“Must be a good kisser“.

Now thats what i call an advert!  No beating around the bush, direct and to the point! Nice.

About me part one, the very early years

This post is the first in a series of occasional posts where I reflect on my past, good and bad. This first post is about the early days, what I can remember from my childhood and schooldays.  I have done some research into my family history and know a fair bit about where I came from.  My story is typical of a lot of people from London of my age, nothing really remarkable happened but the late 60’s and early 70’s were an interesting time to grow up in London.

My family came from Cork, Ireland, to the UK back in the early 1830’s. So technically I am Irish by descent.  A lot of families left Ireland around that time due to severe economic hardships in Ireland mainly caused by a massive increase in population, following the Napoleonic Wars, and the repeated failure of the potato crop. They came for work.

I was born in 1963 in North Kensington, the poorest part of the Royal Borough of Kensington.  I was born in Queen Charlottes hospital, Hammersmith as was my sister Anita (1962) and my brother Stephen (1964) and we lived in Bosworth Road, W11.  All of the houses in Bosworth Road were demolished as part of the areas slum clearance activity in 1972. The house had no inside toilet, no hot running water and no bath.  We washed in a metal portable tub in the living room in front of a coal fire. There were two bedrooms housing my two parents, me and my two siblings and my grandmother.  Bit of a squeeze!

I have looked at the historical addresses of my forebears and, interestingly, over 130 odd years between when the family first arrived in the area up until my birth, my relatives all lived within one mile of Bosworth Road.  I guess it was quite common in years gone by for families to stay in the same area.  Also interestingly all of the streets that appear in my family history since 1830 have all been demolished totally in most cases and at least partly for the rest.  As I mentioned earlier it was a poor area and the slum clearance was dramatic. Six previous generations had all been, christened and married and had their deaths recorded in the same church, St Johns.

In early 1969 the whole family thought we had died and gone to heaven.  We were rehoused by the council on the 4th floor of a brand new tower block about a mile and half away, Whitstable House, in Silchester Road W11. It seems that the council finally gave in when my mother was expecting her 4th child, my baby brother, Peter (March 1969).

The block had 20 floors in total although weirdly the lift only went up to the 19th floor and from there people on the 20th floor had to walk! The block overlooked both the underground track (Hammersmith & District line) and the controversial A40 flyover (the Westway). It was modern and most importantly it had three bedrooms, luxury!  Mum and Dad had one room, my sister another, and myself and my two brothers shared a large double.  Still seemed spacious to me.

The block was part of a new estate but was still surrounded by lots of old fashioned streets destined to disappear in the aforementioned slum clearance program.  Remarkably, considering the war finished twenty odd years previous, there were loads of bomb sites. Houses and other large areas decimated by the Luftwaffe.  These bomb sites and the ongoing slum clearance provided a vast playground for young boys.

We absolutely loved it.  We clambered over rubble, went down big holes, made camps, set fires and generally had great adventures. It was a fantastic time and it felt very safe.

We also used to like to watch the men and their machines smashing down old houses.  Our favourite was the ‘wrecking ball’ crane.  They would move the jib on the crane making the giant iron ball swing straight into the bricks of a house devastating it and making a tremendous noise and mess.  

We were in completely in awe of the men standing on top of roofless houses standing on the edge swing pick-axes between their legs removing bricks, whilst next door the whole house was on fire.  They had no harnesses, no helmets and no other safety equipment.  I think in those days health & safety had not been invented. Below there is a link to a video made by Pathe News in 1971.  It has no sound on it but shows plenty of scenes of what I remember watching.  It is fascinating.  It could be probably used today on a H&S course as a lesson in what NOT TO DO! Definitely worth a watch.  The main focus of the video is Ruston Street  where my great-grandfather lived before he died. Ruston Street led to Ruston Close which was previously called Rillington Place, which and previously been very famous because of the murders of John Christie.  A very interesting case worth a read particularly if you are in favour of bringing back the death penalty for murderers.

If you are a Health & Safety officer, don’t watch,if your not carry on!

Myself, my sister and my brother went to Avondale Park junior school, St Marys Place.  We would walk down Walmer Road to get there.  Walmer road was one of the many streets completely devastated by demolition work needed to build the Westway flyover.  Walmer Road was somewhat unique in that only the south side (nos 2-128) was to be demolished along with part of the north side (nos 3-49 and 103-121) leaving isolated in the middle almost an island of three blocks of the north side (nos 51-101) which would remain quite literally in the shadow of the elevated dual carriageway above.

What was left of Walmer road

 

 

Other buildings of note in the area include the Trellick Tower which was designed by a chap called Goldfinger which always amuses me.  It was completed in 1972 and stands on the site of Southam Street, W11 where my great-great-grandfather lived.  A tiny bit of the street remains. The Trellick Tower was the tallest residential block in London at the time.

Southam Street by Roger Mayne

About half a mile away from our flat was the world famous Portobello road market.  We used to go there virtually every other day just to do our day-to-day shopping.  The market was very long and was sort of divided into three parts.  At the top end, near Notting Hill Gate it was mainly antiques.  In the middle adjacent to Ladbroke Grove it was fresh veg stalls, fish stalls, shoe shops and shops like Tesco (no superstores in those days).  The far end, up towards Golborne road was like the fore runner of car boot sales.  Loads of stalls selling all sorts of odd stuff including secondhand clothes etc.  We used to love poking around in that stuff!

The whole area was exciting, busy and vibrant and although I definitely would not want to live in London again it was the most fantastic place to grow up.  I really enjoyed my childhood living in and around North Kensington.

In my next post I’ll talk about my life from 12 onwards.

The drought is over at last!

When you sun worshippers out there read the title of this post you would be excused for thinking I was referring to the change in the weather from sunshine to rain, thus averting the chance of a ‘hosepipe ban’ being applied.  It is raining hard here in Penzance but that is not what this post is about.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, to what do I refer then?  Some of you ladies out there will know and most of you chaps will definitely know!

Today, the Premier League football season starts again after what seems like an age without it. It seems like it has been forever but in truth it has only been about two months since a ball was kicked in the best football league in the world, The English Premier league.

Probably going to be quite a competitive league this year as opposed to last year where a mediocre Manchester United side, managed for the last season by Sir Alex Ferguson, strolled to the title. Manchester United fans will probably disagree because they always think they are the greatest thing since sliced bread but I think they were no better than average last year and won the title ONLY because the other teams were worse.  Manchester City, Chelsea and Arsenal inconsistent, Totenham punching above their weight and a very poor Liverpool side, all managed to ‘cock it up’ in various ways and hand the title to those red devils from Old Trafford who were at least consistently average.  2012/13 not the greatest vintage.

This year I think things will improve.  Chelsea look favourites with the return of Mourinho but I wouldn’t rule out either of the Manchester Clubs.  Whoever wins its still going to be G  R  E  A  T  !!

The Joy of Penzance

Last week I wrote a post titled “Penzance down in the dumps” and followed that up with another called “End of the line?”.  Both posts may have given readers that there was only negative things to say about Penzance and also that I didn’t like it here.  To rectify both of those negative posts I thought I would write something which would be an attempt to put across the other side of the coin and redress the negative imbalance.

There are loads of positive things to be said for Penzance and I am hoping that after reading this post readers will leave comments emphasising the positives.

Anyway here goes . . . . . . .

Located in one of the world’s most beautiful bays, Mounts Bay, Penzance enjoys its reputation for excellent restaurants and cafes and is reputed to have more restaurants and eating houses per capita then New York! It also has an enviable reputation as one of the friendliest towns in Cornwall with a warm welcome to visitors from all over the globe.  As the business centre of West Cornwall and the focus of commercial activity for the whole Lands End Peninsula, you would be right to expect a bustling, thriving town. Yet Penzance still manages to be true to its heritage and always maintains its olde worlde atmosphere, the town successfully retaining its charm while simultaneously keeping pace with the specific demands of the 21st century.

Now a little bit of history.  The town of Penzance can be traced back to the thirteenth century. Originally called Pen Sans, meaning ‘holy headland’ in the native Cornish language.  By the 18th century, Penzance Harbour had become a bustling port and a centre of local commerce, mainly related to the tin mining industry.  Penzance Railway Station opened in March 1852, linking the town with Bristol, London and the north of England.  By the 19th century, the mining industry in Penzance was at its peak.  Its most famous resident, Sir Humphry Davy, invented the miners safety lamp here in 1801. It was to revolutionise working conditions for those toiling away in Britain’s mines. The town also boasted its own mining school, founded in 1890.

I moved to Cornwall from West London in 1996, that’s 17 years ago (so not considered a local yet!) and I still haven’t got bored of seeing the beautiful Cornish Coast every single day. Every time I am away from the town and come over a hill on the way home and I catch a glimpse of the town and the sea I am uplifted.  It still happens every single time.

Apart from the sea, which never looks the same twice, I love the people of Penzance.  I have always found them to be friendly and welcoming. I have never felt afraid to walk the streets at night for fear of being attacked or mugged unlike London where there were lots of areas where even I as a streetwise local would not venture after dark.  Of course in any town you are going to get bad people but I have been working directly with people for a very long time here and I can say with certainty that there are very few.

Lots of people who live locally complain about Penzance and Cornwall in general.  This seems mainly to be the people, particularly youngsters, who have never really been anywhere else.  They say that there are two bad council estates locally. One at Treneere and the other at Gwavas.  Those are NOT bad estates.  The people that live there are very much normal families bringing up children and making a living.  The estates are safe to walk around at night time and are generally clean and tidy.  I would certainly rather live on either of those two estates than Chalk Farm or somewhere similar in London.

Before people start to criticise the lovely and safe town of Penzance they should perhaps see a bit more of the world.

Of course Penzance has its problems made worse by the current economic situation.  Penzance people have to deal with low wages and high rents which make living comfortably difficult but at least we have the beautiful sea, and surrounds.  The countryside is on our doorstep.

Quite a few shops have closed in the town over the last couple of years but that is not a reflection on Penzance people it is a sad sign of the difficult times we live in.  There are still plenty of shops here and as well as the national chains there are loads of independent and interesting businesses still trading in Market Jew Street, Chapel Street and Causewayhead.  Even though a few pubs have closed down recently there is still a wide range of different types of pub available dependent on what you are looking for.

All in all Penzance is a great town.  I love living here and I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.  Please feel free to make any comments either negative or positive about Penzance.

 

Bullshitters

What is is with bullshitters?  It seems that if you are a bullshitter even when everyone knows they are bullshitting and they know everyone knows they still have to carry on the charade?  Maybe because they tell so many lies they don’t know the truth anymore.  They are obviously stupid people and continually prove that fact by misguidedly thinking that everyone else is stupid. I am not stupid.

I have this week been very disappointed with someone.  A relative in fact. This relative moved down to Penzance from the god-forsaken central England town of Milton Keynes. He said he had to get out of Milton Keynes because he was scared of getting beaten-up by some drug dealers who were upset that he had refused to peddle drugs for them.  Could have been bullshit and he just wanted to get away from a crap town but it sounded plausible.  

When he came down to Penzance he had no money, nowhere to live and didn’t know what to do. This person was, as already mentioned, a relative of mine but I think I would have tried to help him out even if he wasn’t. I am a decent person who also happens to know a lot of people in town and I have good knowledge of housing benefit and jobseekers allowance systems.

 

Even though I was incredibly busy at the time with my Bar I spent the first few days driving him around getting him organised.  He had no money for a deposit and the local Council would not help him so I spoke to a friend of mine who owns a house locally and lets out rooms.  I told my friend that my relative had no deposit but i would vouch for him and he would be a good tenant. My friend agreed that he could move in without paying a deposit on the back of my good name.  I spent the next couple of days taking him between the council and the jobcentre getting all the forms filled out and handed in to the appropriate place.  My relative said he was very keen to get a job and stay down in Penzance permanently. All was well.

My relative has been in the house for six weeks now and has paid NO RENT. For the first five weeks I believed his story that the council were being very slow processing his claim.  Every time I saw him (a couple of times a week) I would ask him how his claims were going and he would say something about a delay and have some plausible reason for the delay. By week six I started to have my doubts.  I called my relative and asked him what was going on.  He said he had an appointment at the Council at 1pm that day to ‘sort it out’.  I was already in suspicious mode so I went to the council offices and waited outside to see if he would show.  He didn’t.  Later I called him and asked how he had got on at the council. He proceeded to tell me a long and complicated story about the forms they went through and blah, blah, blah. I said to him that I was at the council office and didn’t see him but he said he had got there early and was taken into a ‘back’ room.  Much later that day I went to the Council offices myself and spoke to the manager claiming to be the landlord (bit naughty I know). The manager said that my relative had NOT been there that day and they they had PAID the rent into his account at least a week previous.  To say I was not happy would be an understatement.  Anyone who knows me well would say that I don’t get angry very often but when I do I get VERY ANGRY. I also spoke to someone I know at the local Jobcentre who told me that they had issued him a large giro a couple of weeks earlier but now he had somehow managed to get his claim closed.  Probably couldn’t be arsed to sign on. Who knows.

 

That was it, I was MAD know.  I called my relative. His girlfriend answered. He wouldn’t come on the ‘phone.  She told me she was in Longrock (near Penzance).  I drove to Longrock, couldn’t find him.  Another friend of mine had had a text from him saying he was at his girlfriends house in Marazion (near Penzance), drove there couldn’t find him.

I have made it quite clear to him that everyone, especially me, knows he is lying but he just carries on either lying or avoiding me.  He wont feel so clever when he is evicted from the house he is staying in. He probably wont care that he has damaged my relationship with my friend who owns the house. I would still help him if he came to me and stopped the bullshit and asked for some help but because he is stupid he wont do that and will eventually have to sod off back to Milton Keynes and deal with what are probably ‘imaginary’ angry drug dealers.

Designer dogs

I love dogs. My family and I have had dogs since I was very young (a long time ago!).  They are mans best friend.  No other animal can come even close to the special relationship between man and dogs. Even though there are thousands of different dog breeds of all shapes and sizes in the world, ALL dogs are descended from the Wolf.

Humans started to domesticate dogs about 4000 years ago. Over countless generations different characteristics have been bred in or out to produce the vast range of different dogs we see today. In England the body responsible for breed types is The Kennel Club. who are based in Piccadilly, London.  The Kennel Club keeps a national register of pedigree dogs.

Now when I was a kid in the late sixties and seventies any dog which was not a ‘pedigree’ dog was a mongrel.  That would be a dog born from two parents who were not of the same breed. A snippet from an online dictionary defines it thus:

mon·grel  (mnggrl, mng-)

n.

1. An animal or a plant resulting from various interbreedings, especially a dog of mixed or undetermined breed.

2. A cross between different breeds, groups, or varieties, especially a mixture that is or appears to be incongruous.

adj.

Of mixed origin or character.

mon·grel  (mnggrl, mng-)

n.

1. An animal or a plant resulting from various interbreedings, especially a dog of mixed or undetermined breed.

2. A cross between different breeds, groups, or varieties, especially a mixture that is or appears to be incongruous.

adj.

Of mixed origin or character.

A dog that was a mongrel was virtually worthless in financial terms.  Owners of mongrel puppies would give them away to prospective new owners. They could not be sold because only pedigree dogs were of any financial worth.

 

Now something very strange has happened.  It seems the Mongrel is now worth tons of money.  People are inventing their own breeds, giving them fancy names and selling them for an absolute fortune.  I just don’t get it. Ordinary people it seems are being fooled by these crazy made up breed names and getting themselves what appear to be pedigree mongrels! The names are usually just portmanteau words (a combination of two or more words into one word).  Some people describe these ‘new’ breeds as designer dogs. We used to call them mongrels, mutts, curs, heinz 57 and bistsa dogs (bits of this bits of that!)

Here are a few ‘breeds’ of dog which can be currently found with a quick trawl ‘dogs for sale’ sites on the internet.

Sheperdoodle – German Shepherd and poodle

Sprollie (I am NOT making this up!)- Springer Spaniel and Collie

Labradoodle- Labrador and Poodle

Maltipoo – Maltese and Poodle

Cavapoo – Cavilier King Charles and Poodle

Sprocker- Springer and Cocker spaniel

 

Pooshi – A Shitzu and a Poodle

Cockapoo – Poodles and Cocker Spaniel

Jacapoo – Jack Russell and Poodle

Beaglier -Cavilier Spaniel and Beagle

Jackchi -Jack Russell and Chihuahua

Puggle -Beagle and Pug

There are LOADS more.  One thing you will notice is that POODLE appears quite a lot.  Maybe they are the ‘superstuds’ and randy buggers of the canine world?

Anyway as I said at the beginning I love dogs, they will always find a way to make you laugh!