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3rd Law Part 19 – lowlife, postmen and Winking Owls

Friday, March 8th, 2013

Sat in reception of Auto Windscreens listening to some funky music. At first I thought hmm, can they turn this loud stuff off but now I’ve changed my mind. It’s quite uplifting.

I’m here because some lowlife smashed one of the rear windows of the Jeep. The lowlife didn’t get in because they hadn’t bargained for the fact that the knob you use to unlock the door from the inside was broken on that door. I’ve never bothered getting it replaced because it doesn’t stop us from locking and unlocking the car. Hah.

We called the cops who came out straight away fair play.  Apparently there has been a spate of such break-ins in town. They know who is doing it. A bunch of junkies looking for something to steal and sell for peanuts to buy themselves a couple of fixes. Been in and out of prison. There was no evidence onsite at our house to say who it was so I guess the forces of law and order will have to wait until the next incident to try and nab em.

We have beefed up our perimeter defences. I won’t tell you what we’ve done – need to know basis. I’d have to kill you. You can be assured however that it doesn’t involve razorwire or vicious killer dogs patrolling between the fences and trained to attack silently and ask questions after. The mind races away here. Picture the scene.

Dog pounces, forces you to the ground by clamping its huge teeth round your throat, shakes its head to rough you up a little and when it thinks it’s broken your resistance, lets go. It then proceeds to interrogate you in a very business-like manner, enquiring as to the purpose of your intrusion into the Davies estates.

Upon hearing that you are the postman and checking out your ID it licks the blood that has started to flow from the wounds in your neck, backs off and lets you know you are ok to proceed.

No that isn’t what we have done.

We interrupt the flow of this story to say btw it’s Radio 1 playing. Not my thing. I’m not in the right demographic.

Coming back to the security stuff, had the postman had his black and white cat with him in the van it would have scared it witless (words modified to preserve the Universal Classification of this work should it ever get to being assessed by the British Board Of Film or whoever does these things these days.

I assume the postman must have been on foot and without cat. It isn’t practical to take your cat with you on a round if you are on foot as they tend to wander off in search of mice or butterflies (other insects are available).

I’m not a cat person. Not a dog person really either. I like the concept of owning a dog. The faithful retainer trotting alongside you obediently, sitting at your feet in the pub gratefully catching the odd cheese and onion crisp thrown for its benefit. I like all that. What I don’t like is the fact that you have to look after it.

Also what do you do with the dog when you go on holiday?

Puts the mockers on that skiing trip or the villa in Mustique doesn’t it? I guess one could leave it with the gardener or the estate manager, or the mother in law though she wouldn’t be much use. Complains too much. Would drive the dog up the wall. It would attempt to escape and try and find you which is going to be difficult if you are in Mustique though marginally easier if skiing, as long as it isn’t in Canada or somewhere like that.

In fact I haven’t been skiing for many years. Not since Bob Madge suggested we popped up to Aviemore in 1984 or 1985. This was a Thursday and after work on Friday afternoon we were headed northbound with someone else whose name temporarily escapes me but which I will let you know if I remember. George it was I think. So we set off on Friday afternoon for the mobile home we had rented in Aviemore. It is a long way from Lincoln and we got there quite late and were starving.

We had been recommended to go to the Winking Owl to eat but we couldn’t find it so ended up having some poxy pub meal which was ok but not as good as we would have had had it been the Winking Owl, apparently. The ironic thing was that as soon as we had eaten and moved on to the next pub the next pub turned out to be, the Winking Owl of course!!

The next day we spent skiing. The one thing I have refrained from mentioning is that I broke my leg skiing at the age of 13 on a school trip to Sapada in the Italian Dolomites. The consequence of this breakage is that my right leg has never quite been as strong as the left. Normally it doesn’t matter but on that day skiing in Aviemore I found that it was weakening and I was beginning to fall even more than normal. I figured that the safest thing to do was get on the drag lift to the top of the mountain and take the chairlift to the bottom. On the way up someone had to sit next to me because I kept drifting off to the right, my left leg now being muscularly dominant.

When we got to the top we found that the chairlift had been closed due to high winds! Nightmare! The only thing I could do was ski down to the bottom. At this point we must remember from my experience on the drag lift that I could easily go to the right but not to the left! So in attempting to ski down the mountain I found that I could zig but not zag. I ended up having to zig, fall over, turn around on my backside (being ever mindful of that “U”), stand up and zig again. This took me ages and was my last skiing experience apart from a short afternoon on holiday in the French Alps.

Radio 1 is getting a bit irritating btw. I don’t mind the music but the mindless inane rubbish between songs is hard going. Bring back Radio2 or Radio4, though not The Archers. I can’t stand The Archers.

At this point I’m going to change the direction of the conversation because it is in danger of getting too negative. I’m going to take us back in time again to another restaurant we were looking for. This one, whose name is definitely lost in the mists of time, was on the seafront in Haifa. We were in Tel Aviv on business, staying at the Intercontinental Hotel on the beach. Very nice.

The concierge had recommended the restaurant and said it was just outside on the promenade. Getting there all we could find was a closed kiosk. Definitely not the posh restaurant. Looking around us there was nothing in sight. Hmm.

Next thing we know is that an ice cream van comes along, music blaring. I flagged him down and the guy inside, thinking he had a sale, eagerly hopped up to serve us. Unfortunately for him I only wanted to ask where the eatery was.

He was a helpful enough chap and pointed to a spot a couple of miles along the promenade. I then cheekily asked if he wouldn’t mind giving us a lift. Glint in eye etc. No problem.

We piled in and had the surreal experience of riding along the Tel Aviv seafront in the back of an ice cream van. It wasn’t a particularly posh one but hey…

After a short while a kid ran out for an ice cream and we pulled over – right in front of the restaurant. Out we got, thanked him and went in only to find it was fully booked! You lose some you draw some 🙂

How about this – the car is ready. I’m off. Ciao.

3rd Law part 18 here

3rd Law part 20 here

bread in Durham Market during the food festival

Friday, March 8th, 2013

Bread in Durham Market during the food festival. It was a good day out with lots of interesting epicurean treats to sample.

the band eats during a break at the trefor.net xmas party at the PhoenixArtistClub inSoHo

Thursday, March 7th, 2013

The band eats during a break at the trefor.net xmas party at the PhoenixArtistClub in SoHo.

Pic by Nick Pickles

4 pints of Timothy Taylors Landlord poured at the Strugglers Inn in Lincoln

Wednesday, March 6th, 2013

4 pints of Timothy Taylors Landlord poured at the Strugglers Inn in Lincoln. Landlord is the king of beers and the Strugglers a perfect palace in which to reside. A great place to go for a beer in front of the fire on a winter’s evening. Look out for more pictures from the Strugglers in the Art Gallery.

Fish at Borough Market

Tuesday, March 5th, 2013

Fish – smell the sea, feel the wind blowing your hair across your face, peel the spuds and get the chip pan on. A sensory wall hanging in the Art Gallery.

Citroen 2CV at Borough Market

Tuesday, March 5th, 2013

Inedible horse – topical wall hanging

AA van

Monday, March 4th, 2013

Latest in a series of real life wall hangings in the Art Gallery.

The giant electrical plug

Monday, March 4th, 2013

This is one helluva plug. I didn’t have time to look around the corner to see what it was connected to. Probably a giant vacuum cleaner or huge electric fire. It should be possible to find out but perhaps I’ll leave it to you to go and see. Let me know won’t you? 🙂

spices at Borough Market

Sunday, March 3rd, 2013

3rd law part 18

Saturday, March 2nd, 2013

This is one of those time has no meaning days. I have a jobs list but nothing that won’t wait. In one sense it doesn’t make sense to use the internet on a day like this. If time has no meaning it means you have a lot of it going spare. If I use the internet the third law will kick in and that time will have gone. Decisions decisions.

I did just pop out to the back garden for a kickabout with a football with our youngest. The garden has no chance really. It is littered with cracked pots and broken plants, bashed by ball. The lawn itself is in dire need of attention, lots of muddy patches and where there is greenery it is often moss. There is really no point in doing anything about it whilst it is still used as a sports field. Perhaps I should get the groundsman from the school over the road to come in and give it some industrial strength attention.

It’s a good phrase, “industrial strength”. Handy for lots of situations though I’m not sure I can quote an example here, other than the one I just did. It’s a bit like “fair play”. Useful, generally. I’ve made myself think here, wondering what other phrases come into the same category.

 

 

The pause for thought is represented by a couple of carriage returns, invisible but hopefully obvious. I’m afraid I can’t think of another such phrase though if I do I’ll burst out mid paragraph, a kind of metaphoric “Eureka”. Eureka is also a handy word but not a phrase and really only meant to represent the fact that you have discovered something unexpectedly.

You won’t see this but I am writing this bit at a desk in the TV room. It used to be my study but that went out the door when we got a TV. It might surprise you to hear that our oldest was thirteen before we had a TV in the house. I eventually bowed to pressure from a daughter about to go up to high school who was worried she might not be able to keep up with the TV gossip in the playground, although I don’t think they call it playground at “big school”. Playground is for kids.

Although I effectively lost my study it is quite handy to have a room that I can shut the door on and not have to put up with the rubbish they have on. It isn’t all rubbish but the vast majority is. I usually end up in another room on my laptop indulging in a bit of third law, or writing stuff like I am now.

Most of my writing is done on a sofa in the living room or in the kitchen or the conservatory (with Colonel Mustard and the lead piping). That bit in brackets is an in phrase for those in the know. It isn’t quite an eureka phrase and certainly not worthy of a shout out, in case you are analysing every word for the promised expression of surprise and discovery.

That expression may never arrive. I do feel as if I should be offering a prize for the first person to spot such an expression but I won’t because I’ll probably be inundated with emails and comments with “entries” none of which will be right and all of which will be expecting some kind of response. Not that I don’t like comments. I’m a pretty gregarious individual and like to engage with folk.

That’s my rule for twitter. I only follow people who are real people and who have something to say other than “buy my left handed widget”, “offers on left handed widgets” and “sale of left handed widgets ends at noon”. I don’t even know what a left handed widget is and seeing as I am right handed can’t see what possible use I could have for one unless it is something like a fork which I hold in my left hand using my right to manipulate the knife. I might be completely wrong here. It may also be that left handed widgets can also be used in the right hand in which case they are mislabelled, misrepresented and quite possibly miss sold, though not to me as I won’t buy one because I won’t be following them on twitter. I don’t think I’ve ever bought anything through following a link on twitter. I do get a lot of my news through twitter mind you. Breaking news, you saw it first on twitter, hot action as it happens from first hand witnesses, unless that is it is just a simple retweet. In fact it is mostly going to come from retweets as I don’t know anyone who lives in a war zone and who is likely to be filling my stream with live action coverage.

I have been stranded in war zones on two occasions in my life. The first was on 9 11. I was at a conference in the USA. The whole thing fizzled out as the planes crashed on day one of the conference. Many of the attendees had not yet arrived and most who could, drove home leaving just the overseas visitors to spend a week around the pool and going out every night.

The second was during the July 7th bombings in London. I had been expecting to catch a train back north from Kings Cross that day but instead was “forced” to spend the whole afternoon in the pub, crashing out at my sister Sue’s place in Balham for the night. It was handy having a sister living in Balham (gateway to the South) but she lives in Cardiff now which is also quite handy for when you want to go and watch the rugby at the Millennium Stadium which I am wont to do every now and again.

I remember once staying with Sue in Balham after watching England play Wales at Twickers. Sue had been the “good Auntie” and taken Joe then aged three out in London for the day. Hamleys toy shop, that kind of stuff. It’s hard work looking after a three year old, especially when you are not used to it so when I got back from the rugby Sue was desperate for some adult company, a few glasses of wine and a meal. Unfortunately I had been on the pop at a corporate jolly all day and all I could do when I got in was collapse. Poor Sue.

Sue’s a violinist you know. When we were kids we used to play the sailors hornpipe together, her on the fiddle and me on guitar. We would repeat the tune playing the verses faster and faster until we could physically go no faster. Mam and day would be quite proud when they saw people stop outside our house to listen. We still do it as a party piece. That and “The Irish Washerwoman”. Fair play 🙂

Slipped that one in, the fair play. You can’t claim it as a new phrase though because it was in the original spiel on useful phrases. Spiel is also a very useful word but like Eureka, not a phrase. I might be being a little harsh on myself here insisting on the useful phrase being a phrase rather than just a word but there again rules is rules. If you make ‘em there is no point in breaking ‘em straight away though I know that “rules are meant to be broken”.  That last phrase by the way is not one of the useful ones. It is interesting enough but not in my book useful, and this is indeed my book.

It would be no different if it was my ball and we were playing football. If it’s my ball we play by my rules. Period. Full stop. I don’t really like the word period, it’s too American and I don’t know why I used it.

3rd law part 17 here

3rd law part 19 here

Oranges at Borough Market

Friday, March 1st, 2013

Basket of Lemons at Quo Vadis

Friday, March 1st, 2013

The Voice

Friday, March 1st, 2013

She was a few tables away but I could hear her voice as if she was sat opposite, talking directly at me. I could see that others were speaking but hers was the only voice I could hear. Her pitch must have been tuned exactly for my ear. She didn’t seem to be talking loudly.

Talk was of grass seed, husband, New Zealand and a swimming pool that was one metre short of Olympic size. Odd. It was as if I was hearing one side of a telephone conversation because I couldn’t hear the other half of the conversation.

I wasn’t interested enough to record the conversation any more accurately than that. It wasn’t what she was saying that aroused my curiosity. It was the fact that  I could hear her but no one else.

Breakfast, Holiday Inn Bloomsbury, Friday, March 1st

“let spring commence”

Wednesday, February 27th, 2013

The trim hedge,

once out of control, is now tamed,

its gangly tendrils mastered

and canopy forestalled.

 

Clippings lie forlawn, awaiting disposal.

 

Stiff-shoulders, job complete for another year,

the gardener sinks into his armchair and commands:

“let spring commence”.

Lincoln A to Z D13 Birchwood

Wednesday, February 27th, 2013

When I were a lad my first proper job, in 1984, was at Marconi on Doddington Road in Lincoln and Dave Hopkins and I used to nip home to his place at midday for a spot of lunch. Things were pretty easy going in those days and lunch wasn’t typically an hour. We would pop to the Birchwood to buy some fresh crusty bread from the bakers together with a bit of ham and maybe some cheese and swing by his place to eat it.

Hopkins was a dab hand at making tea and I was happy to be the good guest and wait whilst he warmed the pot and made a proper cuppa. Dave was more conscientious than I was and was usually the one to call time and drive us back to the factory.

There used to be a pub on the Birchwood called The Wildlife and on Friday afternoons we would repair there for a few pints, often not returning until 3pm at which time we would go straight to the canteen for afternoon tea. It wasn’t much of a pub but we were fresh out of college and our standards weren’t that high.

They were pretty halcyon, those early days at Marconi. The company took on around 50 graduates over a two year period and it was a happy go lucky environment with almost every night being a party or a night out in the pub somewhere or another.

The Wildlife was the venue for one of the more memorable activities of the Marconi days which was “star stiff”. Star stiff was a competition whereby 200 celebrities, selected for their likelihood of keeling over and dying over the following twelve months were divided up into 20 “stiff portfolios” of ten names. Twenty engineers from Marconi took part, each carrying one stiff portfolio.

The names of the celebrities were contributed by all the contestants and a computer programme was written to randomly allocate the celebrities across all the portfolios. Each person had a seed which was a celeb highly likely to die over the year of the competition. The seeds were usually made up of Formula One racing drivers, which in those days was a far more dangerous sport than it is today, rocks stars known for their high living and drug abuse, and other famous people thought to be already at the edge of the abyss.

We would all gather on a day in July in the pub and eagerly wait to see who the computer had allocated us for our stiff portfolios. As I said the competition lasted twelve months. The deal was of one of the names on your stiff portfolio died you were given a pound by each of the other contestants. This may sound a little macabre but in reality if a particular celebrity looked like popping off you might have one person willing him or her to die but nineteen people doing the exact opposite and willing them a long and happy continuation of life.

The competition made for some tense moments. Salvador Dali was burned in a house fire but it took him months to actually die. Richard Burton actually went and died the day after the twelve months was up. Jim Patterson, who had him in his portfolio was gutted. Nineteen pounds was a reasonable wodge in those days when a pint probably cost 50 or 60 pence. Richard Burton, being known for his fondness of the sauce, was almost certainly a seed. I don’t think any of the racing drivers died during the competition.

When the twelve months were up we would reconvene in The Wildlife, replace the deceased with new prospects and start again with a totally new random allocation of celebrities.

After three of four years the original gang at Marconi started to focus on their careers and went their separate ways. Life was never the same again though I do look back very fondly at what might be called the star stiff days.