A good motorcycling video (in two halves) which demonstrates some of the advanced riding techniques taught by the Institute of Advanced Motorists, complete with commentary. The commentary isn't usual for a bike, it isn't even compulsory in the advanced car test, but it's something I am quite good at in the car (when I'm in full flow) and I often do it on the bike just to keep my hand in!
Part I
Part II
Continuing the sagas and stories of my working life, up to now anyway. If you want to read the preamble, click here to go to the first posting in the series, which contains a short version of my CV.
I used to live some 20 miles from work, and had to get the 0659hrs train which arrived at the other end at 0730hrs followed by a half hour walk to work for an 8am start. Sometimes my colleagues who had cars would spot me walking and stop and give me a lift the last bit of the route and occasionally it was Waldo (see previous War Story posts) who did so, in his old scabby Vauxhall Chevette which had been "customised" with various crap-looking stick-on plastic bits on the outside, and the whole of the inside - floor, roof, dashboard, steering wheel, seats - was covered in dark blue fur (no, really!).
Well I say fur, but in reality it was exceptionally filthy, stinking, mangy cheap nylon which would have made your hair stand up with the static were it not for the insulating properties of the greasy dirt which coated it!
Now Waldo often arrived for work still smelling of beer, and I think he was proud of this because it showed that he was a hardened drinker. A real man. The first time he stopped to pick me up though I discovered his secret, because he had an opened can of cheap lager sitting between his legs as he drove, and he took several little sips from it en-route to work.
So the smell of beer coming from him wasn't from a mammoth session the night before, it was from the small amount he'd consumed just before arriving at work!
I originally posted the following image on 4th July 2006, but it seems quite appropriate to include it again now!
I'm obliged to RE for sending me the following, which is from this site although I suspect it originated elsewhere, since I've seen bits of it before:
The Young Person's Guide To The Choir
In any choir, there are four voice parts: soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. Sometimes these are divided into first and second within each part, prompting endless jokes about first and second basses. There are also various other parts such as baritone, countertenor, contralto, mezzo-soprano, etc., but these are mostly used by people who are either soloists, or belong to some excessively hotshot classical a cappella group (this applies especially to countertenors), or are trying to make excuses for not really fitting into any of the regular voice parts, so we will ignore them for now.
Each voice part sings in a different range, and each one has a very different personality. You may ask, "Why should singing different notes make people act differently?" and indeed this is a mysterious question and has not been adequately studied, especially since scientists who study musicians tend to be musicians themselves and have all the peculiar complexes that go with being tenors, French horn players, timpanists, or whatever. However, this is beside the point; the fact remains that the four voice parts can be easily distinguished, and I will now explain how:
THE SOPRANOS are the ones who sing the highest, and because of this they think they rule the world. They have longer hair, fancier jewellery, and swishier skirts than anyone else, and they consider themselves insulted if they are not allowed to go at least to a high F in every movement of any given piece. When they reach the high notes, they hold them for at least half again as long as the composer and/or conductor requires, and then complain that their throats are killing them and that the composer and conductor are sadists. Sopranos have varied attitudes toward the other sections of the chorus, though they consider all of them inferior. Altos are to sopranos rather like second violins to first violins; nice to harmonize with, but not really necessary. All sopranos have a secret feeling that the altos could drop out and the piece would sound essentially the same, and they don't understand why anybody would sing in that range in the first place - it's so boring. Tenors, on the other hand, can be very nice to have around; besides their flirtation possibilities (it is a well-known fact that sopranos never flirt with basses), sopranos like to sing duets with tenors because all the tenors are doing is working very hard to sing in a low-to-medium soprano range, while the sopranos are up there in the stratosphere showing off. To sopranos, basses are the scum of the earth - they sing too darn loud, are useless to tune to because they're down in that low, low range, and there has to be something wrong with anyone who sings in the F clef, anyway.
THE ALTOS are the salt of the earth--in their opinion, at least. Altos are unassuming people, who would wear jeans to concerts if they were allowed to. Altos are in a unique position in the chorus in that they are unable to complain about having to sing either very high or very low, and they know that all the other sections think their parts are pitifully easy. But the altos know otherwise. They know that while the sopranos are screeching away on a high A, they are being forced to sing elaborate passages full of sharps and flats and tricks of rhythm, and nobody is noticing because the sopranos are singing too loud (and the basses usually are too). Altos get a deep, secret pleasure out of conspiring together to tune the sopranos flat. Altos have an innate distrust of tenors, because the tenors sing in almost the same range and think they sound better. They like the basses, and enjoy singing duets with them, because the basses just sound like a rumble anyway, and it's the only time the altos can really be heard. The altos' other complaint is that there are always too many of them and so they never get to sing really loud.
THE TENORS are spoiled. That's all there is to it. For one thing, there are never enough of them, and choir directors would rather sell their souls than let a halfway decent tenor quit, while they're always ready to unload a few altos at half price. And then, for some reason, the few tenors there are always really good--it's one of those annoying facts of life. So it's no wonder that tenors always get swollen heads; after all, who else can make sopranos swoon? The one thing that can make tenors insecure is the accusation (usually by the basses) that anyone singing that high couldn't possibly be a real man. In their usual perverse fashion, the tenors never acknowledge this, but just complain louder about the composer being a sadist and making them sing so darn high. Tenors have a love-hate relationship with the conductor, too, because the conductor is always telling them to sing louder because there are so few of them. No conductor in recorded history has ever asked for less tenor in a forte passage. Tenors feel threatened in some way by all the other sections: the sopranos because they can hit those incredibly high notes; the altos because they have no trouble singing the notes the tenors kill themselves for; and the basses because, although they can't sing anything above an E, they sing it loud enough to drown the tenors out. Of course, the tenors would rather die than admit any of this. It is a little-known fact that tenors move their eyebrows more than anyone else while singing.
THE BASSES sing the lowest of anybody. This basically explains everything. They are solid, dependable people, and have more facial hair than anybody else. The basses feel perpetually unappreciated, but they have a deep conviction that they are actually the most important part (a view endorsed by musicologists, but certainly not by sopranos or tenors), despite the fact that they have the most boring part of anybody and often sing the same note (or in endless fifths) for an entire page. They compensate for this by singing as loudly as they can get away with, and most basses are tuba players at heart. Basses are the only section that can regularly complain about how low their part is, and they make horrible faces when trying to hit very low notes. Basses are charitable people, but their charity does not extend so far as tenors -- Basses hate tuning to the tenors more than almost anything else. Basses like altos, except when they have duets and the altos get the good part. As for the sopranos, they are simply in an alternative universe that the basses don't understand at all. They can't imagine why anybody would ever want to sing that high and sound that bad when they make mistakes. When a bass makes a mistake, the other three parts will cover him, and he can continue on his merry way, knowing that sometime, somehow, he will end up at the root of the chord.
Top Ten Reasons for Being a Soprano
Not only did I go for a very brisk half hour walk at lunchtime (in the blazing sunshine), but I left work early (flexitime) and went to the gym for the first time in about five weeks. Forty five minutes of sweaty exercise. I don't dislike the gym, I have just found it incredibly difficult to get motivated and get back into the habit after A LOT of years of not doing it.
I had a long sometimes difficult conversation with a close friend last night. That friend put things into startling, stark perspective for me, and that has given me the boost, no, the hard kick up the arse I needed to get a grip of myself and my life and make things happen.
So now I have a specific goal, which will remain private, sorry, but part of which, a bloody big part, involves me changing my physical condition, and my physical shape. And my psychological outlook on life.
This is the new me. I NEED to do this. I NEED to lose weight. I NEED to get fit. I NEED to cut down on alcohol. I NEED to eat a better diet. I WILL do it. I WILL achieve my goal, because it's the most important thing for me.
Please think positive thoughts and project them towards me. Your help is appreciated.
And to that friend, you know who you are, thank you. Thank you for your continuing friendship and honesty and support.
Young Dudley Moore performs Jump.
This, for the uninitiated, is Anglican Chant, like what we do every Sunday at Evensong in the Cathedral when singing Psalms. Well, to different words, obviously!
I have a whole DVD of Dudley Moore and Peter Cook recording their iconic Derek & Clive stuff, and although it's been a while since I watched it I think this is a clip from it.
Please be aware - sound required, and Parental Discretion is well advised. Don't look at it at work.
Thanks to MDB for this.
Watch the following video, and when you get to 1min 4sec see what happens, and see if you saw it coming.
Now tell me the UK police don't deserve our respect, and our thanks for risking their lives on our behalf.
Thanks to Inspector Gadget for this.
In a previous life a number of years ago I was a police turnkey. That is to say a civilian member of staff basically performing, amongst other duties, the function of the police officer in the video by searching and looking after prisoners in a police office. But in Scotland the prisoner would have been flanked and held by two police officers, the arresting officers, while being searched. Didn't always stop them having a go, but in the time I did that job I managed to avoid every attempted head butt, punch, bite, kick and knee aimed at me, although I didn't always avoid the spitting, unfortunately. So having done that for a living it puts into perspective what "normal" working life can throw at you!
There are some nasty people out there, and we should all be very grateful that the police largely keep us safe from them.
Today being the second Sunday of the month it was the Glasgow North Group of the IAM motorcycle run, and a good run it was, albeit the first one I've made this year I have to confess! In fact it's the first one for me for just over a year, because the last one I was on bored me so much by being a slow procession of bikes, apparently unable to overtake anything!
So this morning five of us turned up at the assembly point at PC World at Finnieston for 0930hrs and we decided that the weather forecast suggested Ayrshire as a viable route.
Down via Barrhead, Stewarton and Kilmarnock to the A76 where we then turned off towards Ayr and then headed south past the Electric Brae (negotiating a 35mph car driver on the way!) and Turnberry (where the 2009 Open Golf Championship will take place in July, apparently) to Girvan where we partook of variations on fish and chips in a local cafe, followed by some Nardini's ice cream while we wandered over to look at a substantial (and bright yellow) trike parked at the harbour, which turned out to be for hire. The rider/driver, who was sitting nearby, didn't appear over-friendly it has to be said, since whereas normally bikers will happily chat to each other he sat there five feet away and pretty much ignored us. Prick. And he is, I think, the one sitting on the bike on their homepage, if you followed the link. I suspect he's trying to pretend he's Billy Connolly! Did I ever mention I had lunch with Billy Connolly in Glasgow a few years ago? I'll bore you with that story sometime!
So anyway, after having travelled south to Girvan our route became, ahem, a bit flexible, and we trekked north east a bit to Maybole before heading back down via Kirkmichael and Straiton then across to Dalmellington (which from a personal point of view was nice as my relatively recently passed-away grandmother got married there a number of years ago) before heading to New Cumnock and then Cumnock where we did the usual final starburst and went our separate ways (although we did lose one at a pre-planned split earlier) with three of us continuing east along the A70 to Douglas and finishing with a blast (at a maximum of 70mph, of course, M'lud) up the M74.
I covered almost 200 miles on the day, which was marked by glorious weather for most of the time apart from the stretch from Dalmellington onwards when it rained reasonably heavily, although it had cleared up by the time we were reaching Motherwell on the M74. And I saw a spectacular forked lightning strike at one point on the hills in the distance ahead.
You could do much worse than come along to Glasgow Chamber Choir's concerts this weekend in Perth and Glasgow.
Goodness gracious, is it really three whole years today since I started this Blog?
Yes, it is actually.
And the sentiment I expressed in my third post, on my first day of posting, still holds true.
Follow the link to look at it if you like, but the whole sentiment is contained in the image on the right.
Continuing the sagas and stories of my working life, up to now anyway. If you want to read the preamble, click here to go to the first posting in the series, which contains a short version of my CV.
At the branch of the Plumbers Merchant in which I worked with Waldo (see the previous War Story), for fuelling our delivery vehicle we had our own tank of diesel which was similar to the one in the photo below except it was rectangular, but importantly like the photo it had a wall round the base which formed a sump which accumulated a mixture of rainwater and spilt diesel.
In the winter one year the pipes leading from the tank froze so Springer, the warehouse supervisor, gave Waldo specific instructions to take a blowtorch from stock; play it gently over the frozen pipes to melt the blockage; then finally take some 4" hair felt from stock and lag the pipes with it to prevent future freezing. All pretty straightforward one would think.
Not for Waldo though.
He did as instructed and took a blowtorch from stock and melted the frozen stuff in the pipes, then he took the felt and lagged the pipes, but that's where logic flees because his next action was to get a polystyrene cup from the coffee machine and scoop up some of the mixture of watery diesel from the sump and pour it over the felt lagging, then get the blowtorch again and point it at the by now exceptionally combustible felt.
Can you guess what happened?
Yep, a sheet of flame shot up the side of the building so Waldo didn't hesitate, he ran like fuck all the way down the warehouse and crashed through the door into the office where Springer, the warehouse supervisor who had given him his task, was processing a cash sale through the till.
Waldo screeched to a halt in a cartoon-character fashion as Springer looked up at this sudden violent entry to the normally quiet office, and quickly asked "what's wrong?" to which Waldo, pointing to the till and indicating the fact that Springer was halfway through the process of counting out change, replied "it's OK, I'll wait till you finish that".
Springer duly finished his counting 30 seconds later and said "well, what's up?" to which Waldo screamed "THE BUILDING'S ON FIRE! ".
By the time the Fire Brigade arrived the flames had melted the top half of part of the warehouse external wall (bottom half plain brick, top half clad in a plastic substance from about 10 feet off the ground). The photo on the right was taken only a year or so ago. The diesel tank is long gone, but used to be against the wall just beyond the further away of the two roller shutter doors.
A long time after the event I asked Waldo what had gone through his mind to lead him to do what he did, but he just shrugged and said "Dunno"!
I've added a few more Blogs to my Blogroll on the left.
Have a look at them, there are some good ones!
Needs no explanation from me, just watch it! Although I should say it's safe enough because he was wearing a helmet!
I quite like this photo, which I took yesterday when out for a walk instead of going to the gym like I'd told everyone I was going to do!
If I was going to be wanky about it I'd say the juxtaposition of the setting sun and the Titan Crane, the last remnant of the world famous and world class John Brown shipyard, was a metaphor for the industrial heritage of the river Clyde in general and Clydebank in particular. But I'm not going to be wanky so I won't!
Oh, and I went to the gym tonight instead!
I was supposed to be doing something else tonight. Something very important. Very important indeed. Instead I'm here at home cooking some casserole (for one) and having a glass of red wine.
The red wine's something I suppose. Something like what I should have been doing tonight.
I should have been at a party. A birthday party. An eighteenth birthday party in fact. For my niece. For Rebekah. But I'm not.
Instead I'm sitting at home with only my cat Elmo for company. But at least I'm having a glass of wine. And Elmo is good company.
Thirteen years ago Bekah, not even quite five years old, had life snatched cruelly away from her by the terrible disease that is cancer. When the end came I was there at her bedside with my wife and Bekah's parents, my brother and his wife.
I shared her last moments of life.
Like I should have been sharing her celebrations at turning eighteen today.
Like I should have been sharing a toast to her health today.
Like I should have been enjoying the company of a beautiful young woman.
Instead I am here at home, in tears, raising a glass of red wine to her memory, and she is with my mum, enjoying the wine of heaven, and looking down on us who mourn, and miss, and cry.
Images courtesy of Mad Priest's Blog. As well as GS who emailed the top one to me just exactly when I was about to, ahem, re-use it from Mad Priest.
On an unrelated topic, it's been a long and rather boring bank holiday Monday today. I had plans to go for a nice ride on the bike, but it's been pissing with rain most of the day, so instead I've been doing some online housekeeping on my Flickr account.
Believe it or not, I'm actually looking forward to going back to work tomorrow!
On another completely unrelated topic, have a look at this Ladybird Easy-Reading Book called The Policeman. It's very good! Read it all.
According to Wikipedia, Schadenfreude is the pleasure you get from the misfortune of others.
So how might we expand on that? Can I think of an example? How about this. It might be made up, or it might be true.
Let's say you were singing at the wedding of a friend as one of a large handful of extras augmenting the church choir in which that friend's father is organist. Here's a hypothetical scenario.
One of the other extras is an ex opera singer who, as far as you are aware, has in all the time you've known him (30+ years) sung either bass or counter tenor, but for some inexplicable reason he's now singing tenor and standing next to you.
This ex opera singer has clearly no concept of the word "blending" and sings as though he's still on stage, thus deafening the altos standing in front of him and rendering the other 3 tenors next to him redundant.
This ex opera singer decides it'd be acceptable and a good idea to loudly offer his opinions to the conductor throughout the rehearsal. Opinions such as whether the choir should come off a certain note early, or whether the speed was right. You know the sort of thing, you know the sort of person.
There is a tenor solo in one of the pieces to be sung at the wedding. A piece commissioned by the bridegroom and written by his brother for the occasion, with words chosen by the bridegroom. This tenor solo more or less repeats a soprano one a few pages earlier and starts with a leap up to a top A and lasts about half a dozen bars. And it comes in over the top of the choir who then sing a sustained chord for about a bar before leaving the tenor singing on his own.
The tenor allocated the solo beforehand (presumably at one of the rehearsals) performed it perfectly well on the first run through, but for whatever reason then asked ex opera singer why he wasn't singing it instead, to which the overheard rather loud reply was "because I wasn't asked" so then the tenor soloist expressed the opinion to the conductor (who happened to also be the composer) that maybe a "real tenor" (his words) should sing it instead. Immediately the ex opera singer quickly and graciously accepted the offer, and duly sang through it twice.
Soon after, on the second run through another piece, Parry's I was Glad, ex opera singer suddenly started conducting with grand gestures on the final page but behind the choir stalls so that only I could see him do so. Upon being given a quizzical look by me, he said "you got that bit wrong the last time". Which I hadn't, as an aside.
Let's say that pissed me off.
So now let's say that in the actual service, the very first thing sung was the specially commissioned anthem. We reached the few bars leading to the tenor solo. Ex opera star's big moment. As we approached it it was unclear when he would stop singing the chorus part, over the top of which he would be singing. Would he fade out gradually before becoming the soloist? Would he just stop abruptly and switch to solo mode (which in truth was exactly the same as chorus mode - too loud)?
No, my friends, no. What he did was carry on singing the chorus part, completely missing not only the start of his solo, but the whole first bar of it, suddenly realised his mistake, squeaked out a brief, approximate, and wholly inaccurate top A, didn't manage to pitch the interval back down from the top A for the rest of the phrase, and finished it all on more or less exactly the wrong notes.
And that, my friends, is Schadenfreude.
Oh, and as always, in the service I sang the Parry anthem perfectly accurately, without his conducting assistance!
As I say, a hypothetical situation.
On an unrelated topic, congratulations to my friend Jamie and his new wife Natsuko who got married yesterday in Ayr. Thanks for inviting me to sing, and I'm only sorry I didn't make it to the evening reception.
Continuing the sagas and stories of my working life, up to now anyway. If you want to read the preamble, click here to go to the first posting in the series, which contains a short version of my CV.
I worked for a year or so in a particular branch of a Plumbers Merchant with various "characters" chief amongst whom was probably the guy I'll call 
"Waldo". He was a very strange boy, and one of my favourite stories of him concerns what he did with a delivery of loft insulation. You may be familiar with this stuff and it comes packaged in large rolls which when stood on end are about 5 feet tall and 3 feet in diameter.
The way this warehouse worked was that this item was stored on a mezzanine floor, so we unloaded the 100+ rolls out the back of the delivery lorry straight onto the warehouse floor, then signed the driver's paperwork to let him away, giving us as much time as we wanted to transfer the packs up onto the mezzanine, the floor of which was maybe 10 feet above the warehouse floor.
Anyway, the rolls were now lying about 3 or 4 deep on the floor, all aligned with each other a bit like the two rolls in the photo above right (think of a stack of lots of tubes of Polo Mints or Smarties or pencils lying aligned in the same direction). Waldo and I were on the Mezzanine as other staff were down on the floor throwing them up to us one at a time when Waldo announced loudly "watch this!" and proceeded to stand on the edge of the loading dock poised as if he was on a diving board, then before anyone could stop him he launched himself out in a beautiful somersault onto the comfy padded rolls below, which instantly parted because he was in the same alignment as the rolls, and he went down through them all and hit the concrete floor of the warehouse with a sickening thud.
Fortunately for him a combination of the rolls slowing his descent a bit, and his head being exceptionally thick, he wasn't badly injured.
There was an advert on the TV in the UK a while ago for, I think, Kleenex Velvet toilet roll where it's portrayed as so comfy and padded that the workers in the factory use piles of it to jump down onto instead of using stairs, and I always think of Waldo when I see it!
A brief stop off at Tarsan Dam during a 150 mile round trip across the ferry from Gourock to Dunoon, around to Tighnabruaich, and up round to Strachur then back to Glasgow on Sunday morning.
The judicious use of a fence post and the self timer allowed this rare photo of me with the bike, rather than just the bike!
I really must get round to doing more trips this summer. After all, what makes riding the bike all year round worth it, is the extra enjoyment of riding in good dry weather for a brief period in the Scottish summer!
If you follow the link by clicking on the photo, I think it should take you to my Flickr site, and from there you can see a few other images from Argyll at the weekend. It really is such spectacular scenery, that it makes me slightly less jealous of a former school friend, AS, who now lives in Tucson Arizona and with her husband enjoys long motorcycle rides in the desert (as well as an host of other outdoor activities). She sent me some stunning photos recently. Glad she's doing well.
.......... plus c'est la même chose!
Almost thirty years it might be since we all left school, but the years rolled back and we were all transported back to the years 1974 - 1980 via partially forgotten stories of derring-do in Maths, English, Latin, Physics, Engineering Drawing, French, Religious Education, Geography and other subjects, and involving frisbees, broken light bulbs, corporal punishment (the belt!), playground football, human pyramids (our speciality!), spoons, the sexual awakenings of adolescent boys when confronted by attractive female teachers, the fantasies caused by that last one, teachers who were there in 1974 and are still teaching the offspring of my contemporaries (not the sexy teachers though!), broken ribs, and lost fingertips.
In particular, a fair number of us at the school reunion last night started at Dalziel High School in 1974 in the class called "The Defenders". The norm at that time was to split the year's intake into classes of around 30 pupils for the first couple of years at secondary school, and give each class a name. There was officially no hierarchy, but it soon became apparent that we had been split according to perceived academic ability when coming from our primary schools, and the de facto pecking order was no secret. Due to an obvious clerical error I was in The Defenders, which was the top class (yes really!). One of the obvious and superficial differences was that The Defenders were taught Latin, whilst all the other classes received tuition in Classical Studies (which involved studying the social aspects of Rome rather than the language itself).
But I don't want to give the impression that we were in any way up ourselves. No, not at all. I remember taking a perverse pleasure in 1980 at a presentation to a teacher who was moving on to another job. At that time I was in 6th year, the final year at school although one could leave after completing 4 years, and was around 17-18 years old. The 4th year pupils at that time were a nasty bunch, into breaking windows, and carrying golf clubs to school supposedly as sports kit, but really as implied weapons, and they thought themselves pretty disruptive and tough. The English teacher who was leaving, as an aside the daughter of another English teacher at Dalziel, Wilson Humphries, who happened to be an ex professional footballer, made a speech after she was presented with flowers etc. To my surprise she told everyone present that although the present 4th year thought themselves something special in the bad boy stakes, in fact when she started as a teacher she taught a class called The Defenders, and after every lesson she went back to the staffroom and cried because of the behaviour of that class. She also said that having taught The Defenders, she could handle anything after that! As I said, I took some perverse pleasure in being singled out to these nasty little 4th years as previously being involved in disruption beyond what they were capable of.
I should explain that our disruption and bad behaviour wasn't of the brutal variety. No, we put some effort into it, and amongst other things it involved waiting until the teacher turned his/her back to write on the blackboard (and it was a blackboard at the time, no political correctness or modern technology for us!) and we then swapped seats with each other, more or less silently. We were in desks of two people next to each other. There was usually a slight look of puzzlement on the teacher's face when they turned round again, but we only got caught once, when one Latin teacher turned to the blackboard but spun round again two seconds later, leaving three people in one pair of desks and one person in the pair behind! OK, you had to be there!
So anyway, last night was tremendous and was far better than I'd hoped. There were around 17 of us, male and female, and we hit it off with each other (again) very quickly, so really nothing has changed.
I can summarise it easily by pointing out that it's a long time since I've literally cried laughing. But I did last night.
There are plans afoot to repeat this reunion every year from now on, and this morning I trawled the Friends Reunited Website to contact others from our year to get contact details for next year.
Happy days.
I left school, ahem, a number of years ago, well OK, almost thirty years ago, and apart from one memorable occasion a few years ago when I went to a surprise 40th birthday party for a former schoolmate, I have seen pretty well no one from those days. 
The advent of Friends Reunited, and more recently Facebook has meant that I have in fact kept in email contact with a small handful of people, but never face to face.
So anyway, in January I was contacted by someone I haven't seen since about 1979, and he's arranged a bit of a get together next Friday which has rather grown in scale as the net widens and more people are contacted and invited.
It's only a few beers in the Electric Bar in Motherwell, which always has been more or less an unofficial Dalziel High School Former Pupils Club, but I'm actually really looking forward to it. Particularly now that sense appears to have prevailed and the event has been opened up to persons of the feminine gender too!
I say sense has prevailed only because when it was first mooted to include ladies there were a few low level grumblings about it being a lads evening and if women were there we wouldn't be able to swear and fart. Well personally I rarely fart, not when there's anyone at all around anyway, but as regular readers will realise, I do swear a lot. I don't go out of my way to offend, and I will in fact take steps to try not to offend, but swearing is an intrinsic part of my vocabulary, and if I can swear when in conversation with clergy and family members, then I can do so in front of adult females with whom I went to school!
So anyway, the latest email has just arrived and to my surprise, frankly, it seems that there are a number of the girls intent on turning up. It'll be good to catch up with people, male and female alike, albeit I'm well aware that none of us will be the same people we were in 1980.
I know I'm certainly not.
Thankfully.
The photos, from around 1964 and 1977, and my current profile image respectively, are evidence of physical changes, but underneath the exterior, there are inevitably psychological ones too, which are much more important. Maybe in a future post I'll try to outline those changes.
Or maybe not.
A while back I took advantage of an offer whereby my employer "leased" me a laptop, payment for which has been coming off my monthly salary before tax, giving a nice cheap and easy way of getting the equipment.
It was always stated that at the end of the lease period, 3 years, I would be offered the chance to buy the laptop for a nominal amount (£50 was suggested as typical) or return it with no penalty or anything.
It's near the end of the 3 year period and the other day the letter arrived, and it states that if I want to buy it I need to make an extra payment of £51.97, which is pretty much what I was told 3 years ago.
And my other choice is to return it whereupon I must pay an uplift charge of £39.
So either way I need to pay at least £39, but for an extra £12.97 I get to keep a perfectly serviceable, albeit 3 year old and therefore no longer anything near cutting edge, laptop.
I think I'm going to keep it! What do you think?
OK, I know t'InterWeb is global, but if anyone reading this is local to the west central belt of Scotland, sings, and fancies a go at the cheesy but strangely excellent Crucifixion by Sir John Stainer, then you could probably do worse than come along to Thomas Coats Memorial Church in the High Street in Paisley on Good Friday where there will be a Come and Sing The Crucifixion event happening as a fund raising exercise.
The choir rehearsal is from 3.30pm until 6pm, and tickets for that cost only £3 (or £5 including a copyright-free version of the score to use - not the Novello edition).
Or if you don't sing, but fancy listening, you could come along to hear the performance at 7pm that evening. Tickets for audience members are only £5 (£3 concession). And you probably still have to be fairly local to make it a realistic proposition!
Further information and a booking form for singers can be obtained from Matt Edwards, the conductor, who is the director of music at Thomas Coats Memorial church.
And I should mention that it's a particularly fine building, and well worth visiting for architectural reasons alone!
Why not give it a go? I'll certainly be there.
It isn't often that I promote worthy causes. I feel that our senses are assaulted by so many appeals for this and that, that I rarely, if ever, forward requests for aid or charity.
Go and look at this site though, and watch the film. Be warned that it contains scenes of violence. Not anything like would be classed as an 18 certificate (adults only) but graphic enough to be only shown before 15 certificate films, as I believe is planned.
It's the actress Keira Knightley in a new advert raising awareness of domestic violence. No one should be subject to abuse of this, or any sort.
And domestic abuse doesn't have to feature physical violence, it can be mental cruelty too.
And although this film is connected to Women's Aid, it isn't just women who suffer such abuse.
Don't tolerate it.
Don't tolerate it happening to someone else, and certainly don't tolerate it happening to you.
OK, that's enough seriousness for one day. Back to normal!
Continuing the sagas and stories of my working life, up to now anyway. If you want to read the preamble, click here to go to the first posting in the series, which contains a short version of my CV.
In July there is a traditional two week holiday in the west of Scotland called "The Glasgow Fair" when lots of people head off to various holiday destinations, including Blackpool.
One such Glasgow worthy did just that one year but sadly managed to quickly bring himself to the attention of the Blackpool Police for some misdemeanour at which point the Police National Computer revealed that a Warrant was in existence for this fine chap since for some reason Glasgow Sheriff Court wanted to have a word! Lancashire Constabulary duly contacted the police office in which I worked at the time, where the warrant was held, to ask if we still wanted him. Which we did.
As is the norm, it was arranged that two nightshift cops would take an unmarked car down the 195 miles south to Blackpool, and my shift was working nightshift so the two cops chosen were Tam and Mackem. They decided to share the driving and Mackem (who is a good guy but was not always known for his even temperament) was behind the wheel when they set off southbound. They arrived in Blackpool at about 2am and established that the prisoner was completely compliant and wouldn't cause them any problems so loaded him handcuffed into the back seat of the car and set off again, this time with Tam driving.
First though, Tam assured Mackem that he knew the route back north to the office, so Mackem settled into the front passenger seat and instantly fell asleep.
Tam directed the car along the M55 due East for about a dozen miles to its junction with the M6, whereupon he turned right (think about it!). About an hour later Mackem woke up and was idly gazing out the window and wondering how far north they'd reached when he saw the sign saying "Birmingham 20 miles" whereupon he shouted to Tam
"What the fuck are you doing, we're heading in the wrong direction!" to which Tam replied
"It's OK big man, I know a shortcut!".
The car was then stopped on the hard shoulder and apparently the prisoner had to physically separate the two cops to stop Mackem killing Tam!
That's now two years since, on Sunday 18th March 2007, I snapped my Achilles Tendon in a rather painful manner!
Since then my recovery has been a bit slow, but is now pretty much complete, and I rarely limp. I don't recommend doing such an injury to yourself though, it's not pleasant!
