I had arranged to meet Adrian at Rim's Motors, in Barry, at eight o' clock in the morning. Allowing for rush hour traffic and Cardiff's never-ending roadworks, I got in the pick-up to start the seven mile journey at five to eight. When it comes to punctuality, I am a hypocrite of scarcely imaginable proportions. I can honestly say, that I have never arrived anywhere early in my life, and that furthermore, I can count the times I have arrived somewhere on time (since leaving my parents' home in 1990) on the fingers of one hand. In fact the thumb of one hand would be ample. I don't do this to annoy people, it is just that I always, always, think of something else I need to do before I leave the house. Aside from my usual OCD routine of checking everything at least twice, this could include such vital, last-minute, tasks as, cleaning the hob, removing all of the empty blister-packs from the first aid drawer, wiping the coasters or organizing the contents of the bathroom shelves.
Conversely, if someone has told me that they will call at a particular time, or I believe that the service that I receive, say in a shop, or at a restaurant, is not sufficiently prompt, then I take it extremely personally. With friends this will normally manifest itself as sarcasm. With strangers this will at first manifest itself as sarcasm, but will quickly escalate to verbal abuse and the threat of physical violence and/or property damage.
I arrived at Rim's Motors at eight twenty. Rim's is Adrian's MOT garage of choice, and there can be no higher recommendation. Exhibiting his planning brilliance, we then travelled together, in the pick-up, to his house. We then changed vehicles, getting into his green Transit, but not before he showed off his new white Transit which he had purchased for £400. (Both Transits are parked on the grass verge at the side of Adrian's house. Technically this is a public area, but dual-use verges seem to be very much de rigeur in Adrian's neighbourhood. Some verges double as worn tyre depositories, some as white-goods storage areas, and others as open-air carpet remnants showrooms.) Once inside the green Transit we set off for the address that Adrian was working at that day. It was in Cardiff. We passed my front door at approximately nine o'clock, arriving at the address at nine-thirty.
The job of the day was to replace a kitchen, at a flat in the North of the city. I didn't know what to expect when we opened the door of the property, but as we stepped inside, my involuntary 'f*ck me', summed it up rather well. To say that the flat was a bit messy would be like saying that Kerry Katona is a bit common. I don't think that the it had ever been cleaned. The rooms all looked like they had been set up for a 'Crack Den Monthly' photo-shoot. The bathroom was particularly bad, but the kitchen really took one's breath away. But unfortunately not one's sense of smell. Years of burnt grease, decaying food and the stench of human misery hung heavy in the air. At one point the landlord turned up to 'see how things were going'. What little respect I had for this charlatan quickly evaporated, when he revealed that he lets the flat to his brother. His brother! He made himself a glass of coffee (there were no cups), then said that he had intended to have the flat thoroughly cleaned, but that there had been a leak in the ceiling and he had been in dispute with the management company for months over the matter. Well that's fair enough then. Let your sibling continue to pay you to live in squalor, because, before he moved in, there had been a small leak. He then tutted, complained that his brother could have cleaned up a bit, before putting out his cigarette on the vinyl floor in the hallway. He lit another cigarette, and walked out, bidding us good day. What a ...
In the afternoon Adrian treated us both to lunch at his favourite Scottish-themed restaurant. We both had Big Mac Meals and both 'went large', but not before I thoroughly cleaned my hands in the confusing and ineffective soap dispenser/sink/hand dryer.
Over lunch Adrian and I had a little chat about religion. Adrian was explaining that Jehovah's Witnesses do not think that they are a 'chosen' or 'special', people, merely that they are the ones who God, aka Jehovah, has called to do his bidding. This was a perfectly good explanation of their viewpoint, not needing a simplified version to be understood. However as, for whatever reason, people of a scientific leaning do not appear to gravitate towards Adrian's, or anybody else's, mainstream religion, he has become used to having to explain things more clearly. In my experience, Adrian's ministry relies heavily on the parable. Accordingly, he summed up what he meant (although I fairly confident that I already knew) thusly,
'Imagine you are in a big supermarket, like Asda or whatever. But they're opening up a new, smaller, supermarket, that is going to be selling the best stuff. Now, imagine you were sent to the big supermarket to look for staff for the new supermarket. You would want to pick the hardest workers, wouldn't you? We're the same. Except that everyone in the big supermarket is invited.'
So that was that cleared up. My interest piqued, I asked him about the attitude of the Witnesses to the other world religions. He sipped his coffee.
'Well obviously, every religion thinks that their religion is right.'
Refreshing, I thought. It's a shame that this live-and -let-live attitude didn't prevail throughout the rest of the world. He then paused and added that,
'The difference is, ours actually is right'.
Hmm. Another false dawn.
After work I returned home and prepared myself for my weekly battle of wits with my wife. For five years every Monday evening, when it graces the TV schedule, has revolved around University Challenge. In that time I have lost twice. I average an impressive 16 correct answers per contest, to my wife's admirable 8. The resulting tremendous feeling of intellectual superiority sets me up for the week. Imagine my dismay then, to find that bearded gnome Bill Oddy, is darkening BBC 2's doors for the next two weeks with his dreary 'Autumn Watch'. If people want to watch badgers and foxes going about their everyday business, an interest which in itself should be questioned, then why don't they spend their evenings in a hedgerow, or next to a wheelie bin. If Jeremy Paxman was hosting University Challenge a stone's throw from my front door, I would not want to sit and watch it on TV. Probably.
I went to bed early and resolved never to watch repeats of The Goodies.
Wednesday, 29 October 2008
Sunday October 26th
I had arranged to do my good deed for the week on Sunday. My mother in law had mentioned that she was going to pay a local ne'er-do-well £100 to clear her garage. I told her that, to save her money, I would borrow one of Adrian's fleet of vehicles and clear the garage for her. I assured her that I would do this 'soon'. After weeks of stalling my MiL, 'soon' had arrived.
Adrian knocked on my door an hour earlier than we'd arranged. Or so I thought. The clocks had gone back in the night, but feeling pleased with myself this year, I had remembered and changed the time on my mobile phone as soon as I had wakened. However, by some witchcraft, it transpired that my phone had already gone back an hour, unassisted, so was now two hours earlier than GMT. How does it know when to do that? In every way my phone amazes me. It photographs, video records, entertains. As my friend Elis pointed out on our Exeter trip, if our grandfather's were alive and saw the things that these tiny devices could do, they would think that we were in league with the devil. (As blog reader's will know, our ancestors' belief that good will ultimately triumph over evil, would have been restored, minutes after that statement, as Satan's box of tricks was to drop a bollock, as it's SatNav lead us, not to the desired comedy venue, but into a residential cul-de-sac.)
Anyway, Adrian arrived (when I was still in my TV underpants), and dropped the keys off to his pick-up. Not wanting to waste time. I threw on some clothes from my DIY collection, and headed out of the door. I then headed back in the door, and checked that the oven and all the switches were off, and headed out the door. I then headed back in the door, to check that the iron, which I had not used, was unplugged, and headed out the door. I then headed back in the door, checked the back door, which I hadn't used, set the alarm and headed out the door. I then locked the door, tested it three times, said aloud 'the door is locked' and got in the pick-up.
Like the rest of Adrian's fleet (two Transit vans, a Toyota saloon and a Mercedes convertible), the pick-up is testament to the short-comings of the British MOT system. Adrian's love of a bargain and gung-ho attitude to all things 'handy', mean that the area surrounding his house is home to vehicles in various states of (dis)repair. Adrian is a keen amateur mechanic and electrician who also, due to his strong faith, has an unshakeable belief in life after death. This is a heady brew. Adrian can often be found driving vehicles that, to the more critical eye, might be deemed 'dangerous'. Indeed, he had previously loaned me another vehicle which, after I had driven it, I deemed to be 'f*cking lethal'. The possibility that Adrian's pick-up would transport me on a one-way journey to meet my maker, who may, or may not, be called Jehovah, was outweighed, in true Welsh style, by the fact that it was free. In fairness to Adrian, the pick-up seemed relatively roadworthy, the only niggles being a drivers' side window that leaked, a drivers' side wing mirror that gave an unimpaired view of the road beneath the door, and a fuel cap that was in every way identical to a piece of folded carrier bag held on with an elastic band. These features made Adrian's pick-up only a distant second in the 'Most Dangerous Pick-Up I Have Loaned For Free' competition.*
On arriving in a Swansea ,with a wet right arm and thigh, following heavy rain, I was pleased to see my wife. I was even more pleased when she informed me that I had missed her mother's breakfast. I was keen to press on, so I backed the truck up to the garage, and opened the up-and-over door. My MiL's garage is not unlike the cauldron described in the Mabinogion, the magical vessel which never empties, no matter how many people are fed from it. I made twelve trips to the Penlan skip in the Micra, in one day, not twelve months ago, to empty my MiL's garage of, what can only be described as, tat. That same garage was now once more filled to the rafters with kipple. (Yes, kipple. Look it up.)
By five in the afternoon I had returned to my MiL's house, after three full truck-loads of unwanted kipple had been deposited in the main Swansea skip. I say unwanted, I mean unwanted by normal people. Skip workers, on the other hand, seem to be genetically predisposed to locate and store items, discarded by others, which they think may be of some value. This 'Junk Gene' is what causes their wild scramble from container to container. There scurrying is invariably rewarded with a pile of broken toasters, Buckaroos, tennis rackets, and so forth, which can be found next to their deck chairs, and which they guard jealously.
Good deed accomplished, I accepted the offer of a ham and cheese sandwich from my MiL, in preference to the alternative, (warmed) bacon in a (dry) bap. This was followed by a too-sweet coffee and a Twix. Replete, I kissed my MiL and headed home to Cardiff to meet my wife, who had already gone ahead in the Micra.
On arriving home I cashed in my Brownie points by letting my wife make dinner, whilst I, thanks to the wonder of Sky+, watched 1 x MotoGP Races, 0.5 x Rugby League matches and 2 x NFL games. I didn't watch the third NFL game as I was taking the pick-up back to Adrian in the morning and had agreed to 'help him out' for the day. I wanted to enjoy the experience fully.
Before bed, I checked the oven knobs, front and back doors and electrical switches (twice), made myself a blackcurrant squash and ate two indigestion tablets.
* My friend Todd's pick-up, located in Calgary, which I drove several times, was considerably more dangerous than Adrian's vehicle. As there is no MOT in Canada, Todd's truck was totally un-roadworthy. It was severely rusted in all the major weight-bearing areas. It had no working instruments or fuel gage. It ran on propane, which was pumped directly into a huge, corroded, tank, welded onto the load-carrying area, just behind the occupants heads. In short, it was like driving a bomb to rugby practice twice a week. I genuinely winced every time I turned the key in the ignition. Still, it was free.
Adrian knocked on my door an hour earlier than we'd arranged. Or so I thought. The clocks had gone back in the night, but feeling pleased with myself this year, I had remembered and changed the time on my mobile phone as soon as I had wakened. However, by some witchcraft, it transpired that my phone had already gone back an hour, unassisted, so was now two hours earlier than GMT. How does it know when to do that? In every way my phone amazes me. It photographs, video records, entertains. As my friend Elis pointed out on our Exeter trip, if our grandfather's were alive and saw the things that these tiny devices could do, they would think that we were in league with the devil. (As blog reader's will know, our ancestors' belief that good will ultimately triumph over evil, would have been restored, minutes after that statement, as Satan's box of tricks was to drop a bollock, as it's SatNav lead us, not to the desired comedy venue, but into a residential cul-de-sac.)
Anyway, Adrian arrived (when I was still in my TV underpants), and dropped the keys off to his pick-up. Not wanting to waste time. I threw on some clothes from my DIY collection, and headed out of the door. I then headed back in the door, and checked that the oven and all the switches were off, and headed out the door. I then headed back in the door, to check that the iron, which I had not used, was unplugged, and headed out the door. I then headed back in the door, checked the back door, which I hadn't used, set the alarm and headed out the door. I then locked the door, tested it three times, said aloud 'the door is locked' and got in the pick-up.
Like the rest of Adrian's fleet (two Transit vans, a Toyota saloon and a Mercedes convertible), the pick-up is testament to the short-comings of the British MOT system. Adrian's love of a bargain and gung-ho attitude to all things 'handy', mean that the area surrounding his house is home to vehicles in various states of (dis)repair. Adrian is a keen amateur mechanic and electrician who also, due to his strong faith, has an unshakeable belief in life after death. This is a heady brew. Adrian can often be found driving vehicles that, to the more critical eye, might be deemed 'dangerous'. Indeed, he had previously loaned me another vehicle which, after I had driven it, I deemed to be 'f*cking lethal'. The possibility that Adrian's pick-up would transport me on a one-way journey to meet my maker, who may, or may not, be called Jehovah, was outweighed, in true Welsh style, by the fact that it was free. In fairness to Adrian, the pick-up seemed relatively roadworthy, the only niggles being a drivers' side window that leaked, a drivers' side wing mirror that gave an unimpaired view of the road beneath the door, and a fuel cap that was in every way identical to a piece of folded carrier bag held on with an elastic band. These features made Adrian's pick-up only a distant second in the 'Most Dangerous Pick-Up I Have Loaned For Free' competition.*
On arriving in a Swansea ,with a wet right arm and thigh, following heavy rain, I was pleased to see my wife. I was even more pleased when she informed me that I had missed her mother's breakfast. I was keen to press on, so I backed the truck up to the garage, and opened the up-and-over door. My MiL's garage is not unlike the cauldron described in the Mabinogion, the magical vessel which never empties, no matter how many people are fed from it. I made twelve trips to the Penlan skip in the Micra, in one day, not twelve months ago, to empty my MiL's garage of, what can only be described as, tat. That same garage was now once more filled to the rafters with kipple. (Yes, kipple. Look it up.)
By five in the afternoon I had returned to my MiL's house, after three full truck-loads of unwanted kipple had been deposited in the main Swansea skip. I say unwanted, I mean unwanted by normal people. Skip workers, on the other hand, seem to be genetically predisposed to locate and store items, discarded by others, which they think may be of some value. This 'Junk Gene' is what causes their wild scramble from container to container. There scurrying is invariably rewarded with a pile of broken toasters, Buckaroos, tennis rackets, and so forth, which can be found next to their deck chairs, and which they guard jealously.
Good deed accomplished, I accepted the offer of a ham and cheese sandwich from my MiL, in preference to the alternative, (warmed) bacon in a (dry) bap. This was followed by a too-sweet coffee and a Twix. Replete, I kissed my MiL and headed home to Cardiff to meet my wife, who had already gone ahead in the Micra.
On arriving home I cashed in my Brownie points by letting my wife make dinner, whilst I, thanks to the wonder of Sky+, watched 1 x MotoGP Races, 0.5 x Rugby League matches and 2 x NFL games. I didn't watch the third NFL game as I was taking the pick-up back to Adrian in the morning and had agreed to 'help him out' for the day. I wanted to enjoy the experience fully.
Before bed, I checked the oven knobs, front and back doors and electrical switches (twice), made myself a blackcurrant squash and ate two indigestion tablets.
* My friend Todd's pick-up, located in Calgary, which I drove several times, was considerably more dangerous than Adrian's vehicle. As there is no MOT in Canada, Todd's truck was totally un-roadworthy. It was severely rusted in all the major weight-bearing areas. It had no working instruments or fuel gage. It ran on propane, which was pumped directly into a huge, corroded, tank, welded onto the load-carrying area, just behind the occupants heads. In short, it was like driving a bomb to rugby practice twice a week. I genuinely winced every time I turned the key in the ignition. Still, it was free.
Saturday October 25th
Saturday was a strange one. I awoke fairly early, in a flustered state, as I was unsure at first, of exactly where I was, or who I was with. As it became apparent that I was in my bedroom with my wife, I began to relax. I then panicked, as I remembered that I had gone out with Rob, but had not returned with him. My wife then assured me that I had returned with him, and that he was the person snoring in the Blue Hawaii Suite (aka the spare bedroom).
I felt remarkably well as I headed downstairs to make coffee. But I was not about to be fooled by the Window of Wellness and, as such, I retired to the big sofa to await the hangover. But it never happened. The Window of Wellness was to last all day. The only after-effect of our mammoth drinking session, was to be an insatiable, extreme, hunger.
My wife left before midday, as she was attending her best friend's hen party in Swansea later in the day. She wanted to get there early to distribute hats, outfits and badges, supervise dance routine practice and ensure that everyone had brought their musical instruments. This attention to detail seemed to me to be fairly futile. I have witnessed many hen nights in the Wind Street area of Swansea, and by 10pm they all resemble each other. Girls wearing almost nothing fighting/vomiting/urinating outside Yates Wine Bar, before heading to eighties theme bar Reflex to dance with/be sexually molested by a steroid-fuelled, tattooed, highlighted dwarf, who would invariably expose his penis at some point during, for example, Chaka Khan's 'Chaka Khan'. Still, it makes her happy.
With my wife gone and Rob awake, it was time to head for breakfast. We opted for Steve's Cafe, a short walk from my house. During the brief journey I glimpsed Beelzebub disappearing down a side street.
There is nothing like the Great British cafe. As we ate bacon, eggs, black pudding and luke-warm floppy toast, I tried to avert my eyes from the other diners. If one ponders too long on the fact that the fork which one is putting in one's mouth, may very well be the same fork that the stubbled, unwashed, vagrant sitting across the linoleum floor put in his mouth yesterday, it can really spoil one's appetite. The dining experience was enhanced, as usual, by the grunts of the slipper-wearing illiterate, feeding his latest payout from Accidents Direct into the fruit machine. Doubtlessly hoping to land the big £5 jackpot. He was accompanied, as he always is, by a mute, slipper-wearing, female. The precise relationship between the two is hard to ascertain. She may be his sister, his daughter, his lover. Or any combination of the three.
After breakfast we stopped at Tesco Metro on the way home to buy Mars Bar drinks and doughnuts. Thankfully, the flirtatious Asian checkout operator wasn't working, as my hair and breath were both in need of urgent attention. On the way home I again saw Beelzebub, this time in the vicinity of the Salvation Army shop.
On getting home Rob and I drank our Mars Bar drinks, ate doughnuts and watched TV. This kept us going until our late lunch. At around two thirty I drove Rob's car to McDonald's. I was relieved that he asked me to drive, as I have been a passenger in the car with him on several occasions on the day after a drinking session. In recent years, more often than not, he has had an epileptic fit whilst at the wheel. He suffers from a form of epilepsy which causes, what I would describe as, vacancy, rather than the more common/humorous convulsions. As such, I am normally unaware that he is experiencing an episode until after he has driven through a red light at a junction. At McDonald's we enjoyed Big Mac meals, and we both 'went large'.
After lunch we came home and watched the Cardiff vs Leicester rugby match on TV, whilst sharing a jumbo bag of jelly tots.
After the rugby Rob, headed back to Portsmouth and I made myself a bacon and egg sandwich, before returning to the big sofa.
In the evening I settled down with two bowls of Honey Nut Shredded Wheat and toasted pitta breads (?) to watch Strictly Come Dancing. I am not ashamed to say that I love everything about that programme. I love the dancing. I love the singing. I love Bruce Forsyth. And the girls look pretty good too. (I have been trying in vain for weeks to programme my brain to dream about a scenario I have created, involving Lilia, Ola, the new one with the breasts, who looks a bit like Christina Aguilera, an 'in-shape' me and a dance floor covered in KY Jelly, but to no avail. Whatever that means.)
Later in the night I watched comedy DVDs, to try and ward off the thoughts of death, which I know will be even more pronounced every time that I am home alone. After the second Alan Partridge episode I felt briefly less depressed, so dashed upstairs to try and get off to sleep before the gloom returned. It didn't work. I lay awake, endlessly pondering my own mortality, alone in my enormous bed, until three in the morning.
I felt remarkably well as I headed downstairs to make coffee. But I was not about to be fooled by the Window of Wellness and, as such, I retired to the big sofa to await the hangover. But it never happened. The Window of Wellness was to last all day. The only after-effect of our mammoth drinking session, was to be an insatiable, extreme, hunger.
My wife left before midday, as she was attending her best friend's hen party in Swansea later in the day. She wanted to get there early to distribute hats, outfits and badges, supervise dance routine practice and ensure that everyone had brought their musical instruments. This attention to detail seemed to me to be fairly futile. I have witnessed many hen nights in the Wind Street area of Swansea, and by 10pm they all resemble each other. Girls wearing almost nothing fighting/vomiting/urinating outside Yates Wine Bar, before heading to eighties theme bar Reflex to dance with/be sexually molested by a steroid-fuelled, tattooed, highlighted dwarf, who would invariably expose his penis at some point during, for example, Chaka Khan's 'Chaka Khan'. Still, it makes her happy.
With my wife gone and Rob awake, it was time to head for breakfast. We opted for Steve's Cafe, a short walk from my house. During the brief journey I glimpsed Beelzebub disappearing down a side street.
There is nothing like the Great British cafe. As we ate bacon, eggs, black pudding and luke-warm floppy toast, I tried to avert my eyes from the other diners. If one ponders too long on the fact that the fork which one is putting in one's mouth, may very well be the same fork that the stubbled, unwashed, vagrant sitting across the linoleum floor put in his mouth yesterday, it can really spoil one's appetite. The dining experience was enhanced, as usual, by the grunts of the slipper-wearing illiterate, feeding his latest payout from Accidents Direct into the fruit machine. Doubtlessly hoping to land the big £5 jackpot. He was accompanied, as he always is, by a mute, slipper-wearing, female. The precise relationship between the two is hard to ascertain. She may be his sister, his daughter, his lover. Or any combination of the three.
After breakfast we stopped at Tesco Metro on the way home to buy Mars Bar drinks and doughnuts. Thankfully, the flirtatious Asian checkout operator wasn't working, as my hair and breath were both in need of urgent attention. On the way home I again saw Beelzebub, this time in the vicinity of the Salvation Army shop.
On getting home Rob and I drank our Mars Bar drinks, ate doughnuts and watched TV. This kept us going until our late lunch. At around two thirty I drove Rob's car to McDonald's. I was relieved that he asked me to drive, as I have been a passenger in the car with him on several occasions on the day after a drinking session. In recent years, more often than not, he has had an epileptic fit whilst at the wheel. He suffers from a form of epilepsy which causes, what I would describe as, vacancy, rather than the more common/humorous convulsions. As such, I am normally unaware that he is experiencing an episode until after he has driven through a red light at a junction. At McDonald's we enjoyed Big Mac meals, and we both 'went large'.
After lunch we came home and watched the Cardiff vs Leicester rugby match on TV, whilst sharing a jumbo bag of jelly tots.
After the rugby Rob, headed back to Portsmouth and I made myself a bacon and egg sandwich, before returning to the big sofa.
In the evening I settled down with two bowls of Honey Nut Shredded Wheat and toasted pitta breads (?) to watch Strictly Come Dancing. I am not ashamed to say that I love everything about that programme. I love the dancing. I love the singing. I love Bruce Forsyth. And the girls look pretty good too. (I have been trying in vain for weeks to programme my brain to dream about a scenario I have created, involving Lilia, Ola, the new one with the breasts, who looks a bit like Christina Aguilera, an 'in-shape' me and a dance floor covered in KY Jelly, but to no avail. Whatever that means.)
Later in the night I watched comedy DVDs, to try and ward off the thoughts of death, which I know will be even more pronounced every time that I am home alone. After the second Alan Partridge episode I felt briefly less depressed, so dashed upstairs to try and get off to sleep before the gloom returned. It didn't work. I lay awake, endlessly pondering my own mortality, alone in my enormous bed, until three in the morning.
Tuesday, 28 October 2008
Friday October 24th
I was excited today as I was to meet my friend Rob who I had not seen for several months. Rob, like my friends Adrian, Loud Dan, Julian, Rabbit, Byron, Blanks, my best friend Nicky, and others too numerous to mention, is the sort of cartoon-version of a real person that enriches my life. Rob as a muse has many strings to his bow. To wit;
1. He was bi-polar well before Steven Fry made every miserable person in Britain proud of the fact they they too are bi-polar, albeit undiagnosed. Unlike these deluded, plain, idiots, he is Fry-Esque bi-polar; elated and juvenile one minute, depressed and morose the next. His mood swings are a joy to behold, and in my Churchillian 'Black Dog' days I console myself that Rob's day is, in all probability, much worse than mine. Or at the very least, he perceives it to be so.
2. He is a practical joker par-excellence. Not for him the tame practical joke. Like the best comedians he treads a fine line. My favourite example of this was a time when he stayed at my apartment a few years ago. We had spent the evening drinking and he had stayed on my pull-out sofa. In the morning I turned on the oven to make us crumpets. He sat, straight-faced, as I became aware that something was wrong. On opening the oven door, I found a pair of my shoes, hidden away at the back of the oven. I remonstrated with Rob that he could have set fire to the apartment and told him to grow up. As we ate our crumpets he continued to giggle, I assumed at the shoe/oven gag. My girlfriend, now wife, entered the room. She looked at the painting which I had lately been working on. It was a 4ft x 3ft canvas depicting the view from the Aberfan cemetery in which my grandparents are buried, and dedicated to their memory. There is a beautiful stone angel near the gates, who watches, silently, over the valley below. I had rendered this angel on the left side of the canvas, with the valley and rows of typical, colliery-owned, terraced houses on the right. My wife then asked, in a concerned tone,
'Who drew a cock on the Angel of Aberfan?'
I looked up at the easel, and protruding from the angel's praying hands, was a large, crudely-drawn, cock and balls, with a dashed line of semen arching from the japs-eye, and landing on the miners' homes in the distance. It is funny now, but at the time it was perilously close to being Rob's swan-song.
3. He is the unluckiest man I have ever met. To summarise. The wheel fell off his first car. His wife had an affair and divorced him. He was invalided out of the Navy (he was seasick on every voyage prior to that). He blew all his savings from ten years at sea on a new car, then was promptly diagnosed epileptic and had to sell the car at a huge loss. Whilst driving the car to the buyer in Swansea, he picked up a speeding ticket and three endorsement points. This doesn't include the really personal stuff which is even more tragic/amusing.
In addition to all of this, Rob can be relied upon to regularly come out with statements that are as refreshingly honest, as they are unexpectedly candid.
Rob arrived at around midday, and we promptly drank the only beers that were in the house. After watching back-to-back Curb Your Enthusiasms, we started on the vodka. My wife arrived home from work, and it was becoming apparent that we were regressing. She dropped us in town to meet up with Dave and Neil, the non-couple, who were at The Last Resort Bar. Dave and Neil were heading off to watch the Oasis gig, although it transpired that, although making it to the venue, Dave was asleep at his mother's house (he lives there, and is close to her, but is not gay) before the gig had started.
Rob and I continued to drink fairly heavily and he recounted a recent encounter he had had. He'd recently joined a Health Club ,to 'get in shape', and was having a strenuous workout in the Club's jacuzzi, when a Downs Syndrome teenager and his carer, joined Rob in the hot tub. As he was on an 'up' day, Rob made small talk with the carer. Not wanting to be rude, he then said hello to the teenager. I assume that he did this in an inadvertently condescending manner, as the youth replied by punching Rob in the face. How many of your friends have been punched in the face by a teenager with Downs Syndrome? In a jacuzzi? Exactly.
As the night progressed Rob and I headed to the one place that we always promise that we will not end up going to, before always ending up going there, Kiwis. Kiwis' clientele has remained unchanged since the late eighties. As a bright-eyed eighteen year old the prospect of a night club packed with sexually predatory, thirty-year-old women, was a mouth-watering one. These days, due to the absence of new arrivals, those same women, whilst more predatory than ever, are now approaching fifty. And not in a Madonna-esque way. To be fair to them, I am equally sure that they reminisce about the time when the men they prayed upon were eager young bucks, willing to please, not overweight, disillusioned cynics, suffering from sexual apathy.
Rob lightened the mood with two Rob-isms. The first was triggered by us drunkenly discussing the relentless passage of time, and the strange places that life leads us. He related the episode of his life when, having lost his driving license and unable to secure a job in his chosen field, he moved back to live with his mother, at thirty-two years of age. I said that I would find it next to impossible to live with my parents, at this time in my life. He nodded, sipped his drink, looked into the distance and pondered,
'You haven't lived until you've heard your mother take a sh*t at eight o' clock in the morning'
Superb. As the conversation moved seamlessly towards the subject of sex, we ruminated on our differing attitudes to sex and intimacy. Taking another sip of truth serum, Rob confessed,
'I don't like kissing. All I want to do is wank in their bra.'
Wonderful.
At the end of the evening I ignored the text from my wife asking me to get a taxi home and called her for a lift. I would never have done this sober, but I most definitely was not sober. She proved once again to be the best wife in the world by picking us up and enduring our giggling all the way home.
On arriving home I fell into my neighbours car, setting of the alarm. I then fell through the front door of the house, thus breaking the mirror in the hallway. Bemused by the fact that my wife didn't find this impromptu slap-stick routine as funny as I did, I negotiated the stairs. Showing a poor grasp of physics, she walked up the stairs behind me to stop me falling backwards. She later admitted that the possibility of being crushed to death had been strangely engaging. Like taking part part in Jack Osborne's Adrenalin Junky. In a way. But inside. And genuinely dangerous.
Once upstairs I passed out on our enormous bed. If I did dream about anything, I don't remember it.
My wife had hidden all shoes and unfinished artworks.
1. He was bi-polar well before Steven Fry made every miserable person in Britain proud of the fact they they too are bi-polar, albeit undiagnosed. Unlike these deluded, plain, idiots, he is Fry-Esque bi-polar; elated and juvenile one minute, depressed and morose the next. His mood swings are a joy to behold, and in my Churchillian 'Black Dog' days I console myself that Rob's day is, in all probability, much worse than mine. Or at the very least, he perceives it to be so.
2. He is a practical joker par-excellence. Not for him the tame practical joke. Like the best comedians he treads a fine line. My favourite example of this was a time when he stayed at my apartment a few years ago. We had spent the evening drinking and he had stayed on my pull-out sofa. In the morning I turned on the oven to make us crumpets. He sat, straight-faced, as I became aware that something was wrong. On opening the oven door, I found a pair of my shoes, hidden away at the back of the oven. I remonstrated with Rob that he could have set fire to the apartment and told him to grow up. As we ate our crumpets he continued to giggle, I assumed at the shoe/oven gag. My girlfriend, now wife, entered the room. She looked at the painting which I had lately been working on. It was a 4ft x 3ft canvas depicting the view from the Aberfan cemetery in which my grandparents are buried, and dedicated to their memory. There is a beautiful stone angel near the gates, who watches, silently, over the valley below. I had rendered this angel on the left side of the canvas, with the valley and rows of typical, colliery-owned, terraced houses on the right. My wife then asked, in a concerned tone,
'Who drew a cock on the Angel of Aberfan?'
I looked up at the easel, and protruding from the angel's praying hands, was a large, crudely-drawn, cock and balls, with a dashed line of semen arching from the japs-eye, and landing on the miners' homes in the distance. It is funny now, but at the time it was perilously close to being Rob's swan-song.
3. He is the unluckiest man I have ever met. To summarise. The wheel fell off his first car. His wife had an affair and divorced him. He was invalided out of the Navy (he was seasick on every voyage prior to that). He blew all his savings from ten years at sea on a new car, then was promptly diagnosed epileptic and had to sell the car at a huge loss. Whilst driving the car to the buyer in Swansea, he picked up a speeding ticket and three endorsement points. This doesn't include the really personal stuff which is even more tragic/amusing.
In addition to all of this, Rob can be relied upon to regularly come out with statements that are as refreshingly honest, as they are unexpectedly candid.
Rob arrived at around midday, and we promptly drank the only beers that were in the house. After watching back-to-back Curb Your Enthusiasms, we started on the vodka. My wife arrived home from work, and it was becoming apparent that we were regressing. She dropped us in town to meet up with Dave and Neil, the non-couple, who were at The Last Resort Bar. Dave and Neil were heading off to watch the Oasis gig, although it transpired that, although making it to the venue, Dave was asleep at his mother's house (he lives there, and is close to her, but is not gay) before the gig had started.
Rob and I continued to drink fairly heavily and he recounted a recent encounter he had had. He'd recently joined a Health Club ,to 'get in shape', and was having a strenuous workout in the Club's jacuzzi, when a Downs Syndrome teenager and his carer, joined Rob in the hot tub. As he was on an 'up' day, Rob made small talk with the carer. Not wanting to be rude, he then said hello to the teenager. I assume that he did this in an inadvertently condescending manner, as the youth replied by punching Rob in the face. How many of your friends have been punched in the face by a teenager with Downs Syndrome? In a jacuzzi? Exactly.
As the night progressed Rob and I headed to the one place that we always promise that we will not end up going to, before always ending up going there, Kiwis. Kiwis' clientele has remained unchanged since the late eighties. As a bright-eyed eighteen year old the prospect of a night club packed with sexually predatory, thirty-year-old women, was a mouth-watering one. These days, due to the absence of new arrivals, those same women, whilst more predatory than ever, are now approaching fifty. And not in a Madonna-esque way. To be fair to them, I am equally sure that they reminisce about the time when the men they prayed upon were eager young bucks, willing to please, not overweight, disillusioned cynics, suffering from sexual apathy.
Rob lightened the mood with two Rob-isms. The first was triggered by us drunkenly discussing the relentless passage of time, and the strange places that life leads us. He related the episode of his life when, having lost his driving license and unable to secure a job in his chosen field, he moved back to live with his mother, at thirty-two years of age. I said that I would find it next to impossible to live with my parents, at this time in my life. He nodded, sipped his drink, looked into the distance and pondered,
'You haven't lived until you've heard your mother take a sh*t at eight o' clock in the morning'
Superb. As the conversation moved seamlessly towards the subject of sex, we ruminated on our differing attitudes to sex and intimacy. Taking another sip of truth serum, Rob confessed,
'I don't like kissing. All I want to do is wank in their bra.'
Wonderful.
At the end of the evening I ignored the text from my wife asking me to get a taxi home and called her for a lift. I would never have done this sober, but I most definitely was not sober. She proved once again to be the best wife in the world by picking us up and enduring our giggling all the way home.
On arriving home I fell into my neighbours car, setting of the alarm. I then fell through the front door of the house, thus breaking the mirror in the hallway. Bemused by the fact that my wife didn't find this impromptu slap-stick routine as funny as I did, I negotiated the stairs. Showing a poor grasp of physics, she walked up the stairs behind me to stop me falling backwards. She later admitted that the possibility of being crushed to death had been strangely engaging. Like taking part part in Jack Osborne's Adrenalin Junky. In a way. But inside. And genuinely dangerous.
Once upstairs I passed out on our enormous bed. If I did dream about anything, I don't remember it.
My wife had hidden all shoes and unfinished artworks.
Thursday October 23rd
Today was my mother's birthday. I am sure that she won't mind me revealing that she is now sixty-four years of age. Even if she did mind, her astounding failure to grasp any of the technologies of the twenty first century (Mobile Phone, Sky+, Internet, etc.) mean that she is unlikely to ever read this blog. Furthermore, a Venn Diagram containing the populations of 'People Reading This Blog' and 'People My Mum Talks To' would have a shared area containing one person. Namely, me. In fairness to my mother, she is in remarkable condition for her age. She has sharp eyes, all of her own teeth and possesses a rabbit-punch/shin-kick combination that is still as effective a p*ss-taking deterrent (PTD), as it was in the nineteen eighties.
The day started in the normal manner, by depressing myself with the News and complaining constantly to my wife about Bill Turnbull. As it was a relatively quiet news day, much was made of the media-perpetuated Credit Crunch. The BBC is struggling to convince the general public that the fact that thousands of investment bankers, estate agents and solicitors will lose their livelihoods, is a bad thing. To the casual observer, this seems more like Divine Judgement than anything else. I for one am eagerly awaiting the next four Plagues that the Credit Crunch will bring about;
The collapse of 'Reality' TV (not including 'Strictly Come Dancing').
A re-introduction of the maximum wage in football.
Huge job losses in the celebrity magazine industry.
The death of Kerry Katona.*
In the meantime, the BBC tried to make the ongoing 'disaster' more relevant by broadcasting a piece which, they proudly revealed, was coming directly from the village that was the birth place of deceased nineteen seventies sit-com star, Arthur Lowe. Yes. Arthur Lowe. Instantly hooked by this journalistic first, I got comfortable on the big sofa. The BBC reporter was on location, in the hairdressing salon that served the womenfolk of the village which was the hometown of Arthur Lowe. The hairdresser, who incidentally looked just like one, made me see the real-world implications of the Credit Crunch for the first time. I may not be able to relate to the sub-prime mortgage market in the US. I may struggle to understand the finer details of the re-nationalisation of the British banking system. I may be patently unaware of the ramifications of the weakening pound. But you don't need a degree in economics to realise that if the women in the village which is the home town of Arthur Lowe are now having the hair professionally high-lighted slightly less frequently (down 15-20%), then that is very bad news for all of us.
The rest of the day was a bit of an anti-climax after that blockbuster revelation.
In the evening my wife and I drove to Barry to celebrate my mother's birthday with her and dad. We had decided on the classic bathroom essentials presentation-pack as a gift, along with an amusing card. My wife and I would deliver this to my parents' house, after picking up take away food for the four of us, at the Chinese restaurant in Dinas Powys.
On the way to Dinas Powys, we drove past the gypsy site, near Leckwith, which has reappeared recently after an absence of several years. I would imagine that local entrepreneur Dick Lovett (yes, that is his real name), is overjoyed. His well-established Maserati dealership is immediately adjacent to the gypsy site. As such he can now tempt millionaire prospective buyers, not only with the prospect of test-driving an exclusive £200,000 sports car, but with ringside seats at bare-knuckle boxing matches, badger-baiting excursions into the surrounding woodlands and very competitive block-paving quotes.
The evening with my parents was very enjoyable, as was our chicken chow mein and pancake rolls.
On our return home I made myself an MSG-combating blackcurrant squash, which I proceeded to drink using the correct number of sips, in the correct sequence. I then ate two indigestion tablets and went directly to bed, bypassing the big sofa.
* I of course refer to the hoped-for figurative death of Kerry Katona's career, not her actual death. But you never know.
The day started in the normal manner, by depressing myself with the News and complaining constantly to my wife about Bill Turnbull. As it was a relatively quiet news day, much was made of the media-perpetuated Credit Crunch. The BBC is struggling to convince the general public that the fact that thousands of investment bankers, estate agents and solicitors will lose their livelihoods, is a bad thing. To the casual observer, this seems more like Divine Judgement than anything else. I for one am eagerly awaiting the next four Plagues that the Credit Crunch will bring about;
The collapse of 'Reality' TV (not including 'Strictly Come Dancing').
A re-introduction of the maximum wage in football.
Huge job losses in the celebrity magazine industry.
The death of Kerry Katona.*
In the meantime, the BBC tried to make the ongoing 'disaster' more relevant by broadcasting a piece which, they proudly revealed, was coming directly from the village that was the birth place of deceased nineteen seventies sit-com star, Arthur Lowe. Yes. Arthur Lowe. Instantly hooked by this journalistic first, I got comfortable on the big sofa. The BBC reporter was on location, in the hairdressing salon that served the womenfolk of the village which was the hometown of Arthur Lowe. The hairdresser, who incidentally looked just like one, made me see the real-world implications of the Credit Crunch for the first time. I may not be able to relate to the sub-prime mortgage market in the US. I may struggle to understand the finer details of the re-nationalisation of the British banking system. I may be patently unaware of the ramifications of the weakening pound. But you don't need a degree in economics to realise that if the women in the village which is the home town of Arthur Lowe are now having the hair professionally high-lighted slightly less frequently (down 15-20%), then that is very bad news for all of us.
The rest of the day was a bit of an anti-climax after that blockbuster revelation.
In the evening my wife and I drove to Barry to celebrate my mother's birthday with her and dad. We had decided on the classic bathroom essentials presentation-pack as a gift, along with an amusing card. My wife and I would deliver this to my parents' house, after picking up take away food for the four of us, at the Chinese restaurant in Dinas Powys.
On the way to Dinas Powys, we drove past the gypsy site, near Leckwith, which has reappeared recently after an absence of several years. I would imagine that local entrepreneur Dick Lovett (yes, that is his real name), is overjoyed. His well-established Maserati dealership is immediately adjacent to the gypsy site. As such he can now tempt millionaire prospective buyers, not only with the prospect of test-driving an exclusive £200,000 sports car, but with ringside seats at bare-knuckle boxing matches, badger-baiting excursions into the surrounding woodlands and very competitive block-paving quotes.
The evening with my parents was very enjoyable, as was our chicken chow mein and pancake rolls.
On our return home I made myself an MSG-combating blackcurrant squash, which I proceeded to drink using the correct number of sips, in the correct sequence. I then ate two indigestion tablets and went directly to bed, bypassing the big sofa.
* I of course refer to the hoped-for figurative death of Kerry Katona's career, not her actual death. But you never know.
Wednesday, 22 October 2008
Wednesday October 22nd
Following my disastrous decision to walk home from School X last week, and bearing in mind my car-borrower status and pathological loathing of public transport/the publicly transported, I resolved to cycle to School X. Without a helmet.
I spent rather a lot of money on purchasing my bike a couple of years ago, as I was approaching the stage where half of my shirts did not fit me. My thinking followed the lines that- Cardiff is a relatively small, flat city. I live, work and socialise within the city limits. I was trying to save money for my wedding. I had recently started having to 'psyche myself up' to do up my shoe laces. I would, therefore, kill several birds with one, two-wheeled, stone. Within a few weeks I would be 'back in shape', relaxed and better off financially. And any guilt I experienced at inadvertently pleasing environmental do-gooders, could be easily assuaged, by something as simple as throwing a leaking old fridge into a river. The plan came a cropper as my extreme laziness had not been factored into the equation. Consequently, for a little over two years my bike had been parked in my garage. Next to an exercise ball that looks like a balloon two weeks after Christmas.
But on this cold, crisp morning, I was pumping up the tyres and preparing for my first ride since I bounced off the windscreen of a Peugeot 205, driven by soon-to-be-assaulted teenaged ne'er-do-well, as I navigated Gabalfa Interchange in 1995.
The ride from my house to School X is slightly uphill for the first part, with a short, steep(ish) hill right at the end. The early going was unexpectedly hard. I had not done any outdoor exercise since I unsportingly tried to decapitate an opposing player during a rugby match in 2004. (The resulting complete detachment of my right biceps had brought a sad, but predictable, end to my rugby career.) As I approached the steep(ish) section, I resolved to get off and push the bike. As I was about to do so, I spied two School X pupils, and, more importantly, they spied me. I thought I could still get away with it, as I was sure that they wouldn't remember me. At that point one of the eagle-eyed youths shouted 'Yes Sir!', the in-vogue pupil/staff greeting, and I smiled and nodded in his direction. Breath was at a premium. Thinking that it would paint a poor picture if a PE teacher was witnessed to push his bike to school, I continued in the saddle. As the whole hill was in view, I persevered to the top of it. By the time I reached the top, I could actually see my heart beating through my T-shirt, sweatshirt and waterproof jacket. I was sweating like a, well, like a clinically obese man cycling up a hill.
When I arrived at the school I parked my bike in the PE office, suppressed a feeling of nausea, and headed to the jolly secretary's office to pick up my timetable for the day. There were a number of teachers in the vicinity, bemoaning the behaviour of the children in School X. I smiled wryly, as in my head, I briefly went over the events of the previous three days I had spent in School W. The most memorable of these being a Year 11 (16 years old) class that I had 'taught'. Twenty two of the twenty eight pupils on the register were missing, presumed law-breaking. The four boys and two girls who had turned up, didn't exactly fill me with hope for the country's future. At one point, the brother of the convicted killer chased the six foot three white gangsta around the room with a stool. The big one then ending up wrestling both of them to the floor, before the brother of the convicted killer put the big one in a rather effective choke-hold. During this, the quiet one smiled at me and shook his head, whilst the two girls continued their independent phone conversations. Following his choke-hold release, the big one and the big girl started insulting each other. The white gangsta verbally backed up the big one, despite having a pronounced stammer, and the thin girl backed up the big girl with a few well-chosen barbs, highlighting the obvious shortcomings of the big one and the stammering gangsta. As I was about to intervene, the big one exhibited the sort of concentrated swearing that makes the British world-beaters in the field. He retorted to a weight-based insult, thrown by the thin girl, with this classic;
'F*uck off you f*cking sl*g. You've been f*cked so much, you've got a f*cking c*nt like a f*cking bucket.'
Lovely stuff. After being totally ignored in trying to encourage people to get along, the quiet one smiled at me and shook his head again. The brother of the convicted killer had, by this point, vacated the classroom and was running along the corridor, banging on doors and continually shouting, somewhat confusingly;
'A bomb has gone off in Iraq! Thousands of people are dead!'
I had no idea what constituted the bad behaviour that had upset the teachers at School X, but I was fairly sure that, in an Inter-School Poor Behaviour Competition, School W would definitely go through to the National Finals.
The day at School X passed quite quickly and before long I was, once more, astride my bike. During the day the workshop technician, an avid cyclist, had offered to service my bike, as I had mentioned, in passing, that the brakes weren't very powerful. As he didn't mention that that may be due to the large momental forces involved, I didn't question the cycling helmet that I saw hanging on his coat hook. However, I suspect that he may have heard about my thoughts on the matter somewhere. This is because as I was travelling homewards, down the steep(ish) hill, I naturally applied the brakes. The result was tantamount to hitting a low brick wall. The motorcycle-riding habit of applying the front brake, coupled with the hitherto-unrivalled stopping power, resulted in an 'endo' of epic proportions. This was accompanied by a loud, involuntary 'F*ck me!' uttered approximately six feet from a group of amused School X pupils.
Incidentally, I have never been a good 'trick' rider, even in the days when I rode my Grifter on a daily basis. In fact, none of the Somerset Road Gang were good 'trick' riders. It was a matter of geography. In my experience, I have always found that a child's ability to wheelie a bike, was inversely proportionate to their household's income. If you are offended by this I apologise, it is not meant to sound judgemental. Although the chances are that if you did take offence, you are almost certainly a wheelier and you grew up in a BBZ.
Wednesday early evening passed without incident or Beelzebub sighting.
Later in the night I was to be found sat on the left side of the big sofa, displaying a melancholic expression.
I spent rather a lot of money on purchasing my bike a couple of years ago, as I was approaching the stage where half of my shirts did not fit me. My thinking followed the lines that- Cardiff is a relatively small, flat city. I live, work and socialise within the city limits. I was trying to save money for my wedding. I had recently started having to 'psyche myself up' to do up my shoe laces. I would, therefore, kill several birds with one, two-wheeled, stone. Within a few weeks I would be 'back in shape', relaxed and better off financially. And any guilt I experienced at inadvertently pleasing environmental do-gooders, could be easily assuaged, by something as simple as throwing a leaking old fridge into a river. The plan came a cropper as my extreme laziness had not been factored into the equation. Consequently, for a little over two years my bike had been parked in my garage. Next to an exercise ball that looks like a balloon two weeks after Christmas.
But on this cold, crisp morning, I was pumping up the tyres and preparing for my first ride since I bounced off the windscreen of a Peugeot 205, driven by soon-to-be-assaulted teenaged ne'er-do-well, as I navigated Gabalfa Interchange in 1995.
The ride from my house to School X is slightly uphill for the first part, with a short, steep(ish) hill right at the end. The early going was unexpectedly hard. I had not done any outdoor exercise since I unsportingly tried to decapitate an opposing player during a rugby match in 2004. (The resulting complete detachment of my right biceps had brought a sad, but predictable, end to my rugby career.) As I approached the steep(ish) section, I resolved to get off and push the bike. As I was about to do so, I spied two School X pupils, and, more importantly, they spied me. I thought I could still get away with it, as I was sure that they wouldn't remember me. At that point one of the eagle-eyed youths shouted 'Yes Sir!', the in-vogue pupil/staff greeting, and I smiled and nodded in his direction. Breath was at a premium. Thinking that it would paint a poor picture if a PE teacher was witnessed to push his bike to school, I continued in the saddle. As the whole hill was in view, I persevered to the top of it. By the time I reached the top, I could actually see my heart beating through my T-shirt, sweatshirt and waterproof jacket. I was sweating like a, well, like a clinically obese man cycling up a hill.
When I arrived at the school I parked my bike in the PE office, suppressed a feeling of nausea, and headed to the jolly secretary's office to pick up my timetable for the day. There were a number of teachers in the vicinity, bemoaning the behaviour of the children in School X. I smiled wryly, as in my head, I briefly went over the events of the previous three days I had spent in School W. The most memorable of these being a Year 11 (16 years old) class that I had 'taught'. Twenty two of the twenty eight pupils on the register were missing, presumed law-breaking. The four boys and two girls who had turned up, didn't exactly fill me with hope for the country's future. At one point, the brother of the convicted killer chased the six foot three white gangsta around the room with a stool. The big one then ending up wrestling both of them to the floor, before the brother of the convicted killer put the big one in a rather effective choke-hold. During this, the quiet one smiled at me and shook his head, whilst the two girls continued their independent phone conversations. Following his choke-hold release, the big one and the big girl started insulting each other. The white gangsta verbally backed up the big one, despite having a pronounced stammer, and the thin girl backed up the big girl with a few well-chosen barbs, highlighting the obvious shortcomings of the big one and the stammering gangsta. As I was about to intervene, the big one exhibited the sort of concentrated swearing that makes the British world-beaters in the field. He retorted to a weight-based insult, thrown by the thin girl, with this classic;
'F*uck off you f*cking sl*g. You've been f*cked so much, you've got a f*cking c*nt like a f*cking bucket.'
Lovely stuff. After being totally ignored in trying to encourage people to get along, the quiet one smiled at me and shook his head again. The brother of the convicted killer had, by this point, vacated the classroom and was running along the corridor, banging on doors and continually shouting, somewhat confusingly;
'A bomb has gone off in Iraq! Thousands of people are dead!'
I had no idea what constituted the bad behaviour that had upset the teachers at School X, but I was fairly sure that, in an Inter-School Poor Behaviour Competition, School W would definitely go through to the National Finals.
The day at School X passed quite quickly and before long I was, once more, astride my bike. During the day the workshop technician, an avid cyclist, had offered to service my bike, as I had mentioned, in passing, that the brakes weren't very powerful. As he didn't mention that that may be due to the large momental forces involved, I didn't question the cycling helmet that I saw hanging on his coat hook. However, I suspect that he may have heard about my thoughts on the matter somewhere. This is because as I was travelling homewards, down the steep(ish) hill, I naturally applied the brakes. The result was tantamount to hitting a low brick wall. The motorcycle-riding habit of applying the front brake, coupled with the hitherto-unrivalled stopping power, resulted in an 'endo' of epic proportions. This was accompanied by a loud, involuntary 'F*ck me!' uttered approximately six feet from a group of amused School X pupils.
Incidentally, I have never been a good 'trick' rider, even in the days when I rode my Grifter on a daily basis. In fact, none of the Somerset Road Gang were good 'trick' riders. It was a matter of geography. In my experience, I have always found that a child's ability to wheelie a bike, was inversely proportionate to their household's income. If you are offended by this I apologise, it is not meant to sound judgemental. Although the chances are that if you did take offence, you are almost certainly a wheelier and you grew up in a BBZ.
Wednesday early evening passed without incident or Beelzebub sighting.
Later in the night I was to be found sat on the left side of the big sofa, displaying a melancholic expression.
Tuesday, 21 October 2008
Monday October 20th
Thanks to my good friends at Barclaycard, I had agreed to do three days supply teaching at my previous employer's, School W. My wife, a teacher at School W had regaled me with stories about how the lunatics were finally running the asylum, which I, knowing the female tendency to exaggerate (but not about that), took with a large pinch of salt.
I sat watching the News in the morning, applying the 'Head Banging Principle'. Like the man who banged his head against a wall because it was nice when he stopped, if I watch enough reporting about the credit crunch, climate change, repossessions, stabbings, beatings, famine, disease and pestilence, then anything else seems like a breath of fresh air. Suitably depressed by world events, and equal parts amazed and annoyed by the fact that Bill Turnbull is evidently considered, by someone at the BBC, to be something other than a burk who was not bullied enough at school, I headed to the Micra.
The drive to School W from my house is a short one. One of the aspects of the journey that never fails to amuse me, is Cardiff County Council's approach to environmentally-friendly travel. Doubtless some idealist in Westminster, or worse still, the Welsh Assembly, thinks that cycling to work is the solution to a multitude of ecological and economical problems. As such they have sworn to do whatever it takes to encourage us all to get on our bikes. Either that or they are on a big back-hander from Paint Our Gutters Red Ltd. To expand on that, to say that that the drive to pedal-power had been half-hearted in the Cardiff area, would be a gross understatement. In place of the broad cycle paths to be found in continental Europe, the densely-populated UK has opted for a compromise. Unable to lose space from our already congested roads, and unwilling to fund road-widening schemes, British decision makers have invested almost nothing in a third way. By painting the area between the double yellow lines and the kerb red, Councils such as Cardiff immediately created miles of cycle paths, exceeding (I would have thought) government targets. Brilliant on paper, the scheme loses a little credibility, when the fact that standard bicycle handlebars are several centimetres wider than these newly created cycle paths is factored into the equation. In the unlikely event that the hapless cyclist was not clipped by a passing lorry and sent under the wheels of one of Cardiff's pointless thirty metre long bendy-buses, they would still have to endure cycling through three inch deep dirty rainwater, dog faeces and cicagrette ends. But they still do it. Every morning polystyrene hatted idiots risk life and limb to turn up at work looking like a cross between a vagrant and an aerobics instructor.
Whilst I was parked at the traffic lights near the rear entrance to the train staion (in the cycle path/red gutter), I saw two fly-posted signs that tickled my fancy. The first was advertising a Cage Fighting night in Newport, the second a 'Time Flies in the Rhondda' DJ night.
If you have never been to Newport, don't. It is the most violent conurbation I have ever spent an evening out in. I once had the pleasure of escorting my best friend, bleeding profusely from a head wound (not self-inflicted), to The Royal Gwent Hospital, in Newport, on a Saturday night. The A&E waiting room was standing-room only, as ne'er-do-wells with assorted injuries swayed back and forth. At first I thought that two resident police officers in riot gear was a little heavy handed for a hospital. However, they were soon overwhelmed by the three fights that broke out, independent of any earlier altercations, near the reception desk. As such, the thought of people paying their hard earned money to see grown men fighting, in a barbaric, no-holds-barred, contest, in the Leisure Centre in Newport, is only obscene in as much as those people could see the same thing, gratis, outside of the Leisure Centre in Newport.
With the closure of the mines, the loss of the supply businesses associated with the coal industry, and the crushing unemployment levels that followed, the Rhondda has suffered more hardship than most areas of the UK. The extreme lack of investment has resulted in a landscape peppered with dilapidated buildings and a population who could be forgiven for thinking that they had been abandoned. This oppressive feeling of hopelessness is largely to blame for the greatly heightened levels of drug and alcohol dependency that the area experiences. Accordingly, the reason that I found the DJ night fly-poster particularly ironic, is that I'll venture that one thing that time does not do in the Rhondda, is fly.
On arriving at School W my feelings of dread proved to be well founded, and it took until 10.32am for me to remember exactly why I left my full-time teaching post in the first place. But I think that I will combine my few days back in the real world into one expletive-riddled blog tomorrow.
On the way home I was relieved to see Beelzebub appear, suddenly, near my house. I had not seen my diaboilical chum for over two weeks, and was beginning to think that maybe his work in Canton was done. But there he was, large as life and still wearing his lucky blue sweatshirt and cream trousers.
In the evening, exhausted, I fell asleep on the big sofa, and dreamt of all my teeth falling out.
I sat watching the News in the morning, applying the 'Head Banging Principle'. Like the man who banged his head against a wall because it was nice when he stopped, if I watch enough reporting about the credit crunch, climate change, repossessions, stabbings, beatings, famine, disease and pestilence, then anything else seems like a breath of fresh air. Suitably depressed by world events, and equal parts amazed and annoyed by the fact that Bill Turnbull is evidently considered, by someone at the BBC, to be something other than a burk who was not bullied enough at school, I headed to the Micra.
The drive to School W from my house is a short one. One of the aspects of the journey that never fails to amuse me, is Cardiff County Council's approach to environmentally-friendly travel. Doubtless some idealist in Westminster, or worse still, the Welsh Assembly, thinks that cycling to work is the solution to a multitude of ecological and economical problems. As such they have sworn to do whatever it takes to encourage us all to get on our bikes. Either that or they are on a big back-hander from Paint Our Gutters Red Ltd. To expand on that, to say that that the drive to pedal-power had been half-hearted in the Cardiff area, would be a gross understatement. In place of the broad cycle paths to be found in continental Europe, the densely-populated UK has opted for a compromise. Unable to lose space from our already congested roads, and unwilling to fund road-widening schemes, British decision makers have invested almost nothing in a third way. By painting the area between the double yellow lines and the kerb red, Councils such as Cardiff immediately created miles of cycle paths, exceeding (I would have thought) government targets. Brilliant on paper, the scheme loses a little credibility, when the fact that standard bicycle handlebars are several centimetres wider than these newly created cycle paths is factored into the equation. In the unlikely event that the hapless cyclist was not clipped by a passing lorry and sent under the wheels of one of Cardiff's pointless thirty metre long bendy-buses, they would still have to endure cycling through three inch deep dirty rainwater, dog faeces and cicagrette ends. But they still do it. Every morning polystyrene hatted idiots risk life and limb to turn up at work looking like a cross between a vagrant and an aerobics instructor.
Whilst I was parked at the traffic lights near the rear entrance to the train staion (in the cycle path/red gutter), I saw two fly-posted signs that tickled my fancy. The first was advertising a Cage Fighting night in Newport, the second a 'Time Flies in the Rhondda' DJ night.
If you have never been to Newport, don't. It is the most violent conurbation I have ever spent an evening out in. I once had the pleasure of escorting my best friend, bleeding profusely from a head wound (not self-inflicted), to The Royal Gwent Hospital, in Newport, on a Saturday night. The A&E waiting room was standing-room only, as ne'er-do-wells with assorted injuries swayed back and forth. At first I thought that two resident police officers in riot gear was a little heavy handed for a hospital. However, they were soon overwhelmed by the three fights that broke out, independent of any earlier altercations, near the reception desk. As such, the thought of people paying their hard earned money to see grown men fighting, in a barbaric, no-holds-barred, contest, in the Leisure Centre in Newport, is only obscene in as much as those people could see the same thing, gratis, outside of the Leisure Centre in Newport.
With the closure of the mines, the loss of the supply businesses associated with the coal industry, and the crushing unemployment levels that followed, the Rhondda has suffered more hardship than most areas of the UK. The extreme lack of investment has resulted in a landscape peppered with dilapidated buildings and a population who could be forgiven for thinking that they had been abandoned. This oppressive feeling of hopelessness is largely to blame for the greatly heightened levels of drug and alcohol dependency that the area experiences. Accordingly, the reason that I found the DJ night fly-poster particularly ironic, is that I'll venture that one thing that time does not do in the Rhondda, is fly.
On arriving at School W my feelings of dread proved to be well founded, and it took until 10.32am for me to remember exactly why I left my full-time teaching post in the first place. But I think that I will combine my few days back in the real world into one expletive-riddled blog tomorrow.
On the way home I was relieved to see Beelzebub appear, suddenly, near my house. I had not seen my diaboilical chum for over two weeks, and was beginning to think that maybe his work in Canton was done. But there he was, large as life and still wearing his lucky blue sweatshirt and cream trousers.
In the evening, exhausted, I fell asleep on the big sofa, and dreamt of all my teeth falling out.
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