Please be upstanding for....The Queen...

Broken

My comments seem to have disappeared. But only for the last post?

Hands Across the Water

Well. So much to tell you and, yet, so little inclination. My four year anniversary as well. The strange thing is that there is so much going on in my life that I should be committing it to paper/screen on a par with Keith Waterhouse. Still.

Dearest and I have just returned from a weekend in Cologne. Curate's egg. 'Nuff said.

My Dad went into Respite on Monday. He's back in Hospital today - blood sugar as low as a low thing listening to "Low" by David Bowie. It's hard.

In other news, I finally got accepted for redundancy. I know I should be over the moon, but I really am very wobbly with this, even though I knew I had no option but to accept the "King's Shilling".

Twenty Eight years it's been since I last had an interview and, as I peruse the classifieds, my bowels loosen more and more. Prelimanary telephone interviews, role-play, presentation-giving after the formal interview..........??????????

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And to top things off TNR has "tagged" me. My five secrets.

Well, first off - and given the synchronicity between myself and my Kilmarnock-supporting alter-ego - I find it truly remarkable that I too was a trainee carpet salesman. Christmas 1971 found me hawking the Axminsters, crap suites and £1.25-a-square-yard-shite on the corner of Princess Street, Moss Side, Manchester.

I had worked there about two weeks over the Xmas period when, one testicle-shrinking, raw afternoon, the 5 foot 2 inch owner ("Piggy Mills") and his 69-year-old-acolyte had to go somewhere. I was "in charge."

Being a long-haired, loon-panted liberal I set about my task with woeful worries about "selling" stuff, surrendering to CAPITALISM and putting the hard-earned of the Proletariat into the pockets of the MAN.

As it was, after three hours I only had one enquiry. A West-Indian couple (still rare in those days: even in Moss Side) entered. They were interested in a three-piece suite they had seen in the window. I showed them the same suite indoors and asked them to try it out. See how it felt etc etc etc etc. I was seventeen! What did I know about selling?

As I struggled with my financial dichotomy Piggy Mills and Bob returned and immediately (and I mean immediately) started screaming some of the most abusive, racist crap I've ever, ever heard in my life. All of it along the lines of " get out you b*l*a*c*k s*c*u*m": "We don't serve your kind in here........."

I got a right bollocking.

I told him to stick his job up his tiny arse.

It was a fucking long walk home from Moss Side to North Manchester.

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Dearest and I called off our big church wedding two hours before it should have happened. People had come from all over the world. We got married in a Registry office a month or two later.

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I was once convicted of "chicken rustling". Already dead.

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I was once propostioned by a twenty-five stone bloke who offered me a fiver (a lot of money in 1972) for a "play around". Brought up proper-like, I answered "not tonight thanks" and ran for my life.

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And finally, as I have written before, I'm fairly convinced that Hindley and Brady picked me up in their car circa 1965. It was always a vague memory, but what brought it home was the fact that, watching a documentary on it a few months ago, I realised that Brady didn't drive and the couple who picked me up were odd because the woman drove. I'm sure I only escaped because the gates at Clayton Bridge Railway crossing shut and I opened the door and ran and ran and ran and ran.........

It was years later when the significance hit me. Here's my originaql post:-

Sometime in 1965 at the tender age of 11 I stupidly got into a car with a man and a blonde woman after they had stopped and asked me for directions. I couldn't explain properly - or so they said - so they asked if I'd show them. Adults you see, in those days you were taught to be polite to them and, well the polite thing to do was to comply with their request. The minute we moved off I realised to idiocy of what I was doing and I become very scared. Neither of them spoke to me as we drove along. It was only afterwards I remembered that they supposedly hadn't known where to go. Fortunately for me we came to a level-crossing and a train was coming. We stopped and I quickly opened the door and ran and ran and ran.

Are you Happy now TNR? :-)

When I was a kid, me and my mate Graham adored Ancient Romans and Greeks. Our favourite though was Leonidas and the three hundred Spartans. Quality story (and true to boot). As we left the Matinee, our duffle coats flapped wildly behind our pre-pubecsent frames. Heaven.

I was looking forward to seeing the new interpretation - "300" - until I watched the trailer and Leonidas is heard saying "we're in for a wild night tonight".

WTF?

"Fuck me, they're Persian. D'you reckon they've got Kebabs???"

USA, for fuck's sake sake make an effort.

Let Us Pause In Life's Troubles.....

Some pretty famous faces in there, all performing a Stephen Foster song from the 1850s.

There is reason why some songs last so long.

Incidentally, Seth Lakeman was the DOG'S BOLLOCKS.