Thursday, April 28, 2011

Akele! I will do my best!

The Inimitable George Formby, price 14/6.
Music for Pleasure!
In common with millions of kids across the world, I was once a cub scout.  Like my brothers before me, I was inducted into a movement that was a strange mix of youth organisation and the paramilitary. On the whole it was a “good thing” in that I was encouraged to develop some self-discipline and to think of other people.
Nowadays I would baulk at saluting the flag and swearing allegiance to a God and a Queen I don’t believe in, but at the age of eight you just accept this stuff. I do remember raising an eyebrow a couple of years later when our leader defined a communist as someone who doesn’t believe in God (that was all we needed to know apparently, there was no mention of political ideology), but for the most part I was happy to go along with it, because the Scouts offered an enormous amount of fun.
It gave me a legitimate reason to carry a knife for one thing.  I was, incredibly, allowed to carry a fairly substantial sheath knife on my belt; if you remember the film it was (in my mind at least) about the size of the one Crocodile Dundee pulls on the would-be mugger.  I didn’t carry it for anything more sinister than ‘whittling’ and only then if we were going hiking or camping, but nobody seemed to bat an eyelid or think it inappropriate that a pre-pubescent boy should be allowed such a thing.
The weekly scout meetings were fun too, once we’d got the ‘parade’ bit over and done with. It wasn’t all tying knots; we had some good games of football, and things like British Bulldog, possibly the most violent kids’ game of all time. But we learnt cool stuff too, like map reading, tracking and some basic survival skills (although not quite up to Ray Mears standard).
But the real reason for going to cubs/scouts was the camping trips. The scouts took us to sleep in fields all over the UK. They were great fun. Sleeping in a tent, going hiking all day, eating outdoors and then a camp fire in the evening in which we baked potatoes and of course sang. Many of us had a camp fire blanket, a sort of home-made poncho with all sorts of badges sewn on.
My first camp was with the cubs, and it was held at the West Midland Showground on the outskirts of Shrewsbury, all of 3 miles from my house.  This was around the time of the moon landings, and just about every activity was prefixed with the word ‘Apollo’. So at the Apollo Camp, we constructed Apollo dens, had a football tournament to win the Apollo Cup and even had Apollo Pudding (jam sponge and custard).  But the camp has stuck in my mind mainly because it was there that I earned my first badge, one that I could actually sew onto the sleeve of my uniform.
For reasons unclear, I opted to try for my Troubadour’s Badge. I no longer recall exactly what was required, but I do remember it involved singing a couple of songs to one of the scout masters. To my eternal shame, I sang a couple of George Formby numbers, unaccompanied. I can’t explain why I did this, except that I knew I could. My parents, not best described as a musical couple, had finally bought a record player, and the first (and for some months the only) LP they possessed was a George Formby one. It was in the ‘Music for Pleasure’ series (was there also a ‘Music for Pain and Misery’ series, I wonder?) and cost 14 shillings and sixpence. The novelty of having a record in the house was such that I knew every word of every song, so in terms of performing I was confident I’d be on safe ground.
I got the badge too. Indeed the scout master was so impressed he declined my offer to sing a third Formby classic. He was obviously a busy man and seemed in a hurry to get away, so with my scout book duly signed I made my way to the canteen tent for a drink of Apollo squash.  A glittering career as an entertainer lay at my feet. If only I had a ukelele...

The coveted Troubadour's Badge, awarded only to youngsters of exceptional talent is in the top row, 2nd from the left.


Friday, April 22, 2011

Long shadows, small dog


Stockgrove Country Park, Beds. The photo doesn't do it justice, but this tree is a gorgeous sight in the early morning sun

Today is Good Friday, the sky is blue and the air is clear and bright, and so, having woken at a ridiculous hour as usual, I decided to take Alfie for a walk in Stockgrove Country Park.  This is one of my favourite places; it’s a beautiful area of woodland just a few miles down the road from my home.  There are paths criss-crossing throughout, a small lake, glades and thickly wooded areas and all over is that lovely, musty, earthy, ‘woody’ smell.
There’s something uplifting for your spirits about being outside early on a day like this.  I’m generally at my best in the mornings anyway, but I love the feeling of being up and doing before the majority of people are even awake.  I like the quiet too, or rather I like the lack of noise from humans.  Apart from one or two other early risers, Alfie and I had the woods pretty much to ourselves, which makes the birdsong more distinct, likewise the rustling of small animals in the undergrowth, startled by our passing.  And the day ‘looks’ different too, with the long early morning shadows of the trees thrown by the sun streaming through them at a low angle.
Alfie enjoys it, I can tell just by looking at him.  I wrote elsewhere in this blog about cats and dogs; I think another reason I’m a dog man is because I like the way you can see if a dog is happy or sad just by their face and the way they walk.  It’s going too far to say they have a soul, I’m too much of an atheist to believe in souls for humans let alone animals, but dogs certainly experience joy.  Alfie trots back and forth, tail in the air, nose to the ground, constantly on the alert.  He doesn’t stray too far (unlike my last dog Sam who would bugger off for miles and come back every 10 minutes or so); he just runs happily through the trees, rarely more than 20 metres away, popping back occasionally to ‘round me up’.
I’m back home now, and my family are all still in bed. Alfie has been given his breakfast, and I’ve treated myself to a bacon sandwich and a cup of tea.  It’s almost tempting to say that the best part of the day is over, but that’s not true (how depressing if there were nothing better to do than look forward to tomorrow). It’s Good Friday, I’m off work, the sun is shining and who knows, Stockgrove may get another visit later; it’s pretty damn uplifting at dusk too.
Stockgrove Country Park, Beds.

Friday, April 15, 2011

Who are these people? (A mild rant)


Who are these people who:

Empty their car ash trays all over the lay-by?

Daub obscenities on other people’s property?

Think I will drive faster if they tailgate me?

Pick up their dog’s pooh and then leave the pooh bag on the path or hanging in a tree?

Show off to their friends by being rude to the waiter?

Tell their employees to sell me something I haven’t ordered? (“A small Latte please” “Do you want a cake with that?”  “No, just the coffee please”)

Think playing music after a goal has been scored somehow enhances the match day experience?

Drive on sidelights in the dark? Are they the same people who have their front fog lights on when it’s not foggy?

Leave their dirty dishes in the sink at work for hours on end?

Invent viruses to ruin a complete stranger’s computer?

Assume we all care passionately about the Royal Family?

Came up with the notion that some supermarket packaging should be made of the thickest, sharpest plastic known to man, requiring industrial strength shears to open it?

Make their pets wear clothes?

Waste half their day thinking up stupid lists of things?


Tuesday, April 12, 2011

That's My Stapler!

If you're looking for your hose reel, I think I know where it is.
Twenty odd years ago, having passed my Civil Service entrance exams and then an interview, I took up my first job in the MOD at a pay office, where I was to be the manager of a section of 8 pay clerks.  Everything about the place seemed so incredibly old fashioned.  When we went outside one day to do fire training, an ancient hand drawn fire cart with an enormous hose reel was produced; I kid you not, it looked like something out of a 1940s Will Hay film.

My section was one of several located in a large open plan office, each section’s desks being laid out in regimental rows with me and my counterparts at the head of each one, for all the world feeling like a Victorian school master.  The MOD was still very grade conscious back then, so my desk had to be at a different angle to theirs.  At least by that stage they’d stopped using your grade as a way of deciding whether you were entitled to a piece of carpet around your work space.

The building was basically an enormous pre-fabricated hut with draughty old metal window frames.  Along the entire length of the room ran a corridor which was divided from the main room by a plaster board and glass partition, with doors every 20 metres or so.  Legend had it that the glass was there so that the senior managers could walk along and see who was not at their desk without actually having to talk to the workers.  Complete nonsense of course, but it demonstrates the less than happy working atmosphere that prevailed there.

Just a few days after my arrival I became aware of an excited undercurrent amongst my colleagues.  Looking up I could see a lady slowly pushing a trolley along the corridor.  Although I hadn’t seen her on previous days, my first thought was one of amazement that the civil service should still employ tea ladies.  The trolley finally entered the room through one of the many doors, at which point several people got up and dashed over.  More out of curiosity than the need for a cup of tea, I wandered across to where they were all crowding around the trolley.

Soon all became clear.  The lady was not dispensing tea and biscuits; she was just delivering the stationery order.  Middle aged clerks were arguing over the various tools of the trade as politely as they could (“I think you’ll find the hole punch is mine, Mary. Perhaps you forgot to order one?”)  I was fine for pens, etc. so I stepped back to my desk, making a mental note never to allow myself to become territorial about a stapler.

I stayed at the pay office for 3 years.  My final job there was assisting the ‘Accountant’; I suspected she was out of her depth, mostly because she was completely unqualified and was studying for her maths O-Level in her spare time.  By the time I left, things had moved on a little. The regimented rows of desks were being reconfigured around poles carrying the cabling for the new-fangled desktop computers, and the typing pool ladies (with whom I had frequently done battle over their misguided belief that they could re-write my letters using their unique approach to grammar) were either being let go or redeployed as all this new technology arrived.

I, however, was off to work in Germany where I too would finally be able to write out my own grammatically pure letters as and when was convenient to me.  As it turned out I would be doing this on an ancient typewriter, because IT had yet to arrive in Hannover, but that’s another story …
Got any Custard Creams?

Monday, April 11, 2011

Crowd Scenes

FA Cup Final 1971 ... I was there
I used to love playing football.  I was pretty rubbish at it, but what I lacked in skill I tried to make up for in enthusiasm.  I only hung up my boots for the last time when I was 43 and finally realised I could no longer keep up with my team mates in our Sunday league team (mere boys in their 20s and 30s, not to mention the occasional teenager).  Nothing ever beats actually playing, but watching a good match live in a passionate crowd comes pretty close.
I started going to matches when I was still a small boy. At first my father took me (he’s never been a fan but he realised he’d get no peace if he didn’t), and then later I’d go with my brother.  We didn’t travel far - Bloomfield Road for Blackpool games when we lived there, and after that the Gay Meadow for Shrewsbury Town.  More exciting was the occasional foray to the Victoria Ground, home of Stoke City (the team I still support) to watch the likes of Gordon Banks, who everybody knew was the best goalkeeper in the world.
In 1971 my father got tickets for the FA Cup Final between Arsenal and Liverpool. They were like gold dust, but one of his colleagues just happened to be the Chairman of Shrewsbury Town which entitled him to an allocation. My brother chose to support Liverpool, so for no other reason than to annoy him I opted to cheer on Arsenal, who had just won the league title and were now attempting to win the ‘double’.
Our tickets placed us behind the goal amongst the Liverpool support.  There was still terracing at Wembley Stadium in those days, and my mother had given me an old biscuit tin to stand on so that I would have some chance of catching an occasional glimpse of the match through the forest of adults around me.  The atmosphere was electric, but when Arsenal had won 2-1 we left the stadium in a fairly sombre mood. My heart hadn’t really been in supporting the Gunners, and I felt sorry for these Scousers, some of whom looked like they were on the point of tears.
There was a real crush of bodies as we made our way to the exits. It was a bit frightening to have no control over the speed or direction you were travelling. Once or twice my feet left the floor, and I was literally carried along.  I remember the look of anxiety on my father’s face, and even now I feel uncomfortable whenever crowds of people are impeding me.
While we were making our way around the outside of the ground, there was some sort of commotion, with people looking up, shouting and gesticulating. The cause of this was a lone Arsenal fan; I don’t suppose he was on the actual stadium roof, more likely he was on top of some other structure (it was 40 years ago you know!), but I remember he was very high up.  He was waving an Arsenal flag at the Liverpool supporters and singing in a broad London accent “We won the double, we won the double”.
To my young eyes, this crass gloating, to which he’d gone to so much trouble, seemed a really spiteful way to rub it in.  I regretted more than ever having rooted for the team which won the Cup, and to this day I still harbour a real dislike of Arsenal and a bit of a soft spot for Liverpool.  How strange that such small events can shape our attitudes for years to come.

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Shut up and play some music!

Radio Radio sang Mr Costello
Now I’m not one to complain (stop laughing please) but I’ll tell you what really gets on my wick. Radio DJs.  I know there are some good ones, but they are rarely on air at the times I can tune in, which is usually when driving to or from work. 
DJs have to be able to talk for a living, but some of them are just too fond of their own voices. I know they have to speak and even entertain, but they should also know when to shut up.
Thankfully we’ve not yet returned to the bad old days of the 1970s when the likes of Dave Lee Travis and Noel Edmunds were so far up themselves it made you want to rearrange their smug faces with a spade, if only because of the way any record with the word “radio” (or better still “DJ”) in its title was guaranteed to get huge amounts of air time at the expense of songs I wanted to hear.
Presenting styles have moved on since then, but DLT’s descendants are still annoying, just in a different way. I can’t listen to the Radio One Breakfast Show, not because the music is too young and hip for an old fart like me, but because there’s hardly any of it played. Instead we are treated to a seemingly endless stream of inane chatter from a whole gaggle of people (radio DJs are no longer permitted to present shows on their own, they need a studio of people to help them), which they assume the listener will find interesting or hilarious.
 It’s not just the younger ones who get on my nerves; those experienced enough to know better (i.e. those who have been put out to grass on Radio Two) are just as full of themselves. The one that really grates most (now that the odious Sarah Kennedy has been removed) is Steve Wright, who is guilty in his afternoon show of:
  • Talking over the intro or the end of records.
  • Singing along to records.
  • Playing records and not bothering to tell you who they are by.
  • Playing an inordinate number of jingles telling you whose radio show it is.
  • Sycophantic interviews with celebrities.
  • Reading out requests and never failing to tell us that the listener has said how much they love his show.
It’s got to the stage where I only put the radio on for the news, which I have to switch off again quickly before the chummy banter between newsreader and DJ begins.  Thank goodness for my iPod!
"Poptastic mate!"

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Cats vs Dogs

Sam
Many people seem to fall into one of two camps; they either like cats or dogs.  I have no doubt there are some who adore both, and even some weird soulless folk who can’t abide either, but the truism is true’ish.  As for my own allegiance, I’m a dog man through and through.

Now don’t get the wrong idea; I have nothing against cats.  I quite like cats, in fact about the time we got married my wife and I used to have one called Captain Pugwash.  He was cute, playful, clean in his habits and like most cats pretty independent and therefore easy to care for.  We were really upset when he fell ill one day with what turned out to be a tumour, for which the vet assured us that euthanasia was the kindest course of action.  We were sad of course but we carried on over the next few years with an assortment of smaller animals, including hamsters, guinea pigs and a vicious bastard of a rabbit, who once tore my legs to shreds because he didn’t want to go back in his hutch.

But smaller animals don’t really float my boat; what I really wanted was a dog.  I’d had one as a small boy, purchased from the RSPCA by my dad for a quid in 1967.  We named him Tim, and I was so happy I wrote a poem which began:

I have a little dog, and his name is Tim,
He’s black and brown and white, and I’m very fond of him …

I’ve forgotten how the rest of this masterpiece went, but it was basically an epic chronicling Tim’s brilliance at begging for scraps and the way he would chase seagulls along the beach.  Never knowing when to shut up, I used to recite it to anyone who would listen and to quite a few who wouldn’t.

So about 12 years ago we bought a Labrador puppy and called him Dylan.  He was as cute as a button but infuriating at the same time.  There were 3 facts about Labradors we didn’t fully appreciate:

1.       They don’t have an ‘off’ button when it comes to eating. I’m convinced that left alone with a big sack of dog food, Dylan would have eaten his way through it until he burst at the seams.

2.       They like water, any water.  They have an oily coat, webbed feet and an otter-like tail which makes them great swimmers. Dylan would happily jump in the sea and dive under the water looking for stones thrown nearby.  Unfortunately he would also leap into muddy puddles, filthy canals, stinking ditches and no doubt a sewage farm given half a chance.

3.       They like pooh, any pooh.  They like to eat it and they like to roll in it.  Fox pooh was a real favourite for Dylan, but another dog’s pooh would do just as well.

And yet for all his questionable habits we adored him, and only my taking a job in Cyprus forced us to re-home him to a lovely family in Essex, who used to send us photos of him at Christmas.

Within 10 days of arriving in Cyprus, we were the proud owners of Sam, a 6 month old puppy who’d originally been rescued from a farm by a lady who wasn’t able to keep him in her apartment.  Sam was house trained, but that was all.  However he soon turned into a well behaved dog, apart from occasionally absconding from the garden and turning up at 2.00 in the morning like an errant teenager.  He had fabulous markings being part Doberman, part English pointer.  He was tall and had a tail so long he couldn’t wag it in the traditional way, rather it would go round like a windmill.

When our time in Cyprus was up we took advantage of the newly introduced Pet Passport scheme to bring him back to the UK with us.  It may have cost well over £1,000 but I would do it all again.  He was such a placid, affectionate, dopey dog.  We loved him to bits, and when he too succumbed to a tumour aged just eight, I held him at the vets for the last time and cried my eyes out.

Three months later we got a tricolour Cavalier King Charles puppy and called him Alfie.  He is a joy to have around, although very different from our other dogs.  He’s certainly the most intelligent of them all and the easiest to train, albeit with a stubborn streak.  Being so small, he is quite literally a lapdog and is even permitted to sit up on the sofa with us.  This would ordinarily go against all my beliefs in what dogs should be allowed to do.  The other dogs would have been unceremoniously chucked off the furniture, and neither of them would have dared go upstairs, but Alfie’s different somehow, or maybe I’m just getting softer.

Anyway, so much for the pet history.  Why do I go for dogs and not for cats?  Apart from the obvious things like a dog makes you get up and take some exercise now and then, I suppose it comes down to their different attitudes towards their owners.  Cats are notoriously independent; they don’t want to know you unless they’re after something, and I always feel they’re kind of looking down on you with ill disguised contempt.

Dogs on the other hand ‘need’ you.  They come back for affection even when they’ve been shouted at and give you affection in return.  They depend on you in a way which brings out an almost parental instinct.  A psychologist would have a fine old time analysing my need to control another creature in order to make me feel better about myself.  I don’t know if there’s any truth in that, but I do like knowing the dog needs me.  Well, we all want to be loved, don’t we?

Alfie. Not in the least bit spoilt or mollycoddled