Dreams

Wow. All this time bloggin and never dedicated one to someone.

Bidet
Yes my lovelies, as Mr Arkwright would have said (and still does about 5 times a day on UK GOLD), it’s been a funny old day. As birthday no. 38 falls on a Sunday this year, today was my official birthday at work. I suspect work birthdays are pretty much the same everywhere – the sly and crafty passing around of a card when they think you aren’t looking, the furtive collection and the cringing embarrassment of the “presentation” towards the end of the day.

Actually, its all quite fun these days and a far cry from the early 80s when a birthday meant being thrown into a very cold bath in your pyjamas and an 8 portion cream cake that tasted like vomit.

So, there I was today, red of face and with a small knot in my stomach. The very nice lady who organizes it all had asked me what I wanted and wary of what happened to last guy who just said “surprise me” and ended up with an inflatable sheep, I asked for a new thermos flask. It was a nice aluminium shiny one. The card, as you can imagine was an expletive splattered affair, ensuring that my mother will never see it. Still, thats all part of the fun.

Obviously, I can’t yet report with any certainty that 38 feels any different from 37. I suspect it feels the same as it has since I was about 14. I keep waiting for age to happen but like Trolly Kane in the indoor range, it keeps missing it’s target. My odd little life carries on as always, zig zagging from left to right.

My obsession with the passing of time still continues. It’s now 20 years since I left school and almost 6 since I started writing about it. I still write and think about it an awful lot and still feel that there is nothing odd about doing so. I long ago came to terms that writing about is just “my thing” and thats that. Reading a lot of autobiographies finally hammered this point home. Most of them just apologise that they can’t remember much from their schooldays and this always seems such a shame. The fact that I certainly can has never really struck me as odd, even if it does to several of my contempories. One such person (intials Dirk Cassidy) spoke to me on ICQ just once, many years ago and spent most of the very stilted conversation saying “how can you remember all this shit?”. I didn’t have an answer then and I still don’t. Instead, I just felt a little sorry for him not remembering it. In all fairness, I seem to remember he might not have enjoyed his Dukie life as much as me and like more than one Dukie, maybe has happily put it behind him.

I will tell you one thing though. Remembering which dorm you were in and what common room you were in makes you awfully good at Ken Bruce’s pop quiz. Witness today – what year were the top 3 – 1.Wake Me Up Before You Go Go, 2.Two Tribes and 3.Smalltown Boy?

Told you….:-)

IGone
Bad day for my digital pal. The Ipodlet died. Ordering a new one first thing tomorrow. It doesn’t even warrant a discussion. I use it every day and that’s that. This one has lasted 1 and a half years and has been worth every penny. Why am I still talking about this when I could be asking for special 48hr delivery?

I was thinking of Mrs Newell today
You see, I got England in the team sweepstakes at work. Only Sean, SimonM and Rick will know what connects the two. Dear Bag Newell (a term of nothing less than affection) used to always get Miss UK in the Miss World sweepstakes at school.

I always got Miss “Island You Have Never Heard Of”. Every year, upon drawing said ticket, I quickly accepted the fact that my chances of winning the £10 first prize were slim to none. Miss “Island You Have Never Heard Of” always looked like she had been deliberately set on fire and had the flames doused with a blunt axe. Her only qualifications for representing “Island You Have Never Heard Of” seemed to be a) A more-or-less complete set of limbs and b) An ability to walk in an almost straight line whilst simultaneously grinning like a simpleton.

When she walked on, you could be fooled into thinking her gran had turned up instead to inform the judges that her lovely grandaughter had been killed in a freak accident. Alas, she and I were never so lucky. The squinting, freshly waxed half-wit was my partner for the evening and the source of considerable ridicule for at least the time time it took for Sean’s Miss Vietcong to make her graceless appearance.

So there we’d all sit, dressing-gowned and 3 to a seat as one simpering bint wandered past after another. It was as close to porn as a fruity bumfluffed 3rd former would get for a few years and was thus a highlight of the term. Dieter and Dick quite enjoyed hitting us too. Something for everyone then.

In a bizarre twist of fate, England are playing Trinidad and Tobago on Tuesday. I am sure I had Miss T & T at least once. Me against the Newell at last.

I can still see her now, leaning on a radiator in the 3rd form lobby of Wolseley and chatting with Dieter and Jerry. Dieter tells her that leaning on a radiator is bad for your nipples. She immediately folds her arms, stands up straight and laughs like only she could. She enjoyed the joke and only the smug Neil playing pool nearby was smart enough to know that he should have said it gives you piles. I was also smart enough to know that an 18 year old flirting with a pensioner was just well…wrong on so many levels. Did he intentionally get it wrong so as to crack a dirty joke or did he really not know?

I really do remember some strange shit.

I really do remember some strange shit at strange times.

I remembered this incident at about 7pm tonight.

I have been remembering our 3rd form years a lot lately. Spurred on by the sudden appearance of a certain scary 6th former on the OBA site, the rose-tinted view of Wolseley has been blackened by a number of incidents that (luckily for me) I generally only witnessed rather than had inflicted on me. Some of my colleagues and my best friend was not so lucky and felt this bloke’s sadistic wrath on more than one occasion. I have no problem with repeating what has been said so many times before. A good proportion of the upper 6th in our 3rd form were borderline psycopathic and it was a wonder how we made it out alive after 3 terms of sadistic insanity. The only good thing that came out of it was the imprinting on our psyche of a determination that this was wrong and would end. Despite a final, brief and desperate attempt by the Class of 84 to bring back the bullshit a few years later, we killed it stone dead. It started with little things – we wrote VLR (Vive La Revolution) on our clothes brushes and shoe brushes (don’t laugh – we were quite serious) – and ended with Wolseley being quite a nice place for the last few years of our time there. The 3rd formers became a bit more cheeky but I still think it was worth it.

As far as I know, the “glory years” of rock hammers, bath running and coffee making never returned.

Of course, current Dukies probably have no idea this ever took place.

If only there was somewhere online they could read about it.

That’s me doing my thing that is.

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