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.

…and so it came to pass. Britain was flung into what the tabloids choose to call “commuter chaos” yesterday as nature unexpectedly blew its wad all over our fair nation. Big fluffy crap not seen since those long distant days at Guston when snow was the best thing since sliced bread.

Actually, when Messrs Mansfield and Wheelan built a snow Hovis outside Wolseley, it was in fact unsliced bread.

Now, as a driver, snow is not so nice. A bit like Christmas really, when you get to that age when you actually have to SPEND money in December.

Several colleagues stranded on Bodmin Moor failed to make it to work and some a little closer tried the same. As a consequence, I learnt of a very bizarre Royal Mail rule that states “If you are unable to attend your normal place of work due to inclement weather, please make you way to your nearest Post Office or Mail Sorting Centre and make yourself available for service”. The idea is that if manager of said establishment declines your kind offer, you still get your day’s pay. In theory. I don’t think anyone has tried it yet. My nearest Post Office is in Tamerton Village and the old dear would probably call the police if I turned up broom and kettle in hand offering to be her sidekick for the day.

RIP George Best. The slavering journos and their eagerness to get on with the obituries was sickening as usual. The poor guy lay in bed with his family around him as the radio pretended he had already gone. I really don’t care how much he drank or what he got up to off the pitch in recent years any more than anyone should care what any of us get up to out of work. I don’t even like football that much but he was undoubtedly a great sportsman and that should be enough for one lifetime.

But even as I type, the news on the radio is discussing his career and how recent players like Becks and Rooney are nowhere near as good as him. Best is gone and now they are moving on to others in their cackling, hyena-like way. What have the other two got to do with this and what have they done to deserve such criticism on the day of another’s passing? Few of us are lucky enough to do anything outstanding in our lives, so why does the media insist on pulling apart those who do for us all to see? There is a bizarre contradiction in celebville these days, the media thrives on their celebrity and bathes in the sparkling limelight that these famous people shine on it but at the same time it still insists on inserting microphones and telescopic lenses into every secret crevice of their lives. One probably couldn’t exist without the other but I don’t agree that the achievement of fame and fortune should immediately invalidate your right to a life and privacy and neither should it mean that they have to be perfect. I know I am not.

Anyhoo. One last thing to end on. It is the early 70s, George Best is one of the judges at the Miss World show. A cuban cigar hangs from his lips and a very expensive bottle of champagne is at his side. The most beautiful women in the world parade past him and he leans over to the judge sat next to him…”I don’t know mate…where did it all go wrong?

Yes, another one.

Bear with me. I need to unload this weirdness. I have thought back and this dream was not induced by anything imbibed the previous evening.

So there I am in the school dining hall, ready to eat. Myself, Stan, Matt Colgate and various people I now work with are filing past the hotplate which for some reason is now about 100 yards long. I can’t decide what to have and end up at the other end with an empty plate. For some reason we all exit the hotplate queue at a point roughly where Marlborough House sat. Surprisingly, this is now where my back garden is….and I woke up.

Actually, this is unusual in as much as this was a morning dream. I got up at about 8am, made a cuppa and went back to bed. This is when I had it.

So how has your Bank Holiday weekend been? I have spent 3 long days painting my bedroom whilst not removing a single item of furniture (don’t ask). It was fun, but I managed to listen to Radio 2 from 8am this morning until about 20 minutes ago because the radio was in an inaccessible corner of the room and I couldn’t re-tune it. Honest. I got 33 points on Ken Bruce’s Popmaster quiz, but only my cat witnessed the thrilling and memorable performance.

The Olympics was fun. For some reason, I was more into it this year than in the past. Maybe its another sympton of growing old. At work, the break areas all have TVs now and I spent far too much time catching  a quick glimpse of the Grecian Goings On. Greece looked great and reminded me of my ideallic youth in Cyprus, wherefrom the bronzed Veaseys recently returned. You have to wonder though, with those crystal clear seas, blue skies and shimmering sun whether Manchester ever has a chance in hell of ever hosting the games. Having said that, Beijjing in 2008 hardly promises similar scenes.

I am sick to death of media coverage of grinning school kids and their 15 ‘A’ grade O level passes. No particular reason I suppose, other than a certain camerardery I share with those slightly less successful souls. I am seriously considering going back to college to get 10 or so of my own. I quite fancy some of those A levels too. What say you Sean? I don’t wanna go alone.

Note to self. Stop ending half-sentences with…

I can’t help it. Its the written equivalent of a thoughtful pause. I do that a lot.

So, where were we? Damn. Its been more than a week since my last confession. Blogs are all well and good but they do make you overly concious of the passage of time. I hardly need anything else to remind me of that.

The bigger of my two cats is very sad. Pining in fact.

When we moved in almost a year ago, he quickly made friends with a little white lady cat called Poppy. They used to sit about together, chase each other and so on. About a month ago she died suddenly and he now spends most of his day sat outside her house. It breaks your very heart.

Well, as you brush away a manly tear think of poor me today. I set aside 30 mins from my busy day to put up some rollerblinds. 2 hours and 1 broken drill bit later I am sweaty, angry and very much wish to meet the cretin who thinks curtains are not good enough. Back-to-front twice and then not straight. Fortunately, the hapless DIY victim can rely on the thoughtful designers who saw fit to include an instruction sheet , albeit one barely large enough with which to wipe one’s arse. Three small pictures. One – sketch of proud, unsuspecting purchaser staring lovingly at new rollerblind in its packaging. Two – sketch of entire assembly process, complete with several arrows and numbers. Three – One finished rollerlblind.

Thank you so bloody much.

And so to the footy.

Yes, I am one of those annoying people who only watches England internationals. Once every two years I become entranced by the beautiful game and start to gather with others of my ilk next to the coffee machine at work and speak in loud, confident tones of how “Becks” is off his form and so forth.

The England v Portugal once more reduced me to tears and is quite easily the most intense 15 minutes I had ever witnessed.

Finally Greece were victorious and I watched it. Bottle of Tizer and a Kebab close by. I have no idea of the players’ names except that most of them end is “os” but the boys done good and I am happy for them. At least we all know what the Portuguese word for “Oh Shit!” is.

Well, at least how to shape our mouths for it anyway.