The Sunday Papers

Here's a cracking spoof review of Man City's game with Aris on Wednesday night.  Well, I say spoof, some wags are sure it's taken from The Daily Mirror verbatim:-

"Manchester City's £1bn squad again failed to impress as goal-shy Edin Dzecko and £200k-per-week flop Yaya Touré scuffed them into the next round.

Despite packing his side with expensive attacking flair, Roberto Mancini watched in dismay as his handsomely-paid charges once again failed to inspire, scoring only three times and never looking likely to concede.

A defensive error and a lucky deflection gave an undeserved gloss to a scoreline that cannot disguise the fact that a side that everybody predicted would take time to gel has, in fact, taken time to gel and is now, surprisingly, beginning to gel.

The absence of Carlos Tevez's name on scoresheet will concern those observers whose tactical analysis extends no further than insisting that City only win when the busy Argentinian gets a goal, while the failure of Mario Balotelli to do anything that could be slowed down and endlessly replayed as evidence of his suspect temperament offers further proof that he is yet to justify his enormous price-tag.

Mancini cut a forlorn figure in the dugout as he contemplated a trip to Kiev in the next round of a tournament that, although regarded as beneath contempt by the punditocracy, his side must now win if he is not to be branded an abject failure and hounded out of office come the end of the season."

Quality.  :)

I Just Died in your Arms Tonight....

A group of us watched a man die a lingering death on Friday evening.  Given the location I guess we kind of knew that it was a very real possibility but even so it's still a shock when it happens.  Right in front you.  Up close.

Looking back I can recall the exact moment he realised he might not get through and began to do all the things you shouldn't do when you're deep in it.  Shallow breaths, talking too fast, imploring those around to help.  All to no avail.  It was shocking.  

Yes the Frog and Bucket on a Friday night can be an unforgiving place.  Lose the audience and you are Royally fecked and, without a doubt Paul F Taylor was Royally fecked on Friday.

Personally I'm of the view that if you lose a comedy club audience on a regular basis then it's time to consider a different career path.  Comedy club audiences are - on the whole - packed to the rafters with people receptive to comedians.  They want to laugh, that's why they are there.  It should be easy to make them titter.  Even if your material could do with an overhaul, your delivery tightened a little, the crowd are on your side.  Your performance may be a little flat, the laughs a little thin but generally you'll get a clap for trying.

It takes a special skill to get an audience to cheer when you say it's time to go, a very special skill indeed.  He waved as he went.  Or was he drowning?

I've been re-reading Stuart Maconie's excellent 'Pies and Prejudice' recently.  I love his description of his arrival to and investigation of Oldham.  I think he's bang on with his impression of the place - bars, pound shops and very little else; apart from the portable 'field hospital' the Health Authority provides on a Friday and Saturday night to stitch up and placate the local drunks.  It stops them clogging up A&E y'see allowing more serious cases to be dealt with without the ever-present possibility of things turning nasty. 

It's different now though.  You can't get to Oldham by train (I know, incredible isn't it?)  It will eventually become a 'stop' on Manchester's Metrolink tram system by which time it's decline will probably have become irreversible.

I don't often go to Oldham, there's no need.  It has absolutely nothing to offer that can't be found elsewhere.  It used to have a famous market - Tommyfield.  Coach trips used to head to it from as far as Leeds and Bradford.  It's a car park now and, thanks to the Council, the 21st century market consists of a dozen or so portable stalls scattered along the side of a couple of windswept streets.  It has no cinema, no unique shopping, no fabulous eateries.  Nothing.  The only distinctive thing in Oldham is the Coliseum.  But how often do I go to the theatre? 

Dearest works in the centre of Oldham and, it being one of her working Saturdays I got a bus up to meet her for lunch.  We went to the Three Crowns for a helping of their home made meat and potato pie with red cabbage and I have to say it was excellent.  Thick chunks of steak with lovely spuds and gravy all topped off with a thick pastry crust.  It set me up for my trundle round the town.  I was going to try to see it from a tourist's perspective so  I discarded my cynic's specs and donned an eyes-wide-open pair.  First stop:  the Georgian heart of Oldham, Church Lane.

Church Lane Oldham

It's a lovely little lane Church Lane.  It runs all of 100 yards from the Army recruitment centre (I guess Kandahar does have some things Oldham doesn't) to the parish church.  It consists mainly of Georgian terraces enhanced by the period street lamps that some heritage-fixated councillor insisted on back in the day.

A dour Saturday afternoon was perhaps not the best time to be examining it anew for I have seen this place back-lit by an autumn sun and been thrilled at the view.  It has character and it's a pity it's out of the way of the town centre itself.  It seems forgotten somehow.  A fading memory of times past.

Lancashire House, Church Lane Oldham

The lane itself is predominately occupied by the legal profession who, to be honest, must do very well off the local clientele. There's a church run cafe that, so I've heard, produces some fabulous dishes that don't hit the pocket.  Their cooked breakfasts  are 'to die for' apparently.

Most of the buildings are listed and the council  has made it a conservation area which is great but it's only a 100 yard conservation area.  Well, maybe a bit more.

At the top of the lane is Oldham's Gothic parish church.  The current building was erected in 1830 although there have been churches on this spot since 1280.  It was designed by a Manchester-based architect Richard Lane who employed Alfred Waterhouse as an apprentice.  Alfred would go on to design Manchester Town Hall, the Natural History museum in that there London and a whole host of Gothicry all over the place. 

At the top of the lane we turn right onto a flagged walkway which takes us past the west side of the church down to the cenotaph by the Greaves Arms and opposite the original town hall.  It was on these very steps that the new MP for Oldham - a certain W Churchill gave his first speech as Oldham's Tory MP.  The town hall is a Grade II listed Georgian neo-classical construction built in 1841

Oldham's original neo-classical town hall

Turning left we leave the town's civic heart and amble down Yorkshire Street.  We could have turned right and ambled up Yorkshire Street to the Spindle's shopping centre but there's only so much a man can handle on his day off.  

This was the street Maconie walked up from the now redundant train station.  It's no wonder his impression of Oldham was bleak.  You could successfully argue that Yorkshire Street is Oldham's premier street.  It's only rival is Union street which runs parallel on the Glodwick side of town.  Apart from the Oldham Coliseum, you won't find any culture hereabouts.  This part of the street resembles the Wild West at weekend.  It's here where the Triage tent is erected every Friday and it's not hard to see why.

 






 





Drink offers.  2 for 1 kebabs and curries.  Poundland, betting shops, Poundworld, clubs for drinking, clubs for lapdancing, Poundstyle (honestly), bars, chain pubs, 'It's all a pound!'  Cash converters, 'Don't ask the price it's a pound', 'We'll sub you 'till payday' finance operations, KFC, MacDonald's, Chinese, Primark, Discount shoe shops and all the other tell-tale signs of a town on the skids.


Where the historically authentic, we-know-our-heritage cobblestones have gone missing (thrown in a riot after closing time perhaps?), the powers that be have replaced them with dollops of tar.  Dollops of tar!  Dollops.  Of.  Tar!  I think that tells you all you need to know Oldham's  aspirations. 





The really sad thing about the place is that it could rebrand itself because it does have a lot to offer.  It lies snuggled at the foot of the Pennines.  Within it's Metropolitan Borough walls it has an absolute gem in Saddleworth.  The Peak National park is 20 minutes away at Dovestones Reservoir and the whole of the bleakly beautiful 'backbone of Britain' is on it's doorstep.  Get a grip Oldham.


I carried on my walk down to the Mumps area of the town - doesn't sound very inviting does it?  Maconie describes it thus:-


"I disemabarked from the Manchester train at Oldham Mumps Station.  Perhaps I'm overly delicate but for me it doesn't bode well when the town's main station shares its name with a uniquely unpleasant childhood glandular disease that wreaks havoc with the testicles"



This is the Mumps area of the town.  Lovely eh?  The street on the right is Yorkshire Street.  On the left is Union Street.  Union Street is a hopeless mish-mash of fast food emporia and taxi firms at one end, with the offices of the Oldham Evening Chronicle at the other.  There used to be a railway bridge at the Mumps end of town that rather like the 'Welcome to Bronte Country' signs near Howarth had painted on it: 'Welcome to Oldham.  Home of the Tubular Bandage'.  It's gone now.  It had to make way for the coming Metrolink.    Here's a lovely time-lapse video of its end.





As I trundled up Union street I was beginning to lose the will to live.  There is honestly nothing about this place that - at present - attracts me.  To use a phrase from the lips of the fictitious Malcolm Tucker, Oldham is an omnishambles.


Union Street has less to offer than Yorkshire Street and yet, come the tram, will be the place most folk see when they emerge from Mumps Station.  A lot needs doing before then most definitely.


There is talk of making this Oldham's 'cultural quarter'.  We'll see.  At present it is still home to the library which has recently moved into a state of the art building that also houses an art gallery and various function rooms. 


The Local Studies Library I know very well.  My dissertation was on the Mule Spinners of Oldham during the turbulent years leading up to the Brooklands Agreement in 1893.  There's many a Saturday afternoon I spent here trawling through uncatalogued minutes and correspondence of the various Trade Union bodies, Cotton Master's stuff, old newspapers and other historical paraphernalia.  It were bliss.  'Appen.


The library itself is also a stark reminder of the aspirations of the Victorian age.  Not everyone I know but can you imagine a public-subscription (with or without the help of Carnegie) library being built in this day and age? 




 


I retired to one of the many pubs doing a desultory trade on a Saturday afternoon and reflected on my experience.


It might be a while before I'm back.


Now, where did I put my cynic's glasses?

Rainy Days and Mondays Always Get Me Down

  Rainy Day Dream Away Still Raining Still Dreaming by WakaJawaka

The track above isn't by WakaJawaka actually - that's just my Zappaesque user name on Soundcloud.  It's James Marshall Hendrix for those interested.

Driving to work the other Monday morning as the familiar Mancunian rain spattered and beaded my windscreen, I longed to be back in my bed.  The tardy heater had still not sputtered it's desultory and frankly tepid whisper of comfort and my arthritic frame was extracting groans and grunts everytime I was forced into moving my arms or legs.  The working day lay before me like a childhood month.

I pulled onto the Mancunian Way as the surly and recalcitrant dawn glimmered behind the Beetham Tower like a.....like a...well, like a surly and recalcritrant teenager to be honest and I was subsumed in a back to work slough of despond. 

'Does it get any worse than this?' I muttered as David Cameron's oleaginous twaddle oozed from the Sony in the dashboard.  I vaguely stabbed a forefinger against the 'source' button and switched to whatever CD was still lurking there since the last time I played music in my car. I'm glad I did.  It was home made affair - from the days before iTunes and the like.  Furthermore, it was a track that, in it's entirity, probably only exists on the master tape and my hard disk/CD. 

Checking out the date stamp on the file later I realised that I created it in 2004.  It's the track above if you're interested.  If I were you I'd be playing it now, not reading this.

It's Jimi Hendrix 1968.  From Electric Ladyland.  It's two tracks from different sides of that album that were obviously one longer track chopped in half.  I loved both of them as a fourteen year old and still do.  'Rainy Day Dream Away' and 'Still Raining Still Dreaming'.

One day back in 2004, I came home from work and was messing about with some sound editing software I had acquired when one of the tracks came on my cd player.  I got the idea then and there to try and put back together what James Marshall had rent asunder.

I don't know about you, but until the remastered version approved by Hendrix's estate, MY version is definitive.

 

I Predict a Riot

 

"So now we know. By September dozens of youth centres, libraries and swimming baths will close. The number of elderly people who qualify for subsidised care in their homes, or free transport, will be slashed. Instead, they will be given the number for a taxi.

"Bin collections will be halved. Many deprived families will have to find their own housing. A council-run advice service will be scrapped. Streets will not be cleaned between midnight and 6am. We will have to pay to park in Manchester on Sunday for the first time. Thousands of jobs will be lost.

"By September, then, the cuts will mean Manchester is a very different place. It is a pattern that will be repeated in other councils across the region in the days to come"

Manchester Evening News 8th Feb 2011

So, there we go.  The high-faluting Dispatch box pronouncments  are finally being translated into gritty reality.  The swingeing, front-loaded cut backs that for so long have been abstract, some-time-in-the-future concepts have ceased shape-shifting and become flesh.  

It's easy isn't it when you're looking at a spreadsheet?  A library here, a leisure centre there.  A few old folk aren't going to miss their transport to the day centre - y'know the day centre where they get to meet up with other human beings as opposed to sitting in their living rooms all day and evening staring at a TV.  And the driver - a familiar face they can trust?  Well, he'll be OK, you're sure he'll find something else when the private sector kicks in and creates the tsunami of jobs you predicted.  In the meantime a driver with a public license is just the sort of volunteer the 'Big Society' needs and anyway it can't cost that much in a taxi can it?  Especially not 'up North' where everything's so much cheaper.  Not that it matters anyway, the day centre'll be shut within a couple of months.

2,000 jobs.

It's a good job you can blame it all on the previous administration isn't it?  Otherwise you would just look like idealogically driven shiny faced arseholes wouldn't you?  What you need to do now is keep up the bombardment of catchphrases and snappy one-liners designed to make everything appear an abolutely no-turning-back necessity.  Now.  All at once.  And just to keep everyone on their toes how about a complete reorganisation of the NHS on the side?  The grim reality is that, as you have pointed out, the Health Service needs the shake up that only a back door privatisation can - and will - provide.  It will emerge fitter and leaner and ready for the challenges ahead. Ok so there'll be less staff but hey that would be the last Governments fault wouldn't it?

But don't stop there,  we've not had any good old fashioned Gerrymandering since Shirley Porter back in the day.  You can dress it up as 'much needed boundary reform':  it'll go down a storm in the Home Counties.  They'll be able to look forward to a Tory governement for the rest of time especially if you insist on chaining it to the referendum on AV just to muddy the waters.

As someone once said: "I warn you not to be ordinary.  I warn you not to be young.  I warn you not to fall ill.  I warn you not to get old."  And that was in anticipation of Thatcher's '83 landslide and the cuts she promised.  Cuts that were nothing like as deep and quick as  Baronet Osbourne's.

And no Plan B either.

Still, at least we're all in it together.

What a Difference a Year Makes

Well, if there's anyone still out there:  howya doooin?  12 months to the day since my last post and such a lot has happened.  Some great, some good, some not so good and some just downright crap.  The World still turns, the best of us get on with it and the fuckwits still indulge in gold standard fuckwittery.  Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

I have. of late, felt the need to offload - ejaculate if you will - the joy and frustrations in my life once more.  I have, as some of you will be aware, been perusing the blogosphere during my year long absence and it really is like catching up with old friends.  Hearing of their ups and downs and highs and lows brings a smile to the lips and occasionally a tear to the eye.  All Human life is there to dip into and savour.

So, I'm back.  With a new layout as well.  The pic up above is the Mancunian skyline from a hill about 5 minutes walk from my front door.  If you look close you can see the stanchions of the City of Manchester stadium, Beetham Tower (aka Manchester Hilton) and the CIS Tower at the heart of the new co-operation Quarter.

So, what's changed since I was last here?  Well the biggest change has been the arrival of Littlest who is very, very dear to Dearest and me.  We have him overnight every Saturday and it truly is a joy.  Watching him evolve from the little alien he originally was into the proper little boy he is now has brought a wonderful sense of hope back into my life.  Suddenly I see the future toddling around with his inquisitive little fingers and his inquisitive mind invading our living space.  Children are wonderful.  Grandchildren are magical.  He carries my father's name as well which gives me a sense of continuity.  Such a shame they never met.


My Mother has moved into sheltered accommodation just round the corner from us.  It's a two minute walk from my front door and it has certainly improved all our lives.  In my Mother's case it was just in time really as she had started becoming very forgetful and eccentric and we knew she couldn't live entirely alone any more.  She now has a new flat in a residential block with a hairdressers, restaurant and lounge area where they have daily resident's get togethers with bingo, singalongs and other things that old folk seem to enjoy.

Care attendants call twice a day to make sure she's dressed and eating.  They dish out her medication and sit and chat for 15 minutes or so.  All in all it's worked out very well.  She has finally been diagnosed with Alzheimer's so keeping her daily routine as simple as possible is helping.  She has an equally afflicted friend called Ellen who she spends most of the day with, each of them repeating the same stories to each other as though being heard for the first time.

I have taken them both out to a local hostelry on occasions.  An old fashioned Mancunian pub with an organist and a free and easy attitude to people getting up and bashing out an old-fashioned song or two.  My Mother gets up and sings - pitch perfect - from a repertoire of ten or so numbers that she remembers ALL the words to with no problem.  It's a strange thing the brain.  I should have looked after mine a bit better.   I must admit though, at the end of the evening I am absolutely drained.  The nervous tension involved in making sure they don't drink too much, set off for the loo in plenty of time to avoid accidents, getting them home safely and generally listening to the same stories - in stereo - for three hours or so does tend to wear you down somewhat.

It comes to us all.

Work wise I have survived the first Public Sector Coalition cull - just the second and third to come through unscathed.  It seems all my life I have toiled under the threat of redundancy.  I have though  seen some hard working, decent people put in positions of horrible uncertainty about their futures.  The human face of 'balancing the budget' that the shiny faced arseholes in Government think is required.  It makes blood boil.  I swear if I hear the phrase "we're all in this together" again I won't be responsible for my actions. 

It's a good job the 'Big Society' (© Shiny Faced Arseholes)  will step in to look after us all isn't it?  Just wait until April when it REALLY starts to bite.  Surely the Lib Dems can't keep propping this shower of shit up much longer?  Have they no self esteem?

In recently acquired gadget news I am know a Kindle owner.  I'm very impressed with the whole reading experience with this cracking piece of kit essentially because you forget about the device you are reading from.  It doesn't get in the way if you see what I mean and the e-ink technology is superb.  No headaches from staring at flickering screens.  On top of that the battery lasts for a month on one charge.  Excellent..  Can't wait for the colour version.

Where the Kindle does come into it's own though is holiday time.  With the surcharges that airlines are racking up on luggage weight it was becoming difficult for Dearest and I to take enough reading material to keep us both occupied for a fortnight's leisure without tipping the scales.  We went to New York last autumn (loved it!) and I borrowed Eldest's.  It was that experience of it that convinced me to buy one.  Apart from a nice collection of books I also had a few newspapers delivered to it each morning so I could flip through them as Dearest made herself look fabulous.  When you add in a (not very good really) web browser and a built in dictionary as well as a text to speech facility it really is the Dog's proverbials.

Musically I'm having lot of trouble with my right shoulder which is making it difficult to play guitar for longer than 15 minutes or so.  It's looking like intense physiotherapy or, failing that, surgery.  I never had a problem with it until I became a postman.

To keep me ticking over I've got myself a digital piano which I have installed in my eyrie.  It has many other voices and functions but I use it primarily as a piano.  It has a lovely grand piano sound with a great touch-sensitive keyboard.  It's starting to come back to me.  I passed grade 5 piano when I was 11 and have hardly touched a piano or read sheet music since so it's been quite a learning curve.  It does requires a completely different musical approach than a string instrument.  I don't know it just seems to be a broader sonic palette.  I feel there are more harmonic choices to be made.  I'm lovin' it and so does Littlest - he sits on my knee and bashes away on it with rapturous abandon.  Start 'em young I say.

I won't be resurrecting the sight reading though.  Life's too short.

I've also added a new digital studio to my toys.  A Zoom R16 16 Track Recorder and Interface Controller.  Acutely aware of the fact that the Beatles never recorded on more than 16 tracks and that Frank Zappa only needed 16 tracks to produce as seminal a piece of work as Hot Rats, I am caught in a weird place where excitement at the possibilities smacks headfirst into the ever present fear of inadequacy.  I sometimes look at what is at my disposal and think to myself 'could do better'.  It's like a damning school report back in the day.  I have the equipment.  I have the ideas.  I have the ability.  It's just getting it all together that's the problem. 

Some pics.....eeeee it's just like old times isn't it?

Sicily

Dearest surveys Capri

It's a Hard Life

It's a very hard life.

Colours

Littlest is getting fed up of the camera

Autumn

Bay City

Up 34th Street to the Hudson

Looking Downtown from the Empire State

Downtown

The Empire State Building from the Top of the Rock

From the Staten Island Ferry

Starling Fest

Littlest learns to crawl

Littlest gets ready for Halloween

Littlest celebrates his 1st birthday

Blackpool

The hard life just keeps getting harder

And harder

7th Avenue Waiting to Cross