What’s The Scores, George Dawes?

Whilst on the subject of tax (as I was in my previous post... kind of) have you ever wondered where all your hard earned tax money goes...?

Ahem.

We had new doors fitted to the Gallery a couple of weeks ago. Not cheap MFI reconstituted pine doors. No. Fancy, remote-sensory, duel pump powered, automatic, DDA approved doors. In other words, doors with attitude and ruddy great knobs on (literally).

They cost someone a lot of money. My employers. The local authority (though not alas on doors).

Two weeks later there are still a number of problems with the doors.

Unconnected, exposed wiring is still hanging down either side of them. I’m trusting to luck that none of it is live or essential to the building services.

The door sensors are a bit “over zealous”. They open at the approach of visitors – fine. But when they come to close again one doors senses the other and opens again. And again. And again. In short we have flapping doors. Coming into the Art Gallery is akin to storming into the saloon bar at Tombstone, Arizona. The doors flap dramatically behind you as your order your firewater at the bar.

And lastly (though rather importantly for a security conscious art gallery), the key is impossible to turn in the lock. Honestly you need to have the strength of Geoff Capes (remember him?) to get in or out of the building. My key is now so twisted it looks like a Möbius strip.

The door men are having to come back again to put all of this right. This will be their third visit in three weeks.

Ker-ching. Thank you for your donation.

Faith In Human Nature

A few months ago I reported on a monumental act of misfeasance.

Back in February somebody stole our green recycling bin that had been newly delivered to our house by the local authority. I had to go to the police (as directed by said local authority) and fill out various reports before we could be allocated a brand new one.

All this on top of some petty thief’s criminal attempts to foil my magnificent recycling plans was too much to bear. I suffered apoplexy, hysteria and gout and was hospitalized for several months. I suffered hallucinations and wrote them down as blog entries. I was not a well bunny.

Imagine the horror then of returning home at the end of last week to find that our general refuse bin (black this time) had also been snatched.

It was gone. Just gone. Left out for the refuse team who were due to empty it that day and then stolen in the prime of its life.

In the space of a second I was on the edge of full mental collapse.

One bin goes missing and you feel – despite the annoyance – OK, just kids messing about, some drunken a-hole having a laugh as he wends his way home. But two... suddenly it feels like a vendetta. Siege mentality sets in. The hatches are battened and the big guns wheeled out.

Xenophobia and misanthropy leap to the fore. Who was it? Who was it? Is this the start of a hate campaign? Are they going to steal our car trailer next? It was our Polish neighbours, I’m sure of it. It has to be! They speak with a funny accent and own three cars... it has to be them! Or it’s the chavs up the road. Of course! All that bling... it’s a telltale sign. They’ve got our bin hidden in the boot of their bright blue BMW...

By nightfall I had drafted a scathing blog, written letters to the editor of the local rag and dictated a letter to the chief exec of the council. I even considered writing to Boris Johnson but managed to reel the wavering line of my sanity back in before I crossed that point of no return.

Imagine my surprise then when, next morning, our black bin was mysteriously back on our doorstep. They’ve all got addresses on you see and some kind soul, finding it perhaps abandoned and enfeebled by the roadside had taken the trouble to return it to the family who loved it most dearly.

Oh joy.

What can I say? I felt a mite foolish. All that ranting and raving. All that class war mongering. All for nothing.

My faith in human nature has been totally restored. There are good people out there.

So God bless you, every single one of you. I shall think of you all every time I stuff a full refuse sack into my newly returned black bin.

I shall keep this country clean for you.

There is a corner of a foreign landfill that will be forever England.

Windy Billets

A 6 year old, a 7 month old baby, two adults developing colds and one sitting a major Uni exam in 7 day’s time holed up in a tent in the middle of tornado conditions in one of the wettest valleys in mid Wales... were we utterly mad?

Quite possibly.

It’s fair to say that the weather could have been better. High winds when we arrived had the farmer guffawing at our efforts to erect our Vango uber-tent in his camping field though I’m at pains to point out that Karen and I achieved this assignment so singularly that ours was one of the few tents in Wales not to be blown out into the middle of the North Atlantic by the end of the day.

When we asked the farmer what the forecast was like for the rest of the week he smiled and nonchalantly replied “first the wind, then the rain”.

And he wasn’t bloody wrong.

Anyone who’s ever sat in a tent while the wind howls around them outside knows how oppressive and claustrophobic such an experience can be. However, we could just about cope with that. The kids were fine and we were definitely getting lots of “fresh air”. The torrential rain on Monday evening however was the last straw. Karen and I were feeling decidedly rough by this point and just could not get warm. All our plans to walk the hills had gone for a burton and we just couldn’t face another few days sitting miserably on a plastic ground sheet listening to the deluge outside fall at a 33 degree angle in an attempt to perforate our tent defences.

We either had to find an emergency B&B or bite the bullet and head home.

Our one and only stroke of good fortune saw us locate possibly the last free B&B in the area – another de-camped family tried literally 5 minutes after us and were turned miserably away. I admit I took sadistic pleasure in their disappointment knowing that we had secured the one-and-only room for ourselves.

Ah. What can one say about a proper bed and a television? A sofa and an en suite bathroom? Cooked breakfast and no washing up? Such things are worth killing for. Honestly.

The rest of the holiday was alas a bit of a wash out – 2 of the museums we went to turned out to have closed down and the weather was still too inclement to risk a walk in the hills. So we mooched around Machynelleth, Corris and Betws-Y-Coed and took comfort in the fact that the weather was ineffably worse back at home in Leamington Spa.

Ho hum. Another Great British Holiday experience notched onto the old umbrella handle.

We got home Thursday afternoon and I then had to get my head around some last minute revision for my Uni exam on Saturday. Poetry In English Since 1945. And what a bitch it was too. One of the toughest exams I’ve ever sat. I had to answer 3 questions. Normally I run through the list of questions at the start and put an asterisk next to the ones I feel competent enough to answer. By the end of the list I’d earmarked just one.

Gulp.

I had to find 2 more. 2 more!?

Suddenly being stuck on a hillside in Wales with a tornado shredding my sleeping bag around my legs seemed a much healthier place to be...

Timeslide

A chance encounter this lunchtime has set me off reminiscing...

In-between bouts of heavy rain I decided to kick-start the old MP3 player and take a mooch along one of the many river walks that perforate my home town of Leamington Spa. As luck would have it, this particular route took me by the college where I completed my art foundation course back in 1988 and where I met Dave who, for many years was my closest friend. My best friend, in fact.

Now Dave is still a good friend but life being life we now rarely see each other and hanging out never extends further these days than a rare 20 minute rushed conversation on the street corner, usually in the morning when he’s on the way to his job and I’m on my way to mine. He has a family, I have a family... What can I say? Our commitments and drives seemed to slowly separate over the years until the bond that once held us close as brothers disintegrated without either of us ever quite being aware of it.

It’s something that occasionally causes me a twinge of regret and pain but never for very long – there just isn’t room or time in my life at the moment to dwell on it. And I guess that says it all. As for Dave, well, I’m probably being unfair but I don’t think my absence from the great scheme of things particularly impinges on him at all... but that’s possibly the subject of another post.

Anyway, this lunchtime, as I wandered passed the college where Dave and I first met who should I run into? Dave Jr. Dave’s eldest son who bears an uncanny resemblance to his father when he was 18. It was odd to see him goofing around with his mates the same way Dave and I did exactly 20 years ago and in the same place. Just for a second I honestly wondered if I’d walked through a hole in time or life was inexplicably repeating itself in some kind of temporal ox-bow. Some weird loop serving no other purpose than to endlessly repeat itself.

For the briefest of moments I was 18 again with no other worries than the thought of bunking off from lessons for the afternoon, my head full of stupid ambitions and dreams which now, 20 years on, seem wasteful, ill conceived and ill chosen. Looking back at myself I was lumbered with a profound lack of direction and a hopeless lack of motivation. Not a great combo.

But when you’re 18 it’s fine. There’s plenty of time to do things, loads of time... too much time in fact. So much time you fritter it away on silly pranks and things that don’t really matter and things that are of no consequence.

And I envy Dave Jr that.

But despite the pleasurable regret, the slight sugary tinge of melancholy that is tinting my spectacles this afternoon I’m glad that I’m here and not back there. It’s good to have passed through that period and to be standing on a hillside looking back at it through a pair of wizened binoculars... because as someone clever once said: the past is a great place to visit but you wouldn’t want to live there. Besides which the sexual desert that characterized my twenties is not something I’d ever care to revisit no matter how young it might make me appear.

Today then, for the first time ever, the small grey hairs in my beard and hair are most welcome. They’ve been hard won by trial and experience.

And when I was 18 I certainly would have envied myself that...

Blofeld Is My Next Door Neighbour

It’s not often that my hometown makes the national news (winning Britain In Bloom for the umpteenth time running is never front page material) but when it does it does so with style.

You’ll all no doubt have heard the news of James Bond’s fabled Aston Martin taking an unnecessary nosedive into some picturesque Italian lake on route to the film set of “A Quantum Of Solace”...

Well, it’s with a quantum of pride that I reveal that the driver hailed from good old Leamington Spa... the small Midland’s spa town that brought forth such luminaries into the world as Aleister Crowley, Terry Frost and yours truly.

And now we can add Fraser Dunn to that list, the hapless driver who lost control on a steep mountainous Italian bend in wet weather and took out Bond’s trademark wheels big time.

Fraser escaped unharmed (naturally) and merely brushed off his tux as the car was craned out of the drink by Italian contractors. Reports that the lake was filled with remote-controlled sharks with lasers attached to their foreheads are so far unfounded.

Mr Bond himself was unavailable for comment being up to his hips in posh, busty totty but Blofeld was heard to scream a tirade of curses before pounding his pussy to death in angered frustration.

Er...

Or have I got that the wrong way round?

Can You Feel It?

No I'm not talking about a game of hunt the sausage with Michael Jackson, I'm talking about the earthquake that struck the UK at 1.0 am last night.

Apparently it measured around 5.2 on the Richter Scale and was centred somewhere in Market Rasen in Lincolnshire.

The effects were felt all the way deep down in my neck of the woods in Warwickshire. Thankfully the only casualty in my house was a Lego Luke Skywalker figure who took a tumble from the top shelf and was later found by me, wedged (no pun intended Star Wars fans) behind some boxes on the floor. He was still gripping tight to his light saber, bless 'im.

That's the force for you.

Like I said: can you feel it?

Tag Team

Good day fellow bloggers; yours truly has been tagged good and proper by blogging buddy Old Cheeser and so I must most humbly submit myself to the task at hand.

The rules are simple (they could have been written for me):

First: post the following rules and a link to the person who tagged you.

Second: share seven interesting facts about yourself. The more amazingly interesting the better.

Third: tag seven people at the end of your post linking their names to their blogs and advising them of their tagged status via the comments facility on their own blogs.

Couldn't be easier. Except finding seven interesting facts about myself is going to be an absolute labour of Hercules...

1) One of my aunts is a distant relation of Audrey Hepburn. But sadly so distant that there is utterly no mileage in me trying to capitalize on the connection.

2) I have met Mel and Sue, Roger McGough and two members of Killing Joke. Mel and Sue I met at Weston-super-Mare train station: Mel was lovely and friendly, Sue was much cooler but still very polite. They made a point of not getting into the same carriage as me. Was it something I said? Roger McGough I met at a book signing - top bloke but he gave me a very weird look. Was it something I said? The KJ band members - Jaz Coleman and Paul Raven - I met during an amazing gig at the Birmingham Institute. Jaz shook my hand (his was very sweaty) and Paul Raven was wandering around brushing his teeth. He just gave me a weird look. Was it something I said...?!?

3) I am a secret Lego geek. I absolutely adore the stuff and am an avid collector. Sad eh? However, the way I look at it, there are worse addictions. I could be into crack, booze or gambling. Or, as Karen has just pointed out: I could be into football. I'm also keen to big up the fact that Lego is a lucrative investment as the models tend to increase in value as they get older.

4) When I was a toddler my mother tells me I used to regularly throw myself down the stairs (was it something she said?) without incurring a single injury. And then one day I fell down the bottom two steps and fractured my leg resulting in a few weeks in hospital. Why my family hadn't invested in a stairgate is still a mystery to me.

5) I started my as yet unrewarded writing career when I was about 7 years old after seeing Star Wars at the local cinema. Since then I have tinkered with stories and poetry with only the occasional year off here and there for bad behaviour. A veritable monster was created. Blame George Lucas.

6) A friend and I once snuck into the grounds of Guy's Cliffe - a local heritage site owned by the Masons and reputedly haunted by the ghost of lady Felice of Warwick who threw herself from one of the windows into the river below - and part-way round were confronted by a very spooky presence. I'm not joking for once either. We didn't actually see a manifestation but something unwelcoming was definitely there. I'm happy to report that we both turned tail and ran, wise poltroons that we were...

7) I have a phobia of moths. I can't stand them anywhere near me and I cannot relax if one gets into the house. Urgh. Horrible flaky, powdery things.

There you go - seven not so fab facts to ponder about yours truly.

And now I'm tagging Ally, Eve, Rol, Laura, Tris, Emily and Per.pri to do the same!

Wet Rot

Apologies for the lack of blog action over the last few days – I’ve barely had time to drink a cup of tea let alone tinker with the English language in an entertaining manner.

On Saturday the River Leam burst its banks and, at ground level at least, came within 3 foot of the Art Gallery where I work in dear old Leamington Spa. Hence Saturday lunchtime I was called in to work to help install flood barriers, put out sandbags and remove every valuable painting from the walls so that they could all be stored somewhere safe.

Unfortunately, despite all these precautions, the water managed to get in through the foundations of the building and our under floor store – directly beneath the main Gallery – filled up with over 5ft of smelly, river water.

Hence, yesterday – which was actually my wedding anniversary – I had to go in again as most other staff are away on holiday this time of year to help with the clean up operation. I had originally booked the day off so Karen and I could go out for a meal but it seems the restaurant we’d planned to patronize had also been flooded! As it was Karen was very understanding and we decided to postpone our day out together until today.

So yesterday saw me (begrudgingly) slaving away at work instead of stuffing myself silly with top nosh and gazing adoringly into my wife’s eyes. Not the celebration of 2 years of marriage that we’d planned.

Still, the clean up operation is now underway. Pumps are in place to empty the flooded store and engineers are primed to strip down the boilers as our boiler room also ended up under 4 ft of water.

At the end of the day, compared to other areas of the country, we got off very lightly which is a very sobering thought indeed.

As for me. Top nosh beckons today. And Karen and I are concentrating on getting ourselves through to the weekend – Saturday will see us heading off the Marazion for a week’s well deserved holiday!

I can't wait.

Demon Barber

I’ve just returned to my computer after getting my hair cut at one of Leamington Spa’s most recommended barbers, Francesco’s, in my lunch break.

Bloody hell but the guy who dealt with my hair was rough (not Francesco himself alas). Sweeney Todd just doesn’t come into it. I feel like my head has been savaged by an irradiated combine harvester driven by a rabid three-legged Alsatian high on turps.

The comb was scraped so hard across my scalp you can plant potato seeds in the furrows and my ears resemble a pair of McCoy’s crinkle cut crisps (cheese and onion flavour, thank you for asking).

Even the fluffy brush thing with which he finished off his follicle artwork was batted about like he was playing Australia in the Ashes. Six!

Wow. A haircut and an Indian head massage all in one go. Now that’s what I call service.

Thankfully his finesse with the scissors was exemplary. Bloody good job as I suspect he could have snipped the gonads off a gnat in mid flight with the ruddy things.

The man barely spoke – which normally doesn’t bother me as I like someone to concentrate when they’re swishing about my head and face with sharpened cutting devices – but he did have a weird penchant for humming the Yankee Doodle Dandy tune. Even weirder his mobile phone rang half way through and he deliberately left it unanswered just so he could listen to the ring tone...

Yes. You’ve guessed it: Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Played on a banjo no less.

As a ring tone...

?!?!

I mean really!

But what about the haircut I hear you ask...

...brutal!

Doctor Who Exclusive!

Having lived for most of my life in the completely land-locked town of Leamington Spa I was mystified when a friend found a web site this morning that purported to tell the history of the Leamington Spa Life Boat Museum. It waxed lyrical about the brave life boat men of Leamington Spa as they risked their all on the high seas to save stricken sailors along the rough Leamington Spa coastline.

Leamington also appeared to have uprooted itself from deepest Warwickshire in the very heart of the country and re-sited itself near Carlisle on completely the wrong side of the UK!

What the hell was going on? Had I entered an alternative reality?

Almost.

Further investigation revealed that the source of this mystery lay with the BBC and Doctor Who. Follow the links below to find out more:

http://www.leamingtonspalifeboatmuseum.co.uk

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who_tie-in_websites#Leamington_Spa_Lifeboat_Museum

Future visitors to Leamington Spa please note: life jackets will not be fitted as standard.

House Of Cards

After spending a small fortune – well, ok, just merely a few quid – getting some business cards printed for my fledgling web design business I’ve spent the last few days trotting around my home town of Leamington Spa, trying to offload some of my newly minted wares onto the counters of the friendly shop keepers that make up the business sector of dear old Leamo...

And aside from one shop (where I personally knew one member of staff) all of them replied in the negative. No you cannot display your flea-bitten cards here. No can do. Clear off.

It’s very demoralizing.

I realize it is of course the prerogative of every business owner to choose who, how and what they display in their own shops in the way of advertising but I can’t help feeling a mite peed off about it all. It really felt like a long line of doors being slammed shut in my face. One after the other. Bang bang bang.

Thanks for nothing, guys.

Welcome to the cut throat world of small business.

Jumped The Gun

It seems I was a mite premature in my peevishness towards the Leamington Courier. I had an email this morning from their contribution’s editor thanking me for my letter about the Smack nightclub and advising me to see this Friday’s edition… a sure sign that my letter is primed for publication.

Another teeny-weeny serving of fame beckons.

Who knows I may end up as a guest on Loose Women after all…

Or should I be setting my sights a lot higher?

Sprint For The Weekend And The Smack Letter

Friday, as we all know, is the best day of the week. The whole day is imbibed with a sense of uplifting optimism that can lift even the direst spirit. I realize this pro-plus quality has everything to do with the approaching weekend and the glorious potential that accompanies it. Even if that potential is never realized it doesn’t matter – the weekend is great because it’s “our” time. Time to do our own thing, spend time with our families, time to follow our own pursuits without the boss or the taxman clocking your every tea break and loo stop. Time to do absolutely eff all if that’s what you feel like.

This Friday is especially good for me because (a) I’m taking Karen out for a meal at a fab new Thai restaurant in Leamo tomorrow night to celebrate both Valentine’s day (belatedly) and her birthday (prematurely) and (b) I’ve booked Monday and Tuesday off as holiday so I get a whoppingly huge 4 day weekend followed by a short week at work. Top!

With it being Karen’s birthday on the Tuesday we’re planning a day out somewhere together – possibly shopping in Birmingham, possibly a day mooching around Moreton-in-the-Marsh – wherever we end up it’ll all be good and I’m sure another nice meal will feature as part of the day’s entertainments. I can’t wait. Hedonism – it’s my favourite hobby.

On another matter I was very disappointed to find that a letter I’d written to the local Courier newspaper wasn’t printed in this week’s edition. I feel personally insulted. How dare they decline a missive from yours truly! I spent at least 10 minutes composing the damn thing!

Anyway, just because I’m able and not because you’re at all interested I shall paste a copy of the letter below so that it is saved for all posterity. The background story is this: a local night club has decided to change its name from Sugar (dubious in itself) to Smack and has even set up a web site called trysmack.co.uk to publicise itself. I feel that given Leamington’s history of heroin addiction amongst some of its residents such marketing techniques are deeply offensive, stupid and crass...

For information: Andi Conway-Horbury was the local resident who originally complained about the new name of the club to the Courier.


"Re: Sugar night club renamed Smack

I share Andi Conway-Horbury’s disgust regarding the recent renaming of the Sugar night club. Aside from sounding cheap and nasty, the new name is plainly a cynical manoeuvre on the part of the club owners to cash in on the drug scene. Given the crass name of their web site – www.trysmack.co.uk – they evidently think heroin abuse is not only cool and fashionable but also an ideal sales pitch with which to encourage young customers through their door. This is surely deeply insulting to their potential clientele – as well as incredibly insulting to all individuals and families who have had their lives ruined by heroin addiction.

I’m sure the club owners will want to impose responsible house-rules on drug use and possession within the confines of their club, particularly with reference to all banned and illegal substances – I mean Heaven forbid that the club is constantly raided by the police and earns itself a bad reputation which jeopardizes its license – but I fail to see how cashing in on the heroin scene in such a tactless manner will in any way aid them in their efforts to keep their premises drug free.

Given the nature of most night club entertainments maybe a more suitable, less contentious, drug related name could have been chosen? Alka Seltzer or Imodium perhaps?"