I know, unbelievable isn’t it, I can hardly believe it myself.
Me, a sports injury, who would have thunk it ?
All these years, 53 of them actually without a broken bone to my name and nary even a sprain, 53 years of slovenly behaviour, all those years when my peers were playing football in Sunday Leagues while I preferred to wait for them in the pub, those friends of mine all have knackered knees, dodgy groins and operation scars now, me, I have not an ailment to my name, my doctor does not know my name, my pharmacist would not know me if I wore a name tag.
The RMS Titanic was built at Belfast’s Harland and Wolff shipyard between 31st March 1909 and 31st May 1911…
“You too can build your own RMS Titanic with this weekly magazine entitled “Build Your Own RMS Titanic”"
And so you dash out to the newsagents to buy “Build Your Own RMS Titanic” episode one complete with its free binder and the first part of the plastic scale model of the unsinkable ocean liner that sank.
The first episode is only £2.99 and you get the rudder in that first episode, so thats a good start, and although the thought does cross your mind that they’ve given you an exceptionally large binder that will probably hold, oooh, at least a hundred other magazines, you vow to place the order at your newsagents until the job is done and RMS Titanic sits proudly upon your mantleshelf.
Its like this you see, our company sells software, and hardware, but mainly software specialising in a specialist business application, no more clues.
And because we deal with some rather large corporates as well as thousands of smaller businesses, we are often involved with installing our software onto company servers and suchlike and in doing so have to speak to the customers company-geek, the IT manager.
IT managers in customer company’s simply exist to get in your way. There is an ideal way to install our software, its tried and tested, it works well in this particular configuration, believe me, we’ve tried it every other way, but the default way works best, its why we made it the default way, its true.
This news report caught my eye the other day, or more specifically caught my ear as I was driving at the time and it was broadcast on the radio, marvellous invention car radios, every car should have one, oh, they do ?
Its the story of a school in Wales who’s National Teaching Council have suspended one of their teachers for professional misconduct after hearing stories of her extreme classroom bullying targeting pupils in her care.
It was reported to be so bad that several pupils began bed-wetting in their anxiety and one pupil clung to the school rails one morning screaming not to be sent into the classroom, this same pupil flung herself against a wall sobbing when pried from the railings, poor lamb.
Ah Ronnie Lane, what can I say about Ronnie Lane ?
I have three of his albums for one (I think he only made three), I went to see him twice at Leeds Poly (I think he only toured twice, properly anyway), and I shared a beer with him one night…
Bass player with The Small Faces in the 1960s and with The Faces in the 70s he left the band in 72 when the writing was on the wall that Rod Stewart was a bigger pull than the rest of the band, Lane had seen the same scenario with Steve Marriot in The Small Faces in 68 and in any case wanted to move away from the commercial rock stuff that the Faces were pushing out to something with more of a folky-feel about it.
Bar-room sing-alongs were Ronnie Lanes Slim Chance stock in trade, songs like the Chuck Berry “C’est La Vie” (above) and similar stuff littered his song list on the albums and live gigs, you never sat down at one of their gigs, even during the slow songs.
They never made any money, every penny that Lane had earned from The Faces days was spent on purchasing a derelict farm and a broken down travelling circus with the plan that they could live the gypsy life touring the country and setting up spontaneous gigs in the circus big top tent wherever they stopped.
It sort of worked, apart from the fact that most of the circus trucks were forty years old, struggled to top 20mph and broke down every mile or so – coupled with the very spontaneous nature of the gigs meaning that pre-publicity was impossible, the venture was a bit of a failure and future tours would be of a more traditional University and City Hall stylee.
The second time they came to Leeds I went along with a couple of mates who had done some work organising gigs and parties with the Student Union, and it was during the bands encore that I was grabbed and dragged out of the auditorium – protesting all the way my two mates dragged me down corridors, out of fire escapes, back in the building via a delivery bay and eventually into a small room full of cases of beer.
We stood and waited, me asking what the hell we were doing here, we helped ourselves to a beer, and then the door was flung open and in walked the band and their entourage, assuming we were with the student union organising staff we spent a pleasant quarter hour chatting to messrs Lane and friends until a very large security guard collared us and suggested that now might be a good time to leave, I have to say that standing in this hulk’s shadow his suggestion seemed to be a very good one.
In ‘77 Ronnie Lane was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and eventually moved to Texas where the climate seemed to ease his symptoms, he formed an American version of Slim Chance and worked continuously as income was limited, his royalties from the work with the Small Faces were involved in a long-running legal battle, and he lost most of what he had in a scam that almost had him imprisoned, fortunately he was proven to be a victim rather than a perpetrator.
During the America years he was often supported on the road by Ronnie Wood, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart and a host of other British musicians, a couple of benefit gigs for him were made to pay for his ongoing medical treatment but eventually in 1997 he succumbed to pneumonia.
There is a lot of his stuff on YouTube taken from an appearance on the OGWT and an excellent two hour documentary released by the BBC in 2006 on his time during the travelling circus days called “The Passing Show” probably sits on a charity shop shelf in a town near you…
Some of the things that I nearly did, turning points where things could have been oh so different, a fork in the road of your lifeplan, the day when you make a decision to go left or right and looking back you realise that things might have been different if only, if only …
1. I nearly joined the cubs when I was 7 years old. My mates were all in the cubs and they had asked several times if I wanted to join, it cost sixpence to join and you needed a uniform too so yes, it was for monetary reasons that I hadn’t joined up until that point. But then one night my mother gave me sixpence and told me I could go with my friends that evening to the enrolment night, joy unbounded, I was to become a cub scout, one of Baden Powells boys…
There is a scurrilous stereotype about Yorkshiremen that states that they are just Scotsmen with longer pockets, in other words they do not like to spend their hard earned money in a free and frivolous way.
Let me tell you about my father and the gas cooker…
Boxing Day 1968 and Ned and I are lying in bed, thick woollen blankets pulled up to our earlobes for it was another cold frosty morning in the bungalow without the benefit of central heating, central heating being a thing that only the posh kids families could afford.
The procedure each morning was for us to wait, rolled up inside our blankets for our mother or our dad to get up first, rake out last nights cinders from the coke burning stove in the living room (the only room to have a source of heat), stack the stove up with more coke and then light the gas poker and leave it burning for ten minutes or so for the coke to take a good light of.
Now some of you will be asking of yourselves here and now, “wait a minute, he mentions gas, they had gas in the bungalow, why did they not have a gas fire, or even gas fired central heating ?” and you’d be right to ask such a question, truth is the thought never crossed our minds in those heady days of space exploration, formica and nylon goods, the bungalow had a coke burning stove in it when we moved in that you had to use a gas poker to light it with, and the thought that you could use all of that gas to heat the living room much quicker via the wonders of a gas fire was never even pondered upon.
I was reminded of ours when someone mentioned him on the radio the other day, Geoffrey, our walking monk.
To be honest Geoffrey is a bit of a disappointing name for a monk, I would have much preferred him to be a Dominic or even a Jesus (an underused name for anglo saxon children), but still, Geoffrey it is.
Brother Geoffrey walks the streets of west Yorkshire in an aimless fashion with a permanent fixed smile on his face, he has been sighted, clad in regulation monks habit, bare feet and sandals even in the depths of winter, walking the highways and byways all over the county, I personally have seen him often in Leeds but also in Huddersfield and to the east in Castleford where he is regarded as normal, Castleford having more than its fair shar of nutters and monks walking the streets being par for the course.
Prompted by Dan at Allthatcomeswithit to choose my best three films, and for no other reason that its a fairly un-exhausting choice and I have to be in another part of the country for a training course this week, then here is my decision, which is final and binding, so in no particular order the best three films in the world, ever, are…
The Official Blogsite for our fundraising cycle rides planned for 2010, and the depository for the 2009 C2C articles.........................
ITS ALL DOWNHILL FROM HERE LADS
THE MEECES
The continuing adventures of the two inch high cheese addicts and their Trap o'Doom conflicts...........
THE MEECES
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