Pirate Radio – in Scarborough ?

We sat watching a historical documentary the other night, a historical documentary about Britain in “The Swinging Sixties”, bloody cheek, my childhood is part of documentary history now.

My children of course took the piss all the way through the programme and I found myself defending those strange flower-clad hippy creatures on screen, the way they danced, the music they listened to, the boundless enthusiasm and expectation of a new future and a new kind of life that they had, a life that would be totally different to the one that their own parents had lived through, a life based on love, and love enhancing drugs, where conscription of the youth of the day to fight governments wars for them would be a thing of the past.

I defended the 1960’s because I used to think that way too.

The Sunday Papers

So you sit there for year after year, you’re good at your job, you’re the Financial Director of a big company, you’re in charge of a multi-billion pound turnover in a monopoly business, you’re good, everyone tells you how good at your job you are, it pays well, it has lots of perks, you’re financially secure for the rest of your life and everyone inside and outside your company agrees at just how good you’ve been at your job, in fact you’re ace at your job.

But you’re not happy.

You want more, you want the Chief Executives job.

The Chief Executive is your mate, he’s your best mate actually and you don’t have many best mates, you don’t have many mates actually because at heart you are an economist and to be good at economics means that you forget things like friends and conversations that rivet people.

The CEO of your company is your mate though and he lets you know that he wants out and so you let him know that you want in, you want his job when he goes and you pressurise him to give it to you – he is not so sure, he thinks you are an ace at being Financial Director but he doesn’t think you’ll cut the mustard at being CEO, you have no mates for starters, and you need mates in the CEO seat, no mates in the CEO seat means the seat doesn’t stay occupied for very long.

But you nag and nag and nag him until one day you convince him to step aside and hand over the chair to you and you think that finally he has realised that you are good enough to do the job.

Secretly though your ex-mate, the ex-CEO has just stood you on the biggest banana skin you’ll ever see, he’s just dropped you right in the shit and only he knows that in just a few precious months you will be lampooned as a bumbling bluffing idiot who was a good FD but who was only ever going to be a terrible CEO and everyone knew it except him.

Happy twelve months in the job Gordon.

Hope the pension is still secure.

Not In The Sunday Papers – but well worthy

We went to a close friends 50th birthday party last night, the last of our lads group of very close friends (we’ve know each other since we were a football team at the age of ten years) and seven or so of the lads were there with our wives and partners and we did that thing where you all stand around and catch up on each others lives since you last met – I see some of them most weeks, some not so often.

We’re all 50 or 51 years of age now and we have been married, some have been divorced, some have had late career changes, one has just had a massive heart attack, one has (just this week) died of alcoholism, but the one thing we have in common is that all of us who were present last night have children who are now in their late teens.

So we stood around in a little huddle with beer and we talked about our kids and what they were doing and which universities they were attending and which one is about to be a big star on TV this autumn (more later) and at one point we realised that in our little huddle we numbered nine daughters and one son and perhaps we hadn’t done enough to keep the human lifeform in equilibrium, but still…

And then one of the gang arrived with his partner of several years and they had a little blond haired chubby faced cherub of eighteen months age with them and you glance over and immediately think “I didn’t know Mick had grandchildren” and you think for another nano-second and realise that atualy they don’t have children, its a long story but they don’t.

And then, if you’re me and a bit slow on the uptake, you remember the conversation that you had with someone several weeks ago when it was mentioned that they were going through hell trying to become registered as foster parents and the penny drops and you realise that this cherub who is stuffing his face full of cocktail sausages is actually their first charge.

They were a natural at the job and we all stood in awe all night.

I don’t know what makes a couple who have no responsibilities for raising children, who have a decent enough income and a decent enough house and seemingly everything that two people would need around them, go out and decide to take temporary care of someone elses child only to hand it back at some unprescribed time in the future – but whatever it is our old mate Mick has it, it was a humbling experience last night, but a very warm one too.

Video Saturday – Bryan Ferry

Bryan Ferry from the album “Dylanesque” sings “Make you feel my love”, if you only buy/download one more album before you die then make sure its this one, you would hate to have died before you heard this song, but of course you’ve heard it now, so, ermm, anyway, some soppy stuff…

In September of this year the current Mrs Jerrychicken and I will celebrate our silver wedding anniversary, 25 years at the wheel, 25 years of just agreeing and hoping she’ll go away and myther someone else soon, but more than that its coming up to 28 years since I first fell in love with her arse.

Yes, thats how it happened, we were interviewing for a new secretary at the place I was working at and they all had to walk past my office door to get to the interview room but of course I could only see the back of them.

Later the old bag who did the interviews asked me jokingly what I’d thought of the candidates, “the one in the jeans and houndstooth jacket had a nice arse” I replied in an instant, and so it came to pass…

“I know you haven’t made your mind up yet
but I would never do you wrong
I’ve known it from the moment that we met
no doubt in my mind where you belong…”

Now, why haven’t I got a bloody clean shirt this morning…

Flying tyres…

Many years ago…

So I’m driving in the Leeds inner ring road, I say “in” because is sunk down below ground level, four lanes of traffic, some tunnels, no central reservation to speak of, very busy.

I’m approaching the longest of the tunnels on a slight decline into it at about 60mph with traffic coming in the opposite direction at about the same speed when in the corner of my eye I see something moving in a trajactory that doesn’t match everything else – its how we spot things that are wrong, everything else just blends in and you instictively focus on the one thing that isn’t fitting in.

Complaining, the English way

I’m useless at complaining,more often than not I do that very-English thing where you just pretend that everything is fine and your happy with the goods/services but then you never go back there again and spend the rest of your life telling everyone how shit the place is.

This is how “that very-English thing” works…

You’re in a restuarant…

“my lasagne is cold”
“my shepherds pie is warm on the outside but its raw in the middle”
“my steak is still frozen”
“these potatoes are solid in the middle”
“this fork is dirty”
“he hasn’t brought my wine yet”
“he brought my wine but its the wrong one”
“my chair has only got three legs”
“the waiter blew his nose on my napkin before he gave it to me”
“that maitre’d just exposed his genitals to me from across the room”

<waiter approaches>

“is everything alright with your meal ladies”

<in unison>

“oh yes its lovely, thank you”

<waiter leaves>

“I’m never coming back here again are you ?”

I’m still not flying – what ? again ???

OK, one more, I’ve been reminded of one more thing…

Checking bags in, how utterly painful is that ?

I mean putting aside the stuff you can and cannot put into your hold luggage and putting aside the things that you can and cannot put into your cabin luggage and putting aside the things that you simply have to put into clear plastic ziploc bags so that the whole world can see your jumbo sized – yes we’ve been there.

Putting all that crap to one side, and that crap changes day by day and I’m probably out of date with that crap now because I haven’t flown for two years, not since the day after they brought in that stupid “no liquids on the plane at all, no siree, not unless they are ones that we can sell to you” – but putting even all that to one side I have had two bizarre occurrences at check-in desks.

I’m still not flying – part deux, part II

…continued from yesterday

I’m still not flying because,

Because I don’t like doing business with businesses who, having interrogated me like a criminal, having x-rayed all of my baggage like a criminal, having metal detected me like a criminal, having selected me out from the line to be frisked like a criminal by a gorilla who looks like he is enjoying the job just a tad too much for my liking, having made me walk past the armed police who glare at you from under the peak of their cap as if they have never shared a good joke in their life – having done all that, the airport make it abundantly clear that they are now moving in for the kill – they want the last scraps of your money before you leave the country on the holiday that you now deserve having gone through the stress of their idea of customer frikkin service.

I’m still not flying – part deux

I’m still not flying because…
I don’t like businesses that treat me as a criminal even as I cross their doorstep.

I don’t like businesses that make me stand in line for an hour or so just because they haven’t got enough staff to deal with the amount of customers that they already know are going to appear at their check-in desk at a given time, its not like its a surprise that 200 people will want to be served two hours before a specific flight is it, I mean some of these people bought their tickets 12 months ago, how much frikkin notice would you like to get your staff rota’s set up ?

The Laurel Inn

Another one for the Pub Paintings page, The Laurel Inn at Robin Hoods Bay

Video Saturday – The Lion King

This was the first film that we took Jodie to the cinema to see, she was just over two years of age.

We didn’t go because of her, we went because Amanda, her older sister wanted to see The Lion King and at six years old she was of a more suitable age, so we carried Jodie into the cinema, bought all the sweets on the counter outside and kept telling her what a special occasion going to the cinema was and how she’d have to be quiet if she got too bored and not spoil it for everyone else by crying or whingeing (subtext – or it would be me who got to take her outside and miss the film).

We needn’t have worried.