Grandad we love you...grandad we...ahhfuggit

I got one of calls you dread on Friday night, from the hospital, about my father, he'd had a nasty fall........Immediately I speculated how it would impact on me, god, a broken hip, a stroke! 24/7 care, broken arms, spoon feeding him for the rest of his life, Christ, I became quite upset at the very thought of it all, but luckily for me, the nurse who called said that he'd only cracked his head open falling down pissed out of his head. Phew!
She said it was made worse by him, staggering out of the A&E dept, mid-care, and falling over again outside.
Saturday, my sister and I went round to his place to tidy up his blood caked head, throw his muddied and blooded clothes away and tell him off for being a stupid fucking old Irishman! Having told us he'd blown his weeks pension money, and pouncing a tenna off me, my sister was saying he was as bad as her two teenage yobs, spending the day in the pub, coming home hammered having pissed up their wages in one sitting.
Frustrated and angry I took myself off to the pub and broke my month long dry by getting...er....well hammered with me mate in St Albans. Luckily I didn't fall over though.

Stinky attitooood..

Stuck waiting outside the gym again this morning, until relief came at twenty to seven, just enough time to buff up the body witha power swim and gimme an appetite for my usual bowl of shreddies of a morning....One piece of good news, Suzy from the Gym has quit...or been fired...Gee, I hope it wasn't anything I said. Mind you, I don't think she's cut out for a customer facing role just yet, her attitood stunk as bad as her time keeping.
Now at least I won't have to suffer her sour face every morning. Reeeesult!

£400 sovs gov

Got the bad news from the garage yesterday...gonna cost me £400 to fix the missus's car! I said, look, do we really need 2 cars anyway? It's hardly environmental like, is it?...let's bin yours and make do with mine, for now...but she went into panic mode and insisted she needed a car, for the shopping, the kids, the coffee mornings...just....GETTING ABOUT!!...Christ, I said, listen to yourself, my old mum did without a car all her life..Yeah but, no but...yeah..but no...she never lived round here, said the wife...Then we began thinking about getting a newish second hand car, instead of throwing good money after bad at our heap, but the best decent one we could find woulda cost £4k or so, so that was a non-starter really, for now anyway, mebbe when we re-mortgage.....ah well...bung the repairs on the credit card then, why not, everything else is on it...

Shoulder of a giant

The most depressing day of the year. Official...and I couldnae agree more. Another weekend over, another weekend without booze..when will this hell end?...and to top my depression off nicely, the family car broke down Saturday, in the middle of a busy round-a-bout...some nice young man help us push it off the road and we waited for the breakdown yob to show up...2 hours later, he did, opened the bonnet, tutted, blow smoke in my face, winched the car up onto his truck and fucked off...leaving us to get the train home...I said to the missus as we trod our icy way to the rail station, let's upgrade our breakdown cover when we get home eh?...Still waiting for the estimate, possible water pump gone, dunno but I confidently predict an expensive job.
Sunday, the elder smash went to two parties, so me and the younger Damien smash eyed each other up for 12 hours or so, took him and the cat for a wander into town, bought him some wotsits, but his legs gave way from under him on the way home, so i put him on me shoulders and from there he deposited crispy and half-chewed crisps onto my head. nice....did some paper shredding...oh wussa point...roll on February

Fred and the only present we bought him for christmas...well...I needed my LCD TV didn't I?...actually, the railway used to belong to his brother, but the dumb ass dunt know that, do he?

Oh yeah, did I say I bought a 30 inch LCD TV over christmas?..thass right, I'm now the most important man in my street...fucking right right!

I've got football skills!

We took the smashers to Hertford park yesterday, the highlight of the weekend. We took a football with us to try and wear them out a bit, but the younger one showed no interest. The elder one though, took to it like a duck to water, hoofing it up the park and chasing after it, then hoofing it again, all the while shouting "I've got football skills!...I've got football skills!" until I lumbered up after him and whipped the ball out from under him in a move Beckham would envy. The smashers face was a picture of loathing and confusion. still. fuck him, I take no prisoners.
The rest of the weekend was dull enough, watched "The Butterfly Effect", all about what would happen if you could go back in time and change events...was ok, bit silly though, it seemed whatever he changed, the consequences rebounded on his present self and the people around him until he sort of decides that if he wasn't born at all, things would be better for everyone...or something...I dunno, this no-booze thing I'm doing this month is fucking with my mind I tell ya..(shivver)

Gimme the Manager

Jesus! I mean, when will these people learn not to mess with me? It tell ya, yesterday, 6:30am, I get t the gym for my morning swim and for the second time this week there's no fucker there to open up, so, along with my fellow swimmers and treadmillers, we wait and moan and wait until I decide it's not worth waiting anymore as I had too little time before I began work. I drifted off, cursing them, vowing to return at lunchtime to have it out with the manager!

And so I did too, as I gave the girl behind the counter my card, I asked to see the manager, Roy Cropper I ain't, and she just like, goes, eh? what now?...and I nearly said, oh, er..well..whenever really, not fussed, whenever he's free like...but no, I said, yes. now please. So along comes this midget, I kid you not, and immediately I'm gratified because not only can I condescend to him, I can condescend down to him too, quite literally.
So I said to he, look bla bla this morning...bla bla second time this week...bla bla not good enough and he's taking the full force very calmly, which is not good, and he turns to his assistant behind the counter and says, oh Suzy, what time did you open today?, and get this, says to him, oh, 6:35am or so...why?...and he says, because this gentleman here says it was more like 6:50am and I can see panic in her eyes, but she ploughs on...no..noooo it wasn't that late, i couldn't let people in 'cos i was the only one in and i can't let people thru and john was late...and..bla bla...
So the manager promises it will never happen again, would I like some freebies, he's new here and things'll change round here, bla bla...but all the while, Suzy is staring daggers at me, I dropped her in it, exposed her lies and got her into trouble....and I'm worried, sometime soon, when I'm in the gym, bench pressing up 200 pounds, I'll see her above me, fiddling with the pins, or I'll be in the sauna, and she'll bolt it shut and turn up the heat...or I'll be about to complete a 10km run on the tread mill...and she'll put the counter back to zero! the bitch!...wished I kept my mouth shut now I do..

Tyron!..Reece!!...Archie!!...come over here!!

I say to my smasher, so, what did you do at school today then? and he blanks me, so I say, well, for example, did you learn anything new? did you read from a book, what did you have for lunch, who did you play with?...and for some reason, known only to him, when I prompt him with names, he gets really wound up!
Dave? Nick? John? Pete?
Daddy!!!, he'll scream, you know there's no one called those names in my school, you know my friends are called Ben, Jacob, Reece, Conner, Harry...and, as he begins to calm down, reciting his friends names, I begin to get wound up! I mean, for Christ sake, why do these bloody people call their kids by such stupid, idiotic, predictable low-rent-council-estate names for fucks sake!?
Arthur Ewan William, I say, please do not play with anyone called Reece and Conner, promise me that at least...promise me son, promise yir old prejudiced dad eh?

Smashers teethtime

All I know, is that to me, you look like yir lots of fun

20 years ago, Dead or Alive hit the number one spot, well, in March 1985 they did. I’ve voted for it in the best number ones, from the list of the thousand bans/singers to reach number one since the charts began. An odd choice you might think, but for me, it kicked off the 80’s properly. This was the first tune I danced to, in all the clubs we went to, this one was a mainstay, still is in some of them. Throughout 1985, anywhere you went, every club or pub disco, this tune was played.

My sister and I used to go to a grubby little boozah in Edgware every weekend and on Friday’s they pushed the boat out and hired a DJ, who scraped together his 70’s LP’s from under his bed, dusted them off and played them to a, largely, under whelmed crowd of regulars. One evening, lamenting on this, the DJ turned to us and asked our advice, so we arranged for him to pay a visit to the Woolworth’s singles section and told him to invest in some chart sounds, as well as Dead or Alive, which at the time, was floundering outside the top 40.

The following weekend began as it always did, with REO Speedwagon’s “keep on lovn’ you” followed by “Have I the Right” by the Honeycombes, and resigned, my sister and I hit the pool table room along with the rest of the pub, but then, a wonderful thing happened, from the other room we heard….”Watch out, here I come..”…Then the beat kicked in and we flew outya the poolroom and onto, the still empty, dance floor and jigged about like looney’s. Amazed, the DJ bunged on another chart tune, then another and another until the floor in front of his decks was crowded with half a dozen gyrating, sweating, half pissed bodies….and so it went, from then onwards, every Friday night…
That was how easy it was in those days; the DJ’s reputation in Edgware was secured, his Disco nights were the talk of the town, bouncers were employed to keep the numbers down, but always my sister and I had VIP status and he never forgot who set him up, seriously, he always thanked us for steering him, gently, from the 70’s into the 80’s via Deal or Alive; He died a short while after this, although the two events weren’t connected as far as I know.
The pub gave up the disco nights after his death and the punters stayed away and the boozah reverted back to it’s mucky and grubby past, but for a few months, back in 1985, it was the place to be seen pissed at I tell ya!

I get excited, do you get excited too?

Difficult one this, how to mention what I got for Christmas without sounding...ungrateful or spoilt, but I'm prepared to give it a go if, for the only reason, to help me remember, as I always seem to forget these things.

So, then, picture the scene, chrimbo morning, hungover, but excited, like a small child, because the missus has assured me that this year I'd actually be happy with my presents, yes, this year she has finally, after all our years together, tuned into me in a way she's never done before and has anticipated my every whim, my every desire, hopes and passions. First up then, a water purifier!...O...Kaaaay....next pressie please, quickly now...rip..rip...Tea cup!....right...ahahaha...nice one love....ahahaaa...next please (panic setting in)...paper shredder!!....(jaw drops)....looks to wife, wife looks back, all smiles...expecting...(I force a smile)...next...please....but, by now, my heart had sunk...wait though, what's this?...bathroom scales!...well...they're gonna come in handy I suppose....next, jumper from Matalan....and finally, a years subscription to my favourite mucky mag...I wish, no, to Empire movie Magazine...Next day I get a coupla books I'd asked for, from her family, in hour 8 hour marathon boxing day visit to her mums. Ah well, it's done and done now, thank gawd.

There, not too snidey, well done me for being brave and magnanimous about everything

Rest on Peace

I’ve promised myself I’d take the smashers, ever since I moved to Ware, oh, three and a half years ago now, up to the town cemetery. Not an obvious place to take them you might think, but you’d be quite wrong; the smashers loved playing hide and seek amongst the headstones, they enjoyed jumping off tombstones and rolling around between the graves while the missus and I looked on and caught our breath from the hike up to the top of the town where the cemetery is located.
On one of the benches I noticed a recent plaque made out to a dear husband and father, Charles “Nigger” Noteworthy and it got me thinking, here, amongst the dead, you can, for now, still be as racists as you like and it made me smile....but I feel an outraged letter to the local paper might now be in order, get it removed like...

It’s a great place really, lovely location, lots of space and natural light. As the kids threw clumps of earth at one another, the missus and I shouted to each other these weird and wonderfully old names inscribed on the stones. Exhausted, but happy, I encouraged the boys from the crypt, by tempting them to a hot cup of coco in the Tap Bar in town. It’s one of the highlights in an otherwise, fairly dull Christmas break.