The House of Lords needs me!

I sent off for this stuff ages ago. Older readers of the Alfred the OK archive may remember my musings on receiving these bits and bobs through the post well over a year ago now. When it came, I was all of a dither - so excited at the possibility, no matter how infinitesimally microid of me, a slob from the wrong side of the tracks actually joining the ‘has’ and the ‘beens’ of the British establishment. When it came, I vowed to give a whole week-end to filling it in – but being very busy at the time, I put it in a really safe place. So safe was that really safe place, I totally forgot exactly where that really safe place was…..

And then, the other day, whilst clearing out an old box of stuff, cunningly marked ‘really safe place’, I found it - along with my Dennis the Menace membership card and my 1972 Pan’s People Annual. Hmmmmmm, Cheryl and Babs...…… Anyway, back to the present.

What is it? The thing I’ve just found? It’s an application form to become a member of the House of Lords - obviously. I reckoned the Lords could do with a chippy, gobby English nationalist in their ranks to shake the detritus from their ermine robes and the complacency from their fallen arches. And anyway, my current pension is crap and I fancy giving the hairdryer treatment to Fatty Falconer and that windbag Lord Kinnock of Gingerness…. And with a bit of extra luck, Fatty Fat Boy Prescott might be getting kicked upstairs shortly – so I can get up close and personal to him…..

I’ve also decided on a couple of names, should I be successful in my application to join the august body. It sort of sums up my reason for wanting to join in the first place – to get under the skin of the Establishment, to be the biggest pain in the arse I can be…..
Lord Scabies of Irritania or Lord Piles of Sandpaper, seem to be appropriate.

Anyway, this time I will most certainly fill this form in – and await the guaranteed rejection letter. It’ll look nice, framed on the lounge wall next to my rejection letters to join the Women’s Institute, Mensa and The Tufty Club…

I can almost smell the rejection – it’ll go something like this…

Dear Mr OK,
Further to your application to join the noble House of Lords, I regret to inform you that this year’s quota of chippy, rotund gobby pains in the arses has been filled. We are holding one place open however, as we are expecting Lord Prescott of Turrets Syndromia to take his seat in the very near future..

We have put you on the chippy, rotund waiting list, behind Bernard Manning, Ricky Tomlinson and the late Les Dawson.

We thank you for your interest, but suggest you try joining an organisation more suited to your talents. Have you tried The Tufty Club?

Boys from the black stuff....

We've had a lot of road works being done around our way lately. All in all, the work will take 6 months to do - and we're only 2 months into it. Old tarmac taken up, new stuff put down, traffic cone heaven, orange dayglo jacketed 'stop - go' men by the hundred. queuing traffic by the million and strange looking machinery everywhere......


Here's a picture of one. For the past few days, 'the tarmac men' have been parking their big toy outside our drive. We live on the A59 - one of the busiest roads in the country - so it's a bit tricky trying to get out in the morning. I reckon it looks a bit like a dinosaur - I've called it a right 'Paininthearseaurus'....

Our house is next to a school - so all the little kiddies have to be negotiated as well. Yesterday, I nipped back home to change into my mourning suit as I had a funeral to attend in Liverpool. I was only inside 10 minutes - but by that time, the tarmac wagon had just dumped a load of hot, wet tarmac right outside the drive. I couldn't get out. The men wouldn't let me drive over it for 30 minutes - "Til it had gone off a bit" ...... Thankfully, as it was a catholic funeral service, being half an hour late didn't seem to matter, it went on and on and on and on......

Why are some people such utter bastards?

If I ever come across the morons that go shark fishing using live cats and dogs as bait, I'm afraid murder will be the only possible solution…..

Full story here – be warned it’s very upsetting.

Do us a favour, sign the petition and send a letter to the French Government, telling them to stamp this barbaric treatment out right now on their dependent territory of Reunion in the Indian Ocean.

LOST? – you’d better believe it, baby….

Does anyone know what the bloody hell is going on in ‘Lost’?

Channel 4’s monster American import - the over perplexed, over played and over here series of a load of self obsessed drama queens stranded on a desert island, is stretching Alfie’s grey matter to the limit. I reckon it’s a sort of Emperor’s new clothes deal – everyone I’ve talked to gives this theory, that synopsis, the other underlying subliminal message…. They’re already in hell, in limbo, in pergatory…… in the money. Definitely. I mean, have those guys never heard of ‘beginning, middle and end’?

It’s not helped of course by the fact that the action always seems to be shot at night. And the ‘brightness’ control on our telly is bust. It’s set at the very, very brightest it can go – a video of Acapulco beach looks like a rainy Monday in Salford on our telly. And a desert island on Channel 4 looks like a black hole in a coal hole.

And then there’s the characters, formulaic or what? Kate, the dead fit babe with dodgy past played by Evangeline Lilly. The handsome Doctor with ‘I tried my best to save him on the operating table but I made a mistake, and he died’ baggage. There’s a fat Mexican, a shallow bimbo and her brother and a bloke who was crippled, but has regained the use of his legs. The obligatory former Iraqi Ba’ath Party torture squad member and the guy from Manchester who played a hobbit in Lord of the Rings……

And that’s the problem. That’s where the fantasy reaches the place of non credibility…… suspension of belief has gone just a bit too far on ‘Lost’ for my liking……

Charlie, played by Dominic Monaghan from Manchester with the big ears – the guy that played one of the hobbits – the guy that didn’t need much, if any make up at all to play Merry Brandybuck from Hobbiton. That guy has tapped off with the dead, dead fit bird from the show – in real life!!!!!!!

Fairy tale, pure fairy tale…..

Dead fit bird and a hobbit.....

Join the Awkward Squad, you know it makes sense….

In these dark days of big brother, his porcine pal Fat-Johnny Prescott, and a whole phalanx of yes monkey acolytes –an Englishman’s castle is no longer the redoubt it once was.

To put it bluntly, our territorial freedoms are under siege like never before. It’s the Alamo, Troy and Mafeking all rolled into one for everyone living in this country. Prescott has powers that would shame a mega braided, South American Junta General - and he's using them, (badly, obviously).

If he wants your house to be flattened and made into a car park for his Jag collection, tough.
If he decides a mobile phone mast is to be erected next to your kids school, you’ll just have to watch the little ‘uns glow with health. The bit of ancient woodland down the road – it’s stood proud for a thousand years and helped build the ships that defeated the Spanish Armada? Well, better enjoy it while you can because soon it’ll be built on - earmarked for low cost housing for ‘key’ workers.

What can be done to stop Prescott’s concrete juggernaut in it’s tracks? Short of blowing him up with a booby trapped cow pie, precious little it would seem….. but possibly not.

Time to get organised, mobile and bolshy…… and now there’s a little bit of help available in the shape of an interesting book. Not quite as earth shattering as Mao’s – but nevertheless, it could help knee Prezza right in the goolies, and that can only be a good thing.

Sir Antony Jay, co-writer of ‘Yes Minister’ and experienced Westminster lobby correspondent has written a book entitled ‘Not in My Backyard’. The title smacks of ‘nimbyism’ – but it’s much more than that. During the next 20 years, Prescott wants to build up to 4 million houses in England - in the name of so-called sustainable development. (Even though there are currently up to a million unoccupied houses in the South of England, alone). His new build programme is not sustainable and it's not thought out properly. He wants to plonk a million houses in the South East - an area of the country with chronic water and energy shortages; meanwhile, Scotland’s population is haemorrhaging as the relentless 'South East drift' continues.

His discredited 'Pathfinder' programme in the North of England is trying to knock down nearly half a million perfectly good, perfectly sound Victorian and Edwardian houses (including my Mum's old house) - and replace them with crap. These houses are not slums - Prescott is currently paying up to £200,000 per house - in order to demolish them. Hardly a price you'd pay for a condemned building. That man will ruin our country - and he has to be stopped. The book hones the prospects of protesters, evens up the playing field (well, the ones that haven’t yet been built on) and gives some much-needed ammunition to Mr and Mrs Joe Public. It could be the best £7.99 you ever spend….

Hold the front page......

I was having a discussion with a colleague yesterday, we got round to talking about something close to my heart……
And that is witty, sometimes corny headlines from newspapers…

I have to admit, I couldn’t beat his recollected efforts – the two best were –

In the ‘70’s the Rolling Stones were doing a tax haven thing and relocating to the south of France. Understandably, the locals weren’t too chuffed – they started a campaign and got a bit of a petition going to stop the legendary hell raisers from living in their midst.

The headline in the newspaper –
‘Rolling Stones Gather Mass Noes’

Better than that though, was the story about books being nicked from an Essex town’s central library. The story was headed thus –
'Book Lack in Ongar'

Brilliant, just brilliant.

Ronnie Barker – superstar.

What can I say that hasn’t already been said? Ronnie was a genius, but apart from the usual ‘Porridge’ and ‘Two Ronnies’ Shows, I remember him, years ago on the telly playing ‘Bottom’ in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ – and he was brilliant.

He was also in one of my favourite '60's films – The Bargee", an English film about life on the canals. Ever get the chance – try and see it.

King Conker and the death of a 142er….



When I was a boy, (many, many years ago) this time of year promised a feverish scramble for the fruits of Autumn. Our quarry of course was the conker, seed of the noble horse chestnut tree – and the competition was fierce, very, very fierce. Kids would chuck sticks up to the higher branches in order to get them – because you could be sure that any windfalls will have been snapped up as they dropped. The thrill of actually finding a big one (known as a big’un) or a legendary cheesy shaped one, known as a ‘cheesy’ was like scoring a goal at the Cup Final.

The best ones to find though were the conkers still in their protective prickly green jackets. As the outer skin dried, slowly, sexily, the green jacket would split, widen and the mahogany-coloured jewel within would show us a little sliver of forbidden fruit. That was the signal to peel back the skin and reveal a jewel within. Grainy, and shiny with the most amazing patina and colouring, a real mahogany nugget revealed. There’s just something so special about a freshly opened conker – but then the shininess fades and thoughts turned to preparing it for combat.

Cue secret recipe book, secret ingredients such as Vinegar, nail varnish, creosote, ingredient X and cookery techniques on gas mark 11.

Playing conkers in the playground was a real event. Crowds gathered, bets placed, chants, err ‘chanted’. Each conker smashed amassed even greater bravura to the victor, and lives taken from the defeated and smashed conker were added to the victorious hardened nugget. It seems to be a bit of a non event now – with the result that the Euro conker mountain grows every year. What are the kids doing nowadays? Probably playing Conker-Dong on their Play Stations…..

As with any sport, there were lots of cheats about at our school. ‘Knight’, the school creep and all round twat, (nickname ‘Shitety-Knighty') was rumbled. His conker had lead shot from a fishing tackle shop packed within and the holes covered with Polyfilla.

As usual with Shitey, he overdid the cheating. He packed too much shot and during a few gusto practice swings, he lost his grip on the string. The doctored conker flew into a fairly unforgiving brick bog wall and smashed into a flux of conker flesh and lead shot….

We beat him up. Well, any excuse would do, coz we really hated Shitey.

There was one, legendary conker match though. It had been brewing up all season. Mind games, insults, tactics, bad mouthing from the two protagonists. It had been building up for days, John Skyner and Paul Burnett had the two best conkers in the school. Skyner’s was a 210er and Burnett’s was a 142er.

The two super conkers were really bashed up. Skyner’s had lost some of the outer shell – but Burnett’s had no shell on at all – just a rock-hard shrunken, shrivelled centre. It looked like a scale model of Einstein’s brain after a night on the heavy. The two super conkers had mopped up all the opposition, it was inevitable they would meet for the ultimate conk-off. ‘Super-Conker-Armageddon’ was on!

Afternoon break arrived and the whole school was ready, slavering, baying for sap. An invisible square had been marked out. The arena was ready, beyond was a writhing mass of blazered acned youth. And then they arrived, the two all conkering heroes with their all conkering conkers. Burnett and Skyner milked the applause, shook hands, sent over a few practice swings and tossed up for who was going first. Burnett won. They squared up and prepared to swap blows.

Burnett took aim, swung and missed. Disaster! Skyner would make him pay for sure. He got to work. The aim was true, relentless, sadistic. Burnett looked worried. String strained, conkers twanged, blurred brown arcs of smacked conker against the Autumn sky….. and then, the sound. The hollow, off-key sound of a cracked bell, a cracked glass, a mortally smacked conker.

We knew it was all over. Burnett knew, so did Skyner. He moved in to deliver the ‘conk de grace’ The crowd – by now silenced to a respectful hush exploded as did Burnett’s conker into rapturous applause and a zillion bits of tree pulp…

Skyner’s conker had just gone platinum. Bunett’s had gone into the Stratosphere. It was one of those Kennedy moments. Everyone knew where they were when Burnett’s conker was atomised......

Brock hard….

Last night I saw something I’ve never seen before. And it was bloody great. I’d gone for a bit of a drive – something I do now and again to clear my head, get away from the kids - and listen to a bit of Zepp….. very, very loudly.

I turned down a country lane – and there, curled up lying in the middle of the road was a young badger. It had obviously been hit by a car. It looked dead.

For some reason, I decided to stop the car right in front of it. That way, I could protect it from further harm it if it was, by a miracle still alive. All of a sudden, the badger twitched, jumped up and strolled across the road to safety. Tough or what? It looked fine – a bit wobbly, a bit shaky, but basically he looked OK. He sat down in the verge, checked himself over and ambled into the undergrowth.

I’ve never seen a live badger before, just road-kills. This guy was just immaculate, black and white stripes, grey flanks and a big black snout. What was really amazing though – this badger was only 800 yards from our house - which is on the A59, one of the busiest roads in the country.

Ding dong merrily on high….

Just two weeks after the English cricket team’s Ashes win, I was walking through a West Lancashire village. There, just in the window of a furniture store I espied the first Christmas decorations of the coming season. It was September 25th - a full 3 months before the big day proper…..

These sparkly jaspers, tastefully mixing LED blink-blink technology with old fashioned twink-twink fairy lightery, combined to infuse the passer-by with a veritable tide of mid winter yule-tideryness….. (If you see what I mean)...

If you listen carefully, very, very carefully, you might just be able to hear Santa and his trusty reindeers slapping on their shades and whacking in the sun factor 16 onto Rudolf’s big red nose as we all bake in the unseasonally hot weather……

Anyway, seeing the lights has inspired me. I’ll say it before anyone else does…….. Merry Christmas everybody!!!!!

Bollocks to Blair…..

A young lady, one Charlotte Denis, has been arrested for daring to wear a T-shirt with the words ‘Bollocks to Blair’ on it. Before you could say "Nazi Police State", she was banged up by a carefully selected team of p.c., p.c. plod.

The fuzz deemed the Tee-shirt absolutely obscene – a one legged, non smoking, black transvestite lesbian police vegan spokesperson said that they just couldn’t tolerate the brazen and gratuitous use of such a disgusting word within a small community.

"The Chief Constable decided to take action after the wanton and shameless display of this almost pornographic message." P.C. Davinia Dobson continued "I mean, we had no objections to the ‘bollocks’ and the ‘to’ bit ….. But ‘Blair’? I mean how sick can you get?"…..
"

Anyone know how to get a job in the City?

Scared of London? I should cocoa.
Is there anything that could make me work there? Definitely.
(Well, till Christmas Eve, anyway)…

For it was reported yesterday that over 3,000 dealers in the London money market will receive a Christmas bonus of between 1 million and 20 million quid. I’d like a bit of that – it certainly beats a bottle of bubbly, a big tin of Quality Street and an autographed photocopy of the secretary’s bum….

Added together, that’s a hell of a lot of moolah. The bonus budget will range from 3 billion quid upwards…..

Nice work if you can get it. Just one small point though…. Where the hell is this money coming from? Who’s paying for a tin of Quality Street the size of the Isle of Wight?…..

Yes it’s me, Alfie the wuss - back from that there London.

Been a whole week since my last post – a result of the deep seated shock that set in once I’d got back to the dear old palatine of Lancashire. London is a scary, scary, scary-Mary place – and every time I go there, the panic attacks get just a bit more extreme. Clammy hands, sweaty crotch, banging headache – and I’m not even in Euston yet!

I caught the first train of the day – 6:04 from Wigan North Western. I arrived nice and early, about 5:30 in the morning – and confronted the first problem of the day. No bloody change for the car park – they want five quid in coins for God’s sake. The ticket office is closed, it’s pitch black and there’s no one around….. except for a little old bloke walking towards me.

"Hey mate, have you got change of a tenner?"

"Course I ’ave, cock." With that, this little man with a big heart shoved his hand into his pocket and plucked out a veritable treasure chest of metal.

What a guy, what a pie eater! Would I have got such a positive response outside Euston Station at 5:30 in the morning?

I arrived in Euston at 8:38 – just in time for the end of the rush hour. First tough decision of the day – Tube or Taxi?

A mental toss of a two-headed coin confirms my decision – it’s the Taxi to M&S HQ.

The taxi rank at Euston is a crushingly depressing place – like a bit of old staging from a Blake’s 7 episode. Neon tubes, ‘gulag concretia extreme’ and a bloody great line of humanity waiting for that rarest of animals – a black cab. The queue goes right into the next time zone, there’s bloody millions of us wusses – all with 2 immediate goals in life – 1 get a taxi, - 2 avoid the tube.

They all queue patiently – but I can’t. M&S waits for no one (apart from St Michael) and it’ll be hours before I get a taxi ….. I’ll have to get the tube.

My heart sinks, down the rickety old escalator of Euston Square into the very bowels of that there pit of old London town. I’m surrounded, surrounded by people with rucksacks….

Oh God, people with rucksacks…

Putting myself as far as possible from the rucksack army, I manage to get to the platform. What should I do? Act weird, pretend I’m a bit of a nutter? Fart?…..

Instead, I position myself in the entrance where no one else is standing and await the train to Paddington via the Circle Line. The first train arrives. It’s packed. Packed with millions of rucksack carrying young men. More rucksacks are waiting to board. It’s my train, so let’s go soldier! Brain signals are stopping somewhere near my yellow backbone, feet are resolutely stuck in neutral, - the body, a rigid facsimile of granite stands immovable.

The doors slide, the train whispers off… "I’ll get the next one, honest"

The next one arrives, fuller and more chock full of humanity than the previous train. The Rucksack Express comes to a halt – again I pass, like a reluctant virgin at an orgy.

I’ve been on the platform for a full 25 minutes, people are starting to look at me. I just have to get the next one, or I’ll miss the meet at M&S.

Finally, my train – the OK train of happiness arrives. It’s a rucksack free zone. Superb, Su-bloody-perb. Are there any stickers on the windows I can see? ‘Camping equipment strictly forbidden’….. Maybe not.

Great, even seats are available. I park the ample OK posterior onto the ‘Cool Britannia’ fabric pattern of the seat.

‘Cushty’

Just then, at the next stop a young geezer gets on – with his I-pod, copy of Metro ….. and rucksack. He sits right opposite me. And then he starts to open the rucksack. Then he starts fumbling inside. Is that a nervous fumble?

What should I do? Twat him? Hard? Act like a nutter? Fart? What would the Wigan pie eater have done in such circumstances? ….

I’m waiting for the wires, the pressure button, the switch to come out of the top of the bag. Oh my God, this is bloody well it!!!!

The young guy pulled out a book. A book on ‘Fungi’…….

Sweat poured off me. I’m just being silly. For God’s sake grow up. Get real……. I mean, what are the chances?

Feeling more than slightly foolish I got to Paddington, walked over the canal to the brand new mega building that is M&S – (which stands for ‘Massive and Spacious). Glass, glass and more glass are the building materials for this monolith. And the lifts, made of clear glass are all on the outside, waiting to catapult me at the speed of expectorated vomit into the Stratosphere.

After rucksackophobia, it’s vertigo. What a bloody morning.
I meet a corporate bint from Australia. She was wall to wall M&S, wall to wall company moll. We go through the motions, exchange pleasantries, business cards, ideas – but not body fluids.

Something may come of it – who knows?…

The journey back was uneventful, except that the Virgin Railway Company totally amazed me by arriving on time at my destination for the second time in the day.

I picked up the car, exited Wigan and headed home. On the way, I drove past Tawd Vale – the boy-scout camp just outside Newburgh in West Lancashire. A troop of scouts marched through the gates….. every single one of them had a rucksack on their backs……………

'Sweat creep' started again.

Retail therapy

I’ve been dead, dead busy this week, preparing for a bit of a potential ‘clover fields initiative’…

The reason? I’ve managed to blag a meeting on Friday in ‘that there London’ – at the HQ of the nation’s biggest shopping institution.

It’s not quite ‘Eminem’ – more ‘Emaness’, actually.

Why do they want to see me? God knows. Maybe they fancy a bit of rough, a bit of greying street cred may be in order to resurrect a wounded retail monster – and a dose of OK-le-dokerly magic is sure to do the trick?

More likely, it’s because I’m cheap and will do most things for a couple of bob, a free glass of milk stout and a packet of salt & shake crisps…..

Wow, the Weblog Review, reviews Alfred the OK.

My new pal, Parker from Weblog Review HQ ran his reviewing rule over the A the OK back catalogue. He described my blog as 'lite' with 'flowery' prose. Parker describes me as being 'prolific' - which will certainly surprise Mrs OK.

'Lite and flowery'........ let's just digest that for a while. I'm a 17 stone beardy man, 6'3" tall with size 14 feet. I'm about as lite and flowery as Fungus the Bogeyman……

Mind you, when I originally sent the site in for review, Harold Wilson was Prime Minister, Starsky and Hutch had just started on the telly, my voice was still unbroken and I was wearing short trousers…...

Parker scored me as a 4.75, which I'm quite pleased about, I think.

Whatevaah!

Son number 3 has just got a job at a new Tesco superstore. Along with the training manuals ‘Packing Bags the Tesco Way’ and ‘Grabbing your Customer by the Tescos’ - he’s been given his brand new uniform. It is mostly made of nylon and is a real electrostatic fire hazard. The colours are fanciful – the shirt is a mix of powder blue, brooklyn blue and a bog standard blue hue. The trousers are a subtle mix of black, bible black and coal-hole black. They also have a sort of mega rigid crease hammered into them, as does the non-trendy blue-check mix shirt.

We made him dress up in all his finery so we could have a look. He wasn’t too pleased. He didn’t like the kit at all…. He started to froth at the mouth and babble. "What if my mates saw me"…. They don't do hoody versions - which is gay! This colour – it’s so gay! – In fact the whole shirt is gay and so are the trousers…. GAY!"
It’s all so GAY, the job’s GAY, this house is GAY, you two are so GAY!!!!"

Which was a bit of a shock really. I mean, I’ve only just got used to the word ‘gay’ meaning homosexual – and now, it appears to have changed. When I was a kid, ‘gay’ meant happy – as in "I feel so gay, today"….

And now ‘gay’ means bad, naff, old fashioned….

I can hardly keep up.

Tom torment…..

Serving suggestion

I planted the seed, staggered over several weeks. Thus ensuring a regular and manageable supply of ripe, red, organic fruits.

To make absolutely sure of a constant supply, I planted some earlies, some mediums and some late fruiting varieties.

To make absolutely, absolutely, abso-bloody-lutely certain, I planted some of the little beauties in the green house and some in pots down the sunny side of the garden…..

Oh yes, it was going to be one long Summer of Tomato heaven and no mistake.

I did everything you’re supposed to do with tomatoes, soil not too wet, not too dry. Feeding liberally and often, taking out the side shoots, taking off the bottom leaves stringing them up with canes using ever more Heath Robinson inspired scaffolding…

Well I’ve waited and waited right through the long hot Summer, waiting for the green to go red, like a traffic light in reverse.

I’d planned for an orderly queue of green’uns to red’uns, well I sort of got one, but not an orderly queue of a couple of months. No, my orderly queue of green to red has happened in just a span of one week.

I’ve got tons of them. Tons and tons and tons of red beauties. So in our house at the mo’ it’s toms with everything….
Sugarpuffs and toms, custard and toms, Special Brew and toms with added toms….. The kids hate them, the cats aren’t too fond of them either, but they’re just too good to waste…

I don’t know, you wait all Summer for one big red tomato to come along and then surprise surprise, several thousand arrive all at the same time.

FArce and the theatre of the absurd…..

David Davies, FA Chief Executive and part time screaming skull impersonator was on the telly this morning. Dave, should have looked as sick as a parrot, but instead beamed a ghastly smile as he enthused about the prospect of Team GB entering a British Football Team into the 2012 Olympic Games. He should be ashamed of himself – he’s supposed to be championing English football and nothing else.

Maybe he was smiling because he knew something we don’t? Maybe a knighthood’s in the offing…. Who knows?

One thing’s for sure, Blair and Sports Minister Richard Cayborne have no doubt been leaning on him to comply with the New Labour all inclusive UK-ery credo. Predictably, the BBC have also fallen into their brown nosing position of abject surrender. Carefully selected vox-popping of non footy fans ‘on the street’ elicited predictably positive responses from people that knew bugger all about the beautiful game.

….. "Yes, a GREAT British football team, we'll beat the world!"...... "Ooooh yes, a British Football team, that sounds like a good idea"

Well, it doesn’t - at all!

Football is tribal – it’s the original sport to replace warfare. Allegiances matter, in my case it’s to the 3 lions (more correctly, the 3 leopards). Over the years, I’ve suffered their triumphs and tragedies. The boys of '66, Keegan’s dodgy perm, Pearce’s manic psycho stare, Gazza’s memorable goal celebration against the Scots – and Owen’s goal of genius against Argentina…. My team is Eng-er-land and always will be….. NOT Great Bri-tain.

And who will play for team GB? If it’s talent we’re talking about, then it’ll be 11 Englishmen. But I guess that won’t happen will it. Politics of the absurd will decree that the team should be equally spread across the 4 home nations for such a high profile team…

Looks like an early exit from the comp’ then……

For more info and an objective appraisal on this sorry state of sporting affairs have a look at Toque's take on it.

By the sea with the metal men…..

In between blinding headaches, Bank Holiday Monday saw the OK crew take in a bit of culture for the masses. Crosby beach, a stone’s throw from the Liverpool Freeport Docks complex is the setting for Antony Gormley’s ‘Another Place’ – which basically consists of around a hundred life size cast iron effigies of the artist liberally sprinkled around the beach.

Crosby beach is a bit of a weird place. The sand is fantastic, the sea is getting cleaner every year – young Salmon have recently been found in the upper reaches of the Mersey….. and now there’s a hundred rigid figures to add to the surreal vista.


We meandered through the sandhills down to the beach. The sand stretched away for a hundred yards or more to the shiny twinkles of the tumbling waves. The hot, high Sun in the middle of an azure blue wash – straight out of a David Hockney painting, the metal men stood erect, gazing out to sea in all their metalled nakedness.

It was all a bit surreal – I half expected some of them to be vandalised, nicked even, for scrap or trophies….. but they were all untouched. The only damage coming from Mother Nature. The iron is oxidising the skin - and the figures positioned further down the beach are suffering from a nasty rash of barnacle infestation in and around the nether regions.

The kids enjoyed them, so did the dog, he smelt up to half a dozen metal backsides before he gave up sniffing and started to wee on them instead.

Lights on, no one at home….

Posts have been thin to non-existent recently. Mainly because I’ve been feeling a little bit ‘wrrrrrrr’ and a little bit ‘gahhhhhh’ over the past few days. Laid low with blinding headaches, nausea and a distinct feeling that Stabby-Stan from Daggerthorpe was in residence just behind my right eye. The little git has been gouging away with his stabbing tools for all he was worth. Stabby stab, stabby stab, stabby. So much so that me old pals Pendle Witch, Bombardier and Cain’s Cask have had to go on a bit of a temperance sabbatical. Tuesday night was the worse – I took my eldest Son back to Chester – and drove the whole 80-mile round trip in the darkest glasses I could find…. at 10 o’clock at night. Today I’m feeling a lot better – and hopefully the headaches, nausea and Stabby have gone for good.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear….

I’ve been left a few comments lately in reaction to some of my more contentious posts with the prefix ‘Oh dear’.

What does that mean then? ‘Oh dear’ ….. It’s beginning to bug me a bit. It sort of comes over a bit superior-like – or maybe a bit sanctimonious perhaps? It’s like a pat on a kid’s head from an adult…. "Oh dear – never mind, your mental faculties aren’t quite up to the mark"…..

Presumably it’s intended as a bit of a mild putdown from a brain of a planet bohemian. Maybe it’s the sort of thing Oscar Wilde might have said of one of his contemporaries. "Oh dear Mr Bernard-Shaw, you’re such a beardy-weirdy tosser".

I must remember, next time I need to dig out the ultimate literary equivalent of a roll of the eyes and a shake of the head – from the masters of quick wit and ready repartee… well, it’s got to be ‘Oh dear’….

Yup. Prose perfect.