“How many sugars does the dog take”

After Madge and Irvin had emigrated to Australia they were joined by their daughter Karen and her family a few years later – Ned visited Madge and Irvin a couple of years ago and was enjoying a cold beer in the garden when Karen called with her dog, and the tale, or tail, unfolded.

Some months earlier Karen and her family had taken a holiday and had delivered the dog to Madge and Irvin to look after for the week, after they came back they collected the dog and took him home, the next morning she was on the phone complaining that the dog had sat in the kitchen whining and howling at 4am in the morning and that she was worried in case there was something wrong with him.

Hidden Coins

There’s an innocuous story in Yorkshires finest daily publication, right here, that describes the finding of a hoard of gold coins hidden in a jam jar. Its a very nice story with a nice ending but it deals only with a piffling amount of money when compared to the hoard that Irvin hid in his garden.

Irvin was a window cleaner, a close friend of my fathers, and he plied his trade around the streets of Meanwood for decades.

Video Saturday – Deep Purple

It had to be, I had no choice.

You see the dear departed Chris held this band in the highest esteem ever possible for a band in the early seventies, I had The Faces, Chris had Deep Purple, thats just the way it is when you are 14 years old the shame is that you do not appreciate anything but your chosen favourite.

Years down the line we have taken the piss out of each other on many occasions over our choice of boyhood bands and the numerous and conniving ways in which we tried to grow our hair long enough to match our heroes, neither of us with much success as the Masters at our school had radar for spotting hair that encroached upon the tops of your ears or edge of the collar.

Hope he enjoys this…

I have sold your underpants…

Some days ago, on the way back from a business trip, Ned asked me to call at the launderette near to the office as he had to pick up his underpants.

Yes, he had no more underpants to wear at home for he had delivered the total stock of his underpant drawer to the launderette a few days before, I did not ask the obvious question of why he felt the need for an industrial launderette to wash his underpants when he has a perfectly serviceable washing machine at home for that is his personal business.

A Bad Day…

A big decision was taken at the board meeting yesterday with regard to the future of the business, more of that after 6th April, my job is safe, so no worries there then.

But then late yesterday evening I took the call that we had all been expecting yet still pushing to the back of our minds, and it put all of the business shenanigans into context, ie they are of no importance at all.

Nothing is of any importance anymore when you are told the news that one of your dear friends, a person that you have known since you were both 11 years old, (thats 41 years then) one of the original members of our gang, a close neighbour, a kingpin of our tight little social group and someone with whom we all hold some very tight and long lasting bonds with, has died after a short but devastating cancer.

We’ve been visiting Chris in the hospice for some weeks now and Tuesday’s visit was the hardest, but he’s gone now and free from the lingering suffering that aggressive brain tumours bring, now we have a support role to play.

T’will be rather busy around here in these next weeks … normal service will be resumed ASAP.

A Big Day

We travel to Birmingham today for a big event, more tomorrow, even I don’t know whats going to happen yet.

It might be the last time I use petty cash for a coffee stop at Tamworth though…

The VIP Channel

So the man who owns the hotel in Barbados orders £12000 worth of electronic “swipe” card equipment from us and I’m asked to go to the hotel and spend a week there installing it all.

I am very pleased.

The stuff comes into stock and I ring him to ask how it is that he normally exports the equipment that he purchases, and he answers “put it in your luggage”.

Snooker

We had a snooker table at home when I was a boy.

A proper, real, snooker table.

Three quarter size I admit, its not that we were posh or anything, just that our dad knew someone who knew someone else who had it before us and then decided that snooker wasn’t for him, and so it came to live at our house, a sucker for a bargain was our dad and you can’t get much more of a bargain than a free snooker table.

For Sale – Passport

OK, OK, for the sake of those HM Customs officials who have made it thus far thanks to an over-active search engine and top secret government algorithm, my passport is not really for sale, OK?

Metaphorically speaking it may as well be though, for I have absolutely no intention of using it to leave these shores, ever again.

Well maybe when I’m a famous artist and the trip to New York is to collect the multi-million dollar cheque for my latest effort on the subject of  “This pub down the road from where I live”, apart from that I mean.

Read this article for further explanation.

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Video Saturday – The Faces

Remember the days when your group were nobody’s if your drummer didn’t do a five minute self indulgent drum solo somewhere during the gig ?

I used to love this stuff, in my geekiness I even remember the tv show that this was taken from, a “Sounds on Saturday” a half hour live performance from a band, 7pm every Saturday on BBC2, I’d have to fight with my father to watch it as we all got ready to go out on the town (each to their own seperate vision of a perfect Saturday night) as he always wanted to watch Bruce Forsyth’s “The Generation Game”, half an hour later I’d be on the bus to Headingley and a gallon of dark mild in The Woodman, fish and chips from Bryans afterwards and then throw up in the garden when I got home – a perfect night.

I even cut my hair in the stylee too, cut it myself in front of the bathroom mirror then stole a half can of my mothers Silvacryn hair spray to make it stand up like that, never quite got the shaggyness right until I accidently used a pair of her serated edge shears one night, after that everyone would ask how I managed to get each hair to be cut a different length, it was my secret, until now…