Dennis, and more Dennis

I’d like to dedicate this post to Dennis Creasey, a service engineer of note that I once employed for 15 years or so.

He hasn’t died or anything, or at least I don’t think he’s died since he retired six years ago, now you come to mention it he may have died and not told me, but not to worry, carry on…

Dennis was unique.
Dennis had Tourettes Syndrome.
Dennis interspersed most sentences with the word “fuck”, or a fizzing noise, or a noise like an alarm clock spring breaking when under full tension, and like that alarm clock Dennis would make these noises when under tension.

Dennis and religion

Remember Dennis ?

Dennis the tourettes service engineer that worked for us for several years ?

Actually, maybe you don’t, I’ve just checked, all of the Dennis the tourettes service engineer who worked for us stuff was on the old blog, maybe I’ll have to ressurect him this week, we’ll have a Dennis the tourettes service engineer week, I’ve got enough Dennis the tourettes service engineer stories to fill a month, easily.

Video Sunday – Siadwell

The 1980s saw a move away from the traditional stand-up TV comedian, and about time too, and the emergence of the story-teller comedian, illustrated perfectly by John Sparkes as Siadwell from the BBC Scotland excellent “Naked Video” series.

The idea of a bloke in a suit smoking a cigar. leaning on a mic stand and telling a string of unrelated and sometimes not very funny but usually racist, sexist or perm any two from three “ist’s”, suddenly becomes very bland and unappealing.

PS – For the colonialists, Siadwell is Welsh, not Scottish, thats a Welsh accent you hear, strange people the Welsh, we try and avoid them if at all possible.

.

And then of course, there is this…

Video Saturday – Bob Dylan

So early in 1972, and having been influenced by the fact that Rod Stewart seemed to include at least one Dylan folk track on his solo LP’s, I picked up our mothers Brian Mills mail order catalogue and therein espied Bob Dylans “Greatest Hits Vol II”.

Twenty weeks at thirty new pee seemed like some sort of bargain for the fifteen year old me, I was earning two pounds every fortnight selling programmes at rugby matches and records were the only thing I had to spend the money on, oh how I long for those carefree days of self indulgence.

Anyway, our mother would soon forget that I owed her 30p a week, she always did, and so the double LP “Greatest Hits Vol II” came into my possession, and a finer collection of Dylan tracks you would not wish to own.

More importantly the ownership of such a serious item in my rapidly expanding collection of LP’s elevated me to the pseudo music intellectuals at school, no longer was I considered a teeny-bopper with my Rod Stewart album tucked firmly under my arm, no, here was I a Bob Dylan fan and suddenly regarded as seriously cool by those in the know.

I learned the lyrics of nearly every song on that double album, and there are some bloody long songs on that double album I can tell you. I spent many an evening sat next to the record player at home with the headphones on, lifting the arm off the record after every line whilst writing the words down in the back of a school exercise book, in order to recite lines and verses at school in front of awe-inspired not-as-cool friends who regarded me as some sort of Moses who had come down the mountain carrying not slabs of stone but a Bob Dylan double album under his arm.

“Come gather ’round people, wherever you roam” I’d preach, and they’d sit in awe and mutter, “Is that Dylan ?” and I’d nod in that all-knowing way of the sinner who has seen the light and beseech of them to go and seek out the truth in the words of the Dylan, and I was cool, and it was so.

An Update

A deliberately short post today.

No, its got nothing to do with Michael Jackson, I was never a fan and am dreading the Diana-style outpouring of grief that is going to be thrust upon us in the next week or so, probably from the same people that were screaming “paedophile” a few years ago…

Anyway…

The politically incorrect farm …

Yesterdays post about my mates dad’s sweet shop reminded me of something else that used to happen in the shop on a regular basis.

People used to come into the small, very well stocked shop to have epileptic attacks on the floor and during the general thrashing around would tend to ruin several floor displays of food, the crisp stand was always a victim.

Its true, my mates sweet shop was a magnet for the districts epileptic sufferers, let me explain…

You mean you live in a sweet shop ?

When I was 11 years old something remarkable happened shortly after I’d started at high school.

One of the boys in my class came to me one day and asked me where I lived, when I told him he mentioned that he was moving to my neighbourhood the following week and did I know of Cooper’s sweet shop.

Of course I knew of Coopers sweet shop, it was the centre of our universe.

“Oh” he said, “well thats where we’re going to be living, my dad’s bought the shop”

He immediately became my new best friend.

Its all coming together nicely now…

In just 24 days we set off into the blue yonder, on bicycles, some of us may not return.

Yes, its that dramatic.

You think I’m kidding, the last time we had a lads jolly, one of the party had a heart attack, and that was just a golf weekend – he’s not coming on the bike ride though.

Chateau Keriolet, Bretagne

Of all of the places we visited during our Brittany trip, this was the strangest. This sketch was done in the evening after we had visited the chateau, mainly because the tours around the place were guided, you weren’t left alone by the guide, and you didn’t get long to stand around and admire this weird building, I photographed it and drew it up later on that evening, aren’t digital cameras great ?

This chateau has a wonderful history and looks like some children have built it using icing and toys from their toy box.

It was rebuilt in this style in the late 19th century by a very wealthy Russian Princess, Zenaide Narishkine, aunt of Tsar Nicholas II who had emigrated to France and married a Count from Brittany, when she saw his chateau she ordered it to be demolished and rebuilt in a style that suggests that she was under the influence of some amazing substances.

For instance the “thing” that you can see perched on the roof in my drawing is actually an iron statue of the Angel Gabriel blowing a trumpet, it has to be at least ten feet high but even it doesn’t dominate the skyline for at the other side of the roof is a huge stone bear gazing towards the North East and Russia.

This is the view from the back of the house, the front of the house is decorated with stone carvings depicting moons and stars, crowns and castles, the local stonemasons must have been smoking the same stuff as she did, it was probably the best commission that they ever did.

The couple died in the 1890’s with no heirs and the chateau was donated to the local Department of Finistere (the region of Brittany) and the local council turned it into a museum until 1957, part of the legal legacy being that the chateau and its contents were not to be dispersed – for nearly fifty years this was the case but over time the council sold off some of the land and some of the antiquities until in 1948, fresh from the war, a chap by the name of Felix Yusupov arrived from Russia claiming that he was the grandson of the old dear and wishing to reclaim his inheritance given that the council had reneged on the terms of the legacy.

The legal case lasted ten years and Felix was eventually awarded possession, at which point he decided that he didn’t want it after all and sold off most of the land and all of the house contents, then buggered off back to Russia. The house  was then  sold to a hotel company but they let it stand empty for 23 years as they had no means to renovate it.

In 1972 the local town mayor decided to help himself to a white stone chapel that stood in the grounds, he had it demolished and used the stone to build part of his new home nearby, how good is that, your local mayor travels the district seeking out derelict buildings to steal, just because he can.

Finally in 1987 the “great hurricane” that destroyed lots of Southern England (the soft southern nancies), also decimated the Chateau Keriolet, ripping off the roof and letting the rain destroy what remained of the inside of the building.

Only the kitchen survived and in 1988 its current owner bought the ruin and set about restoring it one room at a time, financed partly by the income from letting tourists look around.

The tour that we went on was supposed to have been with an English guide but she had gone home so we went around with a group of French people and the guide gave us a piece of paper with some English notes written on it. Most of the inside of the building is in that wonderful state of decay that cheap Hollywood horror movies revel in and although the tour was brief it was perfect in that there were no ropes to stand behind and no corny old paintings of ancestors that you weren’t interested in, in fact nearly all of the rooms were empty with joists and floorboards missing, it was like being guided around a building site, which made the experience even more unique.

I hope that one day we might return, its got to be the weirdest place I’ve ever been inside and I hope they haven’t spoiled it during the renovations.

Pont l’Abbe, Bretagne

I’m re-visiting my old sketch book and photographs from the France holiday of 2003 at the moment, seeking for fresh inspiration. I visited almost every small town and village along the south coast of Brittany during that holiday while the womenfolk simply sat in the sun outside our apartment, such a waste.

This one was unusual in that I actually sat in-situ and sketched it. It doesn’t usually work like that, there isn’t usually anywhere to comfortably sit when you find the perfect view, or some old woman has already nabbed the seat, or you’ve only got ten minutes left on the parking meter (not that I had to pay to park anywhere in Brittany, what a refreshing change), but this one was different, a quiet little town built around an old abbey on the coast and a tiny little harbour right in the middle of town where medieval houses mixed with Belle Epoque grandeur, the sort of place you could see yourself living if someone would pay you to sit around and do nothing all day long.