There are 118 days between the 2015 Super League Grand Final and the start of the 2016 Super League season. That’s around 17 weeks. Almost as if they knew that 17 consecutive weekends without rugby league was a prospect that I could not countenance, the powers that be organised a three-test international series between England and New Zealand to take place in November. Just to tide us leagueaholics over that little bit. We’re still going to have to cope for 14 weekends without our game, but every little helps.
To this end, Emma and I decided to attend the second of these three tests at London’s Olympic Stadium. Or the Queen Elizabeth II Olympic Stadium to give it its regal, full title. The first test was in Hull and although I have nothing against Hull, London seemed like a more suitable place to be able to spend a few days while taking in the game somewhere along the line. We did attend an international game in Hull once, but only stayed the one night. My abiding memory of that night is of two lads coming in to the pub looking all cool and gangster (gangsta?), not saying a word even to each other, until a Black Eyed Peas track came on and caused them to lose their minds and their credibility as they started busting the sort of moves that would make Fergie blush. So we didn’t go to Hull this time….
The game took place on the Saturday so we drove down there on the Thursday morning. We had chosen to stay in Greenwich, which is close to Stratford which houses the Olympic Park, but which is also home to an accessible part of the erratic London Underground system. That would allow us to get around to a few other parts of the city and take in some other sites. After all, even a leagueaholic doesn’t drive 220 miles just to get to the game. If it was just about the game there would be a coach involved, and an open bottle of whiskey at 5.45 in the morning. But those days are very probably behind me now, so the whiskey money went on the Ibis Hotel in Greenwich.
The journey south was perfectly Hellish. We left at around 10.45am and did not arrive in Greenwich until around 4.30pm. We did not stop, except when the volume of traffic dictated it which was often. But more than that, the principal reason for a 3 and a half hour journey managing to last well over five hours was the berserk antics of the satnav in the new car. We’ve had that car for about six weeks and it has already caused us problems. Well, I caused a problem with it when I tried to get through a space not big enough for a child’s tricycle in the university car park the other week, but the car has also had its moments. It steadfastly refuses to play anything on my MP3 player which was downloaded on a Tuesday, for example. I remember one Monday after buying my new MP3 player painstakingly loading all of my favourite music on to my equally erratic laptop and MP3 player and then driving to work on the Tuesday with the pleasure of an alternative to bloody Joel and Lorna on Heart North West. I then downloaded some more on the Tuesday evening and every single one of those tracks still refuses to play. They don’t even register. It’s like they’re not there. Except they are because when I use the MP3 player outside of the car they all play perfectly well. Now either the car has decided that it doesn’t like my taste in music, or the people at Ford have seen me coming and it is in fact a heap of shit. I suspect the latter but considering I only paid £95 for it I don’t think I can complain too much. Alright it is not quite £95 because they take the £200+ mobility allowance I receive to cover the rest of it but given that I also get free insurance and am exempt from road tax I am still getting a brand new car for only just north of about £7000. It probably thinks it is entitled to have a shit music system.
Anyway, back to the satnav. Naively, we had muted the voice instructions. We had done this because it rudely turns the radio down when it wants to tell you something. You don’t do that, do you? If you want to speak to someone in a car you don’t turn the radio down, do you? You shout above the music. The satnav is not for shouting so we took it to the other extreme and muted it. Which was a mistake in hindsight because what we didn’t know is that every time the visual instructions guided us away from the motorway on to some deserted outpost of an A-road, it was only doing so to try to avoid heavy traffic. At one point, we were stopped dead on the M6 and noticed that all of the traffic on the slip road for the A14 was moving reasonably well. The satnav was flashing up all sorts of visual prompts to get off the motorway and take the A14. Which we did, at which point the traffic on the A14 stopped dead and the queue on the M6 that we had just left magically disappeared. You couldn’t make this shit up. It reminded me of the bank robbery scene in the last episode of The Young Ones, when they get stuck in the queue behind the man from the penny arcade across the road who has just turned up to have all his pennies changed into banknotes.
I’m not one for worrying about immigration. I don’t care how many foreign people live here as long as they’re making a contribution like everyone else. There are huge swathes of English people living here who aren’t making a contribution in any case, so for me it is not an issue. But still, it would have been somehow comforting if even one of the staff at the Ibis Hotel in Greenwich had English as their first language. It’s amazing how long it can take to check in to a hotel when there is a language barrier between you and the staff. It didn’t help that we couldn’t remember the registration number of the car and Emma had to go back outside to get it. That bloody car, again. When we got to the room we had to phone down to reception to report the complete absence of an accessible shower, which they responded to by bringing a chair to our room. A chair with holes in probably designed for use in the shower, but a portable chair nonetheless. I had this terribly antiquated idea that an accessible shower should have a seat bolted to the wall. With a bath also conspicuous by its absence, it would have to do.
The plan for Thursday evening was to pay a visit to Hard Rock Cafe. At the risk of again veering dangerously off topic I have to give you a little bit of background to that. Otherwise you will rightly wonder who in their right mind would choose to go to Hard Rock Cafe in London for an evening out? You need to have a second mortgage just to get through the door. But we had vouchers as a result of an unfortunate incident in New York last summer. You can go and check out that full story elsewhere on these pages I’m sure, but I would prefer you to stay here so I will summarise it thus. We went in there looking to just having a drink only to find that the only accessible low seating was reserved for people who were dining. No food, no seat. Emma, who is the person in charge of written complaints to charlatan corporate giants, wrote a long and dissatisfied email about this, the net result of which was the acquisition of $50 worth of vouchers for any Hard Rock Cafe we wished to frequent. That we have left it this long to use them is mostly down to the fact that there aren’t many Hard Rock Cafes knocking about the north west of England, and we are not in London very often. So it just seemed like an opportune moment to score a free meal, even if we ran the very real risk of racking up a gargantuan drinks bill.
We needn’t have worried about that. After the short stroll down from the hotel to the Cutty Sark DLR (Docklands Light Railway) station we were informed rather rudely that we would not be gaining access to it that night. There was a note on one door asking customers to use the door opposite, and just as we were about to do so a voice from behind us just bellowed out ‘NO LIFT!’. We turned to see a burly man in a high viz jacket who just repeated this two word utterance as if it were the only morsel of English he knew. That would have been no surprise given the language issues at the hotel, but it turned out he was just being incredibly rude. We know this because we asked him for directions to an alternative station at Greenwich and his English was impeccable. He told us that the station at Greenwich was 10 or 15 minutes away, which didn’t seem like a big deal except that it was raining pretty hard. After a long hard slog of a journey it was all too tempting to sneak into the Wetherspoons just next door to the Cutty Sark DLR station.
“Shall we just go in here and get lashed?” I said. So we did.
It was busy downstairs so we took the lift upstairs and found a seat. The girl working behind the bar looked remarkably like a girl I used to work with only younger. Maybe she has a younger sister working in the Clock Gate, Greenwich’s branch of Wetherspoons. Stranger things have happened. Or maybe she just looked a bit like her and it was a perfectly reasonable coincidence. You get free Wi-Fi in Wetherspoons so I remember feeling uplifted to see the news that Sam Burgess had returned to rugby league from the dark forces of Toryball. Other leagueacholics are terribly worried that he has not made an impression in that game and that he will be deemed a failure by them at their poxy cocktail gatherings. I personally couldn’t give a flying fuck. He took their money so he should be prepared to cop the consequences. In any case, he is back in the only game that matters now, the game that he says is in his heart, which is a triumph for our sport and a poke in the eye of the public school pig-porkers who enjoy line-outs and contested scrums.
Then I had a phone failure that will no doubt come back to haunt me at some point. I texted a friend of mine to see if she was alright after having some surgery a day or two before. She replied that she was and so I just told her to take it easy, but tried to add some vomworthy smiley face emoticon with it. I meant well, but on my sent items the smiley face was a little green man. He looked quite ill as it happens. This may seem insignificant but where I work it will no doubt be used as a stick with which to beat me at some point in the future. Which is why it is better that you all find out about it here, before it becomes the most twisted and contorted Chinese whisper of a story in the history of modern civilisation. I don’t even know how that happens. That’ll teach me to use emoticons. They’re just not for men, are they?
The rest of the night was an astonishing blur, but then that is what seven or eight Budweisers will do for you. I can remember how angry Emma got when she realised that she had left a bag of Boost Bites in the car. I’ve never seen her so angry over chocolate. She’d had quite a bit to drink to be fair and I am myself hardly averse to getting a little tetchy over trivial matters when my blood turns to alcohol. But still it was surprising, but mercifully short as sleep took over us both ahead of what was going to be a busy Friday in The Smoke.
Tuesday, 10 November 2015
Monday, 9 November 2015
Skyfall
I'm waiting for a call from Sky. They're late. They are supposed to call between 1.00 and 3.00pm. It is now 3.05pm. This shouldn't even be necessary. When we had the builders in the house during the summer they had to disconnect the broadband router and the telephone line from the television. Consequently, this meant we could no longer get access to Sky's On Demand services until we got it reconnected.
When we moved back in to the house in August the Sky+ box was not working. We just got a message saying we weren't getting a signal. I pay something like £8 a month for insurance on my Sky system. £96 a year. £960 since we moved into this house. You get the picture. It's money that could have been spent elsewhere even if it isn't a massive amount. It is in addition to the £94 a month that I pay Sky for my subscription. That makes a grand total of £102 a month going directly from my pocket to Rupert's. Things you can do for £102 a month;
Buy around 15-20 kindle books
Drink 34 pints
Attend 5 Saints matches (two people)
Buy 1.8 cats called Mowinkle who will not come to you but will nevertheless lie down and have his belly tickled by the Sky engineer.
Ah..the Sky engineer. So to pick up the story the Sky engineer came out in August to address the problem with the Sky+ box. When he did so he advised us that unfortunately he would not be able to reconnect the broadband and telephone to the television. A different type of Sky engineer was required. This seemed to me to be taking the deskilling of engineers to new levels. After all, we all know that one shonky bloke who can tile your floor, paint your bathroom and fill in your tattoo as the situation demands. Surely it is not too much of a stretch to expect a man who can realign a satellite dish to the optimum position - turns out the builders had inadvertently moved it - which they no doubt would have denied as they denied responsibility for everything else that went on in our house for three months - to be able to reconnect a cable? Apparently it was, so a new appointment with a new Sky engineer was required.
That appointment was arranged for today when we are off work anyway having only got back from London yesterday. I had to fight tooth and nail to get the appointment free, despite the aforementioned monthly insurance premium. They would have quite liked to have charged me £50 for the call out but after an exhausting and circular telephone conversation with one of their half wit employees they agreed that the insurance covers this problem. They would send the engineer on Monday (today) between 8.00am and 1.00pm.
Their generosity and helpfulness didn't end there. They texted me this morning to narrow down that window to somewhere between 11.00am and 1.00pm. One NFL game, one episode of Homeland and one of The Blacklist later the engineer arrived as planned. Expecting no problems this time around I'd gone for a bath. Their generosity and helpfulness ended there. I hadn't had time to run the bath before Emma was knocking on the door to ask about my annual leave situation because the thing was the appointment would have to be rearranged. A second engineer in the space of three months was refusing to address the problem. They don't touch phone lines they said, as if they were fishermen and we were asking them to perform a bomb disposal.
Slightly staggered, I listened while the engineer spoke again to the customer service people to ascertain exactly why he had been sent when we needed someone carefree and risk-happy enough to touch phone lines. He had to pass the phone on to Emma to try and confirm a new appointment because I was too angry. Yet they couldn't even manage that, offering only to call us back between 1.00-3.00pm to make the arrangements.
I called them straight back when the engineer left. Undeterred by their queues, buck-passing and other delaying tactics I hung on long enough to inform them that first and foremost they are a fucking disgrace, but also that as a loyal customer of over 10 years I resented paying £102 a month to be treated like a recently passed ton of turd. I also let them know that if they were to charge me £100 for moving my phone socket or for a new telephone lead as had been suggested by the visiting engineer then respectfully they could stick their services up their collective rectums. There are, I reminded them, several other good satellite and cable providers who charge less than they do. In short Sky, I Believe In Better and will be cancelling their services if something is not done about my enormous monthly bill as compensation for this astronomical balls up.
They were all apologies at that point, not seeming too keen on the whole cancellation thing. However, on reflection their apathy towards my loyal custom might be the reason they have not called back...
Did you enjoy this? If so hit 'join this site' at the top of this page to follow Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard. If not, leave a comment and tell me why.
When we moved back in to the house in August the Sky+ box was not working. We just got a message saying we weren't getting a signal. I pay something like £8 a month for insurance on my Sky system. £96 a year. £960 since we moved into this house. You get the picture. It's money that could have been spent elsewhere even if it isn't a massive amount. It is in addition to the £94 a month that I pay Sky for my subscription. That makes a grand total of £102 a month going directly from my pocket to Rupert's. Things you can do for £102 a month;
Buy around 15-20 kindle books
Drink 34 pints
Attend 5 Saints matches (two people)
Buy 1.8 cats called Mowinkle who will not come to you but will nevertheless lie down and have his belly tickled by the Sky engineer.
Ah..the Sky engineer. So to pick up the story the Sky engineer came out in August to address the problem with the Sky+ box. When he did so he advised us that unfortunately he would not be able to reconnect the broadband and telephone to the television. A different type of Sky engineer was required. This seemed to me to be taking the deskilling of engineers to new levels. After all, we all know that one shonky bloke who can tile your floor, paint your bathroom and fill in your tattoo as the situation demands. Surely it is not too much of a stretch to expect a man who can realign a satellite dish to the optimum position - turns out the builders had inadvertently moved it - which they no doubt would have denied as they denied responsibility for everything else that went on in our house for three months - to be able to reconnect a cable? Apparently it was, so a new appointment with a new Sky engineer was required.
That appointment was arranged for today when we are off work anyway having only got back from London yesterday. I had to fight tooth and nail to get the appointment free, despite the aforementioned monthly insurance premium. They would have quite liked to have charged me £50 for the call out but after an exhausting and circular telephone conversation with one of their half wit employees they agreed that the insurance covers this problem. They would send the engineer on Monday (today) between 8.00am and 1.00pm.
Their generosity and helpfulness didn't end there. They texted me this morning to narrow down that window to somewhere between 11.00am and 1.00pm. One NFL game, one episode of Homeland and one of The Blacklist later the engineer arrived as planned. Expecting no problems this time around I'd gone for a bath. Their generosity and helpfulness ended there. I hadn't had time to run the bath before Emma was knocking on the door to ask about my annual leave situation because the thing was the appointment would have to be rearranged. A second engineer in the space of three months was refusing to address the problem. They don't touch phone lines they said, as if they were fishermen and we were asking them to perform a bomb disposal.
Slightly staggered, I listened while the engineer spoke again to the customer service people to ascertain exactly why he had been sent when we needed someone carefree and risk-happy enough to touch phone lines. He had to pass the phone on to Emma to try and confirm a new appointment because I was too angry. Yet they couldn't even manage that, offering only to call us back between 1.00-3.00pm to make the arrangements.
I called them straight back when the engineer left. Undeterred by their queues, buck-passing and other delaying tactics I hung on long enough to inform them that first and foremost they are a fucking disgrace, but also that as a loyal customer of over 10 years I resented paying £102 a month to be treated like a recently passed ton of turd. I also let them know that if they were to charge me £100 for moving my phone socket or for a new telephone lead as had been suggested by the visiting engineer then respectfully they could stick their services up their collective rectums. There are, I reminded them, several other good satellite and cable providers who charge less than they do. In short Sky, I Believe In Better and will be cancelling their services if something is not done about my enormous monthly bill as compensation for this astronomical balls up.
They were all apologies at that point, not seeming too keen on the whole cancellation thing. However, on reflection their apathy towards my loyal custom might be the reason they have not called back...
Did you enjoy this? If so hit 'join this site' at the top of this page to follow Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard. If not, leave a comment and tell me why.
Monday, 2 November 2015
Other People's Blogs
I've been at this blogging lark now for seven years. I have spent a lot of that time trying to convince everyone that this is actually a column, rather than a blog but let's call an implement used for digging a spade, it's a blog. A column would be sharp and insightful and....well....profitable. In those seven years I have seen surprisingly few other blogs against which to compare my own work. Tonight, quite by accident really as I was scanning through some old comments about previous pieces (sorry, blogs), I stumbled across the very real and terrifying evil that is Other People's Blogs.
I'm not saying that this is the best blog in the world. It's riddled with as many flaws as its author (although it has never been thrown out of Martines for being a fire hazard) and can often take self-serving diatribe to a whole new level. Yet it might be the best blog written by anybody I know. Not many people I know write blogs. That's either because they are not confident enough to let the wider world (or less than 100 people a day if you are me) see their work, or because they can't be arsed to keep it updated. Others come straight out and say that they don't understand the point of writing a blog. Those people haven't got this far so I can say with complete impunity that they are uneducated botherers of small rodents. That's between me and you and the other 99 of you, ok? Back at the ranch, this is the best blog written by anybody I know but more than that it is, as blogs go, above average.
There is a whole world of awful blogs out there. Badly written, pointless bollocks that does indeed drive you to consider why someone went to the trouble of inventing blogger or wordpress or any of those other gizmos. That's what luddites call pieces of software that they don't understand, by the way. In fact, so deep is my misunderstanding of the software I use to bring you this rot that I only discovered this very day how to sift through the bad and the ugly of Other People's Blogs. On my blogger profile (which I must have completed seven years ago when I started this sentence, not this grammatical sentence, you know what I mean) are a list of things that I like. My favourite music, my favourite films, my favourite television shows, my hobbies. Alright hobby. If watching Saints while sitting perfectly still holding a £2 cup of Ty-Phoo qualifies as a hobby. This information is clickable, that is to say it is lit up in blue and if you click on it you will find a list of fellow bloggers who like that same thing or hobby. What I didn't realise when I completed the profile was that being a smart arse was not going to help me find like minded bloggers. For example, you can search the internet for as long as you like and you will not find another blogger other than me whose favourite music is 'anything that is not by Lily Allen, Rihanna or Lady Fecking Gaga'. Worse than that, blogger splits that sentence up when it conducts its search, so it believes that I am a fan of anything not by Lily Allen (true) IN ADDITION TO Rhianna and Lady Fecking Gaga (false). It makes no connection between the first part of that sentence and the last, treating all those elements separately. Clearly, only Rihanna is actually a real artist. There are no artists called 'anything not by Lily Allen' or even 'Lady Fecking Gaga', surprisingly. So if you visit my profile and you have never met me or heard my arse-achingly oft-repeated mantra about how much I hate Rihanna's music you will be led to believe that I am genuinely a fan of hers.
Similarly, describing my literary preference as 'too numerous to mention but basically anything by Nick Hornby' was a mistake. On many levels, you might argue. But principally because there is nobody out there who the software can match to that phrase. It wasn't until I came to another of my musical preferences that I actually discovered any like-minded bloggers that I could swot up on and compare myself with. However, before I managed that I was again hamstrung by my own smart-arsedness, this time using the over familiar 'Joss' rather than giving Ms Stone her full title. Which led me to a series of bloggers who all seem worryingly obsessed with Buffy The Vampire Slayer and its probably very troubled writer Joss Wheedon. One such lady writes a blog called 'Muffler Mill' which focuses exclusively on selling car exhausts! Even Jeremy Clarkson has never said anything quite that boring. You can imagine what I thought Muffler Mill was at first glance, and if you're being cynical, you can probably imagine why I clicked on it. Another took me to the work of Leah, but her work is open only to invited guests. Who the fuck is in a position to pick and choose who reads their poxy blog? Is Leah a pen name for John Fucking Grisham? Almost all of the other 'Joss' enthusiasts write their blog in a language which cannot in any way be described as English. And I don't mean bad grammar or exasperated use of potty-mouthery which is fast becoming my forte, I mean Portuguese or French.
I made the same mistake with Robbie Williams. Who hasn't made a mistake with Robbie Williams, by the way? I referred to him by his first name in my profile which brought up such literary classics as Krafty Kows, a blog about arts and crafts that would make your eyes bleed, Fairy Thoughts which appears to be attempting to flog jewellery and the work of Viking Longship, who writes about how Goodish modern life might be in rural Norway! Meanwhile a preference for Star Wars movies will lead you to the tome of Alan Scott. He sounds sensible, his subject matter of science fiction and writing seems much more up my street. And then he drops the bombshell on you. His blog is entirely blank. He has gone to the trouble of framing the page with a lovely image of stacked bookshelves in a library, conjuring up a world of exploration of adventure and intrigue. But he has obviously hit upon a problem with the words. I'm being a little harsh on Alan because he does have two blogs on the go. His second effort is much more wordy, to be fair, but is still held back by an alarming lack of any evidence of any vague interest in science fiction or Star Wars.
I stand by my claim that this blog is above average. If I ever learn to put pictures and links on here..........
I'm not saying that this is the best blog in the world. It's riddled with as many flaws as its author (although it has never been thrown out of Martines for being a fire hazard) and can often take self-serving diatribe to a whole new level. Yet it might be the best blog written by anybody I know. Not many people I know write blogs. That's either because they are not confident enough to let the wider world (or less than 100 people a day if you are me) see their work, or because they can't be arsed to keep it updated. Others come straight out and say that they don't understand the point of writing a blog. Those people haven't got this far so I can say with complete impunity that they are uneducated botherers of small rodents. That's between me and you and the other 99 of you, ok? Back at the ranch, this is the best blog written by anybody I know but more than that it is, as blogs go, above average.
There is a whole world of awful blogs out there. Badly written, pointless bollocks that does indeed drive you to consider why someone went to the trouble of inventing blogger or wordpress or any of those other gizmos. That's what luddites call pieces of software that they don't understand, by the way. In fact, so deep is my misunderstanding of the software I use to bring you this rot that I only discovered this very day how to sift through the bad and the ugly of Other People's Blogs. On my blogger profile (which I must have completed seven years ago when I started this sentence, not this grammatical sentence, you know what I mean) are a list of things that I like. My favourite music, my favourite films, my favourite television shows, my hobbies. Alright hobby. If watching Saints while sitting perfectly still holding a £2 cup of Ty-Phoo qualifies as a hobby. This information is clickable, that is to say it is lit up in blue and if you click on it you will find a list of fellow bloggers who like that same thing or hobby. What I didn't realise when I completed the profile was that being a smart arse was not going to help me find like minded bloggers. For example, you can search the internet for as long as you like and you will not find another blogger other than me whose favourite music is 'anything that is not by Lily Allen, Rihanna or Lady Fecking Gaga'. Worse than that, blogger splits that sentence up when it conducts its search, so it believes that I am a fan of anything not by Lily Allen (true) IN ADDITION TO Rhianna and Lady Fecking Gaga (false). It makes no connection between the first part of that sentence and the last, treating all those elements separately. Clearly, only Rihanna is actually a real artist. There are no artists called 'anything not by Lily Allen' or even 'Lady Fecking Gaga', surprisingly. So if you visit my profile and you have never met me or heard my arse-achingly oft-repeated mantra about how much I hate Rihanna's music you will be led to believe that I am genuinely a fan of hers.
Similarly, describing my literary preference as 'too numerous to mention but basically anything by Nick Hornby' was a mistake. On many levels, you might argue. But principally because there is nobody out there who the software can match to that phrase. It wasn't until I came to another of my musical preferences that I actually discovered any like-minded bloggers that I could swot up on and compare myself with. However, before I managed that I was again hamstrung by my own smart-arsedness, this time using the over familiar 'Joss' rather than giving Ms Stone her full title. Which led me to a series of bloggers who all seem worryingly obsessed with Buffy The Vampire Slayer and its probably very troubled writer Joss Wheedon. One such lady writes a blog called 'Muffler Mill' which focuses exclusively on selling car exhausts! Even Jeremy Clarkson has never said anything quite that boring. You can imagine what I thought Muffler Mill was at first glance, and if you're being cynical, you can probably imagine why I clicked on it. Another took me to the work of Leah, but her work is open only to invited guests. Who the fuck is in a position to pick and choose who reads their poxy blog? Is Leah a pen name for John Fucking Grisham? Almost all of the other 'Joss' enthusiasts write their blog in a language which cannot in any way be described as English. And I don't mean bad grammar or exasperated use of potty-mouthery which is fast becoming my forte, I mean Portuguese or French.
I made the same mistake with Robbie Williams. Who hasn't made a mistake with Robbie Williams, by the way? I referred to him by his first name in my profile which brought up such literary classics as Krafty Kows, a blog about arts and crafts that would make your eyes bleed, Fairy Thoughts which appears to be attempting to flog jewellery and the work of Viking Longship, who writes about how Goodish modern life might be in rural Norway! Meanwhile a preference for Star Wars movies will lead you to the tome of Alan Scott. He sounds sensible, his subject matter of science fiction and writing seems much more up my street. And then he drops the bombshell on you. His blog is entirely blank. He has gone to the trouble of framing the page with a lovely image of stacked bookshelves in a library, conjuring up a world of exploration of adventure and intrigue. But he has obviously hit upon a problem with the words. I'm being a little harsh on Alan because he does have two blogs on the go. His second effort is much more wordy, to be fair, but is still held back by an alarming lack of any evidence of any vague interest in science fiction or Star Wars.
I stand by my claim that this blog is above average. If I ever learn to put pictures and links on here..........
Friday, 30 October 2015
Making A Mocha-ry Of Chocolate
Just a quickie tonight. I realise I have overloaded your brains with blogs this week, not all of which you have liked, but I couldn't let this one pass without comment. I can't let much pass without comment, truth be told.
Why don’t companies selling alternative flavours of popular products use different coloured packaging? I’ve just erroneously eaten a Kit-Kat Mocha and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. I hate anything coffee flavoured. I can’t drink coffee. This actually disappoints me more than anything. Every morning on the drive to work I marvel at how much the general public must spend on unnecessarily huge cartons of coffee from Costa, Starbucks or Nero and think that I’m missing out on something. If everyone is drinking it in such large quantities on the way to work, and spending so much to do so, then it must have a positive effect on them. It could all be in their minds, but even a placebo is better than nothing.
I have tried coffee numerous times, naively thinking that I can conquer my distaste of it. It didn’t seem unreasonable. I wouldn’t eat pizza until I was about 20 because of the amount of tomato on it. That was until I was very drunk and hungry one night and someone gave me a slice to try. Rather like when I first tried beer properly, I haven’t stopped eating pizza since. Except for that one time when I threw my pizza at a bloke in a taxi rank. I’d offered him a slice and he sniffed it and gave it back to me. How rude. I was in a transitional period that night. Which means I was drunk.
So anyway back to bloody Kit-Kat. I know I asked the question about why companies disguise their flavoured alternatives but I know the answer. It’s because they know that if they didn’t then nobody would buy the bloody things. Who in their right mind buys vanilla Coke, or Coke Lime or whatever the feck it is called? Every single can of this shite has been bought by someone who didn’t have time to look properly at the can and just picked up a red can thinking it was the real deal. It’s how Brendan Rodgers must have felt when he signed Mario Balotelli.
It’s been suggested to me that this incident was a clear case of ‘user error’ but I would dispute this. We’re all busy people. We can’t be expected to carefully study Kit-Kat packaging to look for the minutest label in the corner that reads ‘Mocha’. It’s like smallprint on a contract. Nobody reads it but everybody gets in a lather when they get royally shafted by some small detail that they missed. Often these details are hidden in 97 pages of terms and conditions which nobody will live long enough to justify reading. So it is with Kit-Kats. We don’t have time for your shit, chocolate manufacturers, so start playing fairly. You don’t get this with milk. If you want a different type of milk from the standard, full-fat stuff you look for a different coloured bottle top. Simple. Kit-Kat Mocha should come in a light brown packet and, in keeping with other coffee-related products, should be seventeen times more expensive than it has any right to be. If the woman serving me had asked me for £4.00 for it I would have recognised it as a coffee product, thus realising my mistake straight away and exchanging it for something that is not so far up its own arse.
I ate it anyway, by the way.
Why don’t companies selling alternative flavours of popular products use different coloured packaging? I’ve just erroneously eaten a Kit-Kat Mocha and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. I hate anything coffee flavoured. I can’t drink coffee. This actually disappoints me more than anything. Every morning on the drive to work I marvel at how much the general public must spend on unnecessarily huge cartons of coffee from Costa, Starbucks or Nero and think that I’m missing out on something. If everyone is drinking it in such large quantities on the way to work, and spending so much to do so, then it must have a positive effect on them. It could all be in their minds, but even a placebo is better than nothing.
I have tried coffee numerous times, naively thinking that I can conquer my distaste of it. It didn’t seem unreasonable. I wouldn’t eat pizza until I was about 20 because of the amount of tomato on it. That was until I was very drunk and hungry one night and someone gave me a slice to try. Rather like when I first tried beer properly, I haven’t stopped eating pizza since. Except for that one time when I threw my pizza at a bloke in a taxi rank. I’d offered him a slice and he sniffed it and gave it back to me. How rude. I was in a transitional period that night. Which means I was drunk.
So anyway back to bloody Kit-Kat. I know I asked the question about why companies disguise their flavoured alternatives but I know the answer. It’s because they know that if they didn’t then nobody would buy the bloody things. Who in their right mind buys vanilla Coke, or Coke Lime or whatever the feck it is called? Every single can of this shite has been bought by someone who didn’t have time to look properly at the can and just picked up a red can thinking it was the real deal. It’s how Brendan Rodgers must have felt when he signed Mario Balotelli.
It’s been suggested to me that this incident was a clear case of ‘user error’ but I would dispute this. We’re all busy people. We can’t be expected to carefully study Kit-Kat packaging to look for the minutest label in the corner that reads ‘Mocha’. It’s like smallprint on a contract. Nobody reads it but everybody gets in a lather when they get royally shafted by some small detail that they missed. Often these details are hidden in 97 pages of terms and conditions which nobody will live long enough to justify reading. So it is with Kit-Kats. We don’t have time for your shit, chocolate manufacturers, so start playing fairly. You don’t get this with milk. If you want a different type of milk from the standard, full-fat stuff you look for a different coloured bottle top. Simple. Kit-Kat Mocha should come in a light brown packet and, in keeping with other coffee-related products, should be seventeen times more expensive than it has any right to be. If the woman serving me had asked me for £4.00 for it I would have recognised it as a coffee product, thus realising my mistake straight away and exchanging it for something that is not so far up its own arse.
I ate it anyway, by the way.
Wednesday, 28 October 2015
Mistaken Identity
I need to lift my game. I have been looking through these pages and it is fair to say that I'm not impressed. I'm sick of myself, in fact. If I keep using the same old clunking phraseology then pretty soon someone is going to figure out what percentage of the contents of these pages is brazenly lifted from other people's work. And we can't have that. I just thought I'd tell you that, just to reassure you that I am aware of the deficiencies in this column and I am trying to address them. But it probably won't happen overnight. Ask Jurgen Klopp. By the way, did you hear the one about the German Liverpool football manager who said that two years ago Roberto Firmino was the best player in the Bundesliga? The same Bundesliga that contains Arjen Robben, Robert Lewandowski, Mario Gotze, Marco Reus and Thomas Muller? Keep cracking those gags, Jurgen, you'll go down well in Liverpool.
Thrillingly, I have got two more mistaken identity tales for you today. Two for the price of one. You must feel like Lembit Opik did when he met The Cheeky Girls. The first of these happened a month or so ago, the day before Emma and I were due to fly out to Rhodes for our holidays. Being the last minute sort of person I am we had to go into Liverpool after work to get our Euros for the trip. Emma's birthday was coming up during the holiday so I took the opportunity to go and buy her card before I met up with her to get the Euros. I was just getting served when the woman behind me tapped me on the shoulder. That could start a whole new column in itself about the able bodied invading the personal space of the disabled, except when we want them to. But we don't have time for that right now so I'll crack on if I may. The woman tapped me on the shoulder and said;
"You're a Kirkbyite aren't you?"
Yes, that does say Kirkbyite, and that is the exact word she used. Kirkbyite as in kopite, meteorite, Thatcherite but not pie shite. That would have stretched the boundaries of how far I am prepared to tolerate being insulted.
Naively, I hoped that a quick response in the negative would be enough to convince her so I just said 'no' and smiled that 'you must be mistaken' smile that people with Spina Bifida are born with. We get that and hydrocephalus and I know which is more useful. Yet the woman, let's pander to lazy scouse stereotypes and call her Mad Margi, wasn't having it.
"You are, you're a Kirbyite." she insisted.
"No, no I'm not." I replied, using the best, broadest St Helens accent that I could muster. Which is broad. I made Johnny Vegas sound like The Duke Of Cambridge. Not that it put her off any.
"You are a Kirkbyite. I've seen you."
No, you have seen a man using a wheelchair in Kirkby, which believe it or not is not beyond the realms of possibility without that man being me. If I was perplexed by this claim and her borderline psychotic insistence on its validity, her next snippet of insight into my life was nothing short of sensational.
"Yeah, I know you." she said.
"You lost your mother recently."
What? I only came out for a fucking birthday card and a few Euros and a complete stranger is telling me that my mum died recently?
I told Mad Margi that as far as I knew (and I'd seen her a day or two before if memory serves me correctly) that my mum is alive and well and not living in Kirkby. There was no relief on Mad Margi's face, only confusion. She looked almost offended that I hadn't lost my mother or, more specifically, that I was in some sort of manic denial about it. It was a good job I was leaving the country the next day. Surely nobody in Rhodes would recognise me. Erroneously.
I may write about Rhodes at some point but for now we will jump forward to a week or so after my return. There's a café just over the road from work which I frequent at lunchtimes. It's expensive but for that reason it is also quiet so it offers a good opportunity to get out of the madness for an hour. On the first or second day back at work following my holiday I was in the café ordering my lunch when another Mad Margi came up to me at the counter and asked;
"Excuse me, are you Dennis?"
Who?
My granddad is called Dennis. I have this on good authority from my parents but Dennis has never officially verified it because I haven't seen Dennis for over 30 years, except for a couple of funerals. He and my nan divorced some time in the 1970's and he decided that he wasn't going to have a relationship with his grandchildren. He lives fairly nearby I believe, but he might just as well live in Malta. Or he might just as well be a Kirkbyite. Maybe then he could at least have a rapport with my non-doppleganger in that part of the world. He is, I think, the only Dennis I know. There was a Dennis I used to play basketball with at Sheffield but his name wasn't really Dennis, and we only called him Dennis because his surname was Lillee. Get it? I know, pure bloody Oscar Wilde.
So in the same way I wasn't a Kirkbyite, I wasn't going to be Dennis either. This Mad Margi was far more willing to accept the concept of the existence of more than one man in Merseyside using a wheelchair so the exchange was not as laborious and painful as the Kirkbyite one had been. However, she did go on to explain that Dennis was a friend of her nephew.
Who is dead.
The nephew that is. As sad as that is, the fact that he was called Stephen (or Steven, she didn't stipulate the spelling) is I'm sure you will agree a cruel but marvellous irony. I am Stephen, but I can't be every person called Stephen just like I can't be every man who uses a wheelchair. I feel a little guilty about it actually. I could have just admitted to being Dennis and kept a little part of Stephen alive for her. She probably would not have known the difference.
I've been Daniel, Phil, Paul, Lee and Martin. Why couldn't I just be Dennis?
Thrillingly, I have got two more mistaken identity tales for you today. Two for the price of one. You must feel like Lembit Opik did when he met The Cheeky Girls. The first of these happened a month or so ago, the day before Emma and I were due to fly out to Rhodes for our holidays. Being the last minute sort of person I am we had to go into Liverpool after work to get our Euros for the trip. Emma's birthday was coming up during the holiday so I took the opportunity to go and buy her card before I met up with her to get the Euros. I was just getting served when the woman behind me tapped me on the shoulder. That could start a whole new column in itself about the able bodied invading the personal space of the disabled, except when we want them to. But we don't have time for that right now so I'll crack on if I may. The woman tapped me on the shoulder and said;
"You're a Kirkbyite aren't you?"
Yes, that does say Kirkbyite, and that is the exact word she used. Kirkbyite as in kopite, meteorite, Thatcherite but not pie shite. That would have stretched the boundaries of how far I am prepared to tolerate being insulted.
Naively, I hoped that a quick response in the negative would be enough to convince her so I just said 'no' and smiled that 'you must be mistaken' smile that people with Spina Bifida are born with. We get that and hydrocephalus and I know which is more useful. Yet the woman, let's pander to lazy scouse stereotypes and call her Mad Margi, wasn't having it.
"You are, you're a Kirbyite." she insisted.
"No, no I'm not." I replied, using the best, broadest St Helens accent that I could muster. Which is broad. I made Johnny Vegas sound like The Duke Of Cambridge. Not that it put her off any.
"You are a Kirkbyite. I've seen you."
No, you have seen a man using a wheelchair in Kirkby, which believe it or not is not beyond the realms of possibility without that man being me. If I was perplexed by this claim and her borderline psychotic insistence on its validity, her next snippet of insight into my life was nothing short of sensational.
"Yeah, I know you." she said.
"You lost your mother recently."
What? I only came out for a fucking birthday card and a few Euros and a complete stranger is telling me that my mum died recently?
I told Mad Margi that as far as I knew (and I'd seen her a day or two before if memory serves me correctly) that my mum is alive and well and not living in Kirkby. There was no relief on Mad Margi's face, only confusion. She looked almost offended that I hadn't lost my mother or, more specifically, that I was in some sort of manic denial about it. It was a good job I was leaving the country the next day. Surely nobody in Rhodes would recognise me. Erroneously.
I may write about Rhodes at some point but for now we will jump forward to a week or so after my return. There's a café just over the road from work which I frequent at lunchtimes. It's expensive but for that reason it is also quiet so it offers a good opportunity to get out of the madness for an hour. On the first or second day back at work following my holiday I was in the café ordering my lunch when another Mad Margi came up to me at the counter and asked;
"Excuse me, are you Dennis?"
Who?
My granddad is called Dennis. I have this on good authority from my parents but Dennis has never officially verified it because I haven't seen Dennis for over 30 years, except for a couple of funerals. He and my nan divorced some time in the 1970's and he decided that he wasn't going to have a relationship with his grandchildren. He lives fairly nearby I believe, but he might just as well live in Malta. Or he might just as well be a Kirkbyite. Maybe then he could at least have a rapport with my non-doppleganger in that part of the world. He is, I think, the only Dennis I know. There was a Dennis I used to play basketball with at Sheffield but his name wasn't really Dennis, and we only called him Dennis because his surname was Lillee. Get it? I know, pure bloody Oscar Wilde.
So in the same way I wasn't a Kirkbyite, I wasn't going to be Dennis either. This Mad Margi was far more willing to accept the concept of the existence of more than one man in Merseyside using a wheelchair so the exchange was not as laborious and painful as the Kirkbyite one had been. However, she did go on to explain that Dennis was a friend of her nephew.
Who is dead.
The nephew that is. As sad as that is, the fact that he was called Stephen (or Steven, she didn't stipulate the spelling) is I'm sure you will agree a cruel but marvellous irony. I am Stephen, but I can't be every person called Stephen just like I can't be every man who uses a wheelchair. I feel a little guilty about it actually. I could have just admitted to being Dennis and kept a little part of Stephen alive for her. She probably would not have known the difference.
I've been Daniel, Phil, Paul, Lee and Martin. Why couldn't I just be Dennis?
Tuesday, 27 October 2015
Shrewsbury Theatre And Honest Betty
A little access tip for you, since that is allegedly one of the functions of this column. If you turn up at the Empire Theatre in Liverpool with a wheelchair under your behind you are not going to be sitting next to the person you go in with. You will be sat behind them. Possibly in front of them. I can’t remember which. But certainly not next to them. You might aswell go by yourself. It’s reminiscent of two very strange young men who used to go into the Springy together on a Thursday night for the karaoke, buy their pints together at the bar, and then go and sit in completely different places as if they didn’t know each other at all. No, I don’t know either….
I mention this because Emma and I like the theatre. You can suggest that is because I have become middle class if you like but then I’m not the one drinking Pimms and watching fat hairy men shout ‘heave’ at each other at the Rugby World Cup. So anyway to get to the theatre we had to take the slightly drastic measure of travelling to Shrewsbury. When we were last in Shrewsbury we visited the Severn Theatre just to have a nose around, but there was nothing much on. We resolved to come back one day, especially given the access limitations closer to home, and so when a Sherlock Holmes-related play hit the stage we thought we would take the opportunity.
With the doors opening at 7.30pm an early evening meal was required. We had been out earlier for a couple of relaxants to watch Jurgen Klopp’s first game in charge at Liverpool, a catatonia-inducing 0-0 draw with Tottenham Hotspur. Even that presented a dilemma with Emma’s Sheffield Wednesday playing Hull City on half of the television sets in The Salopian, reminding us again of our friends from the Springy karaoke. The Salopian is a dinge-hole of a bar but one which is sufficiently 21st century to know that subscribing to BT Sport will be a profitable exercise. One or two others in the town had failed to realise this.
On our travels we had noticed a nice looking pub restaurant type place on the river close to the theatre. In the event it looked far nicer from the outside than it did on the inside. It was far more pub than restaurant. There were some booths (inaccessible unless you are able and inclined to vacate your wheelchair) and just one large round table in one half of the room. There was another rectangular table or two on the other side of the room but one was full and the other had a notice on it indicating that it had been reserved. Not that this stopped the customers on the full table from stealing the empty chairs from the reserved table. We were left with the large round table, so we settled in and picked up a menu.
It was not exactly a rip-roaring success. We only ordered sandwiches with a side order of chips but Emma complained that the chips were not cooked properly on the inside. She got a fiver back for her troubles, which is first of all an admission of guilt on their part and secondly the value of two portions of chips in this place. It is not my local chippy. I didn’t even like my ham sandwich, which Emma said was because it was ‘proper ham’. I ate it anyway but it wasn’t to my tastes. Still, good job I was eating ‘proper ham’ now that other types of ham apparently give you cancer. Aswell as sausages and bacon of course. I read somewhere that these things pose the same risk of cancer as cigarettes, which strikes me as slightly hysterical. I haven’t done the stats, but I’m almost certain that the percentage of bacon, ham and sausage eaters who have developed cancer is much lower than the percentage of smokers who have. Otherwise there would be government health warnings on packets of bacon, wouldn’t there? Who knows, perhaps that’s next. All in all I’m reminded of a scene from The Young Ones in which Rik complains that Neil had kept him awake all night ‘pacing up and down and ringing bells’ to which Neil replies ‘sleep gives you cancer man, everyone knows that’. Everything gives you something and you will die. This is not news.
There was time for some liquid refreshment before the show but predictably this meant fighting through the queues at the bar. In a brilliant initiative geared towards saving time they were taking orders for interval drinks aswell, so we blatantly pushed our way to the front and did the deal. The barman assured us, after scanning our tickets, that we would be able to take our drinks into the theatre. We had to make sure of this before we bought them as it was getting a little close to performance time. The last thing you want to be doing if you have a hiatus hernia is downing a bottle of Budweiser in 10 seconds before you settle down to watch anything as lengthy as a stage play. I’d be thrown out once the wretching started so it was important to know that we would be able to take our time.
Having scrambled around for a few minutes trying to find the right theatre (there are at least three in the building, probably more) we arrived at the door to be advised by the lady on the door that we would not be able to take our drinks in after all. A sense of panic began to take hold at this point, as I faced the prospect of either not drinking a hugely expensive Budweiser (imagine!) or forcing it down and exposing myself to my ailments and subsequent ejection from the premises. We argued that we had been told that we would definitely be able to take our drinks in by the barman but the lady on the door was not budging. The best she could do, she said, was to get the manager up to speak to us about it. We waited a few minutes more before the manager appeared. But all she did was confirm that we would not be taking any drinks into this auditorium any time that night. She mumbled something about accessibility which I didn’t fully understand, probably because I was so focused on the fact that I’d apparently been conned by the barman downstairs.
I was just about to go into a rant about how the only accessible theatre was the one which customers were not allowed to take drinks into. The injustice of it all was sure to fill these pages with months of rants just like this one. And then Emma said;
‘Is this ‘The Game’s Afoot’?’
It wasn’t.
We were in the wrong place. This was Abba or something. I quickly apologised and then pushed away towards the other auditorium at the end of the corner as fast as possible. In mitigation, shit like this always happens to us so it was a natural conclusion to jump to. The idea that we would be misinformed by a barman and that an accessible theatre would turn out to be an alcohol free zone seemed, and still seems completely realistic. But perhaps it would have been prudent of us to ask if we were in the right place before we got into a debate about rules around alcohol. You live and you learn.
‘The Game’s Afoot’ is not strictly a Sherlock Holmes story. It’s about an actor who plays Sherlock Holmes on stage. During one performance he is shot in the arm by a mystery member of the audience. Subsequently the action switches to his large house on Christmas Eve where he and his actor friends contemplate the riddle of who tried to take him out. When of course there is another murder. But all of this bloodshed is done in the right spirit, if that is possible. The deaths are funny and meant to be. There are running jokes, knob gags, slapstick and general silliness aplenty. And the interval drinks thing even worked out well. It was a hugely enjoyable evening from the moment I stopped blushing about the wrong auditorium scenario.
Later, we were in the nearby Wetherspoons having a few to finish the night off. We noticed a bag had been left unattended. It was hanging from a chair at a table which, until a few minutes previously, had been occupied by a large gang of women. We weren’t sure whether they were coming back or not but working on the assumption that only some kind of crazy woman leaves her handbag unattended like that, we told the bar staff about it and they put it behind the bar. Just a few minutes later a panic-stricken woman wandered in and started looking around for something. When we told her that the bag was behind the bar because we weren’t sure who it belonged to and whether they were coming back she wore the look of a woman who had recently won a large sum of money on a hugely unlikely outcome. She must have had a bit of money as it happened because she insisted on giving us some of it for making sure the bag was safe. She had somehow forgotten about it, which I didn’t think women were capable of given that they seem to keep their entire lives inside their handbags. Or maybe that just shows what I know about women. Anyway, despite our protestations she would not take the money back. So we spent it on more beer.
That incident brings me nicely on to the story of how I spent my lunch hour today. I say hour, it was more like two and a half hours in the end. I’d been out of cash for a few days. Not because I’m skint but because I’m lazy. It’s too easy to wave my card at the man who works in the cafe over the road, even if he does charge an extra 75p for admin on card transactions. Today I decided that since it was one of the less freezing days of the week enough was enough and I was going to finally get out there, get some cash and get my hair cut. It was going through that awful bog brush phase that it gets in when it hasn’t been shaved for more than a month. Think John Terry without the mysterious ability to attract women. The whole thing was a bad idea, as it turned out.
I stopped at Sayers to buy my lunch and somewhere between there, failing to find a space in the canteen and getting back up to the office I managed to drop both my wallet and my phone from the bag underneath my chair. This was no doubt largely due to the fact that in the first place I had forgotten to zip up said bag, and in the second place I was playing my MP3 player (which won’t play three quarters of its content in the car but that is another story) at a volume that no sensible hearing specialist would recommend. If all you can hear is Ed Sheeran, you are not going to hear your phone drop on the floor, concrete or not. So I didn’t.
I didn’t realise this until I got up to the office and reached into my bag for my wallet, which contains my staff card which opens the door. Regular readers will know all about what fun I can have with the doors at work, but we won’t go over all that again. There were more pressing matters at hand, like the whereabouts of my wallet and phone, and consequently my cash card and the £85 or so that remained from what I had withdrawn earlier after spending some of it on my hair cut and my lunch. Only slightly panicking I went back down exactly the same path I had travelled between Sayers and the office (including a lap of the canteen after remembering my failed attempt to get a table there). Along the way I asked everyone in the canteen and all the security staff if anything had been handed in and nothing had. I asked the staff at the cafe just on the off chance because they seem to know me there (three visits a week on average will do that for you) and I asked at Sayers. I even asked at the bookmakers next door. Nothing.
So I rolled down towards the bank resigned to the fact that I needed to cancel my card and that I could pretty much kiss goodbye to the money in the wallet. On the way down the hill an extra dimension to my sorry predicament was added when a total arse of a man decided to walk right in front of me on the pavement. Stopping suddenly, I over balanced and hit a crack in the pavement, throwing me forward and on to the ground. If I had taken stock at that particular moment I might have concluded that since I had lost my wallet and my phone and fallen out of my chair I might just aswell stay there on the floor and give up on the whole day. But that would have been embarrassing and potentially expensive since the card had not been cancelled at this point. I got up, brushing away the attempts to help me of a well-meaning passer by. Incidentally the actual culprit merely glanced in my direction and walked on as if the whole thing were my fault. The man was a total, total Jeremy Hunt.
You have to cancel your cards on the phones in the bank. I didn’t know this, and it took quite a long time for anyone to answer. I had considered that the staff there were winding me up and that whoever does Jeremy Beadle’s job these days would soon come bouncing around the corner giggling uncontrollably at the hilarity of it all. Finally I got through and did the necessary, before trudging back up the hill to the office. Whereupon I discovered from my friends and colleagues that the wallet had been found. Now you might think a wave of relief would have swept through me at this point. Yes it is an inconvenience to have to cancel the card and wait up to five days for a replacement but at least I would be getting my money back. But it was just the beginning of another absurd saga in the longest lunchtime on record.
I spoke to security downstairs. They said that actually they did not have the wallet, that a woman called Betty had it. Betty doesn’t work for the same company that I do (you know the one that does a lot for charity and saves puppies from drowning but who unfortunately we can’t name?) but she did leave a number for me to contact her on. But she also left instructions that she must be texted and not phoned, because they are not allowed to receive phone calls where she works, a place called Armstrong’s Solicitors just off Dale Street in the city centre. Am I allowed to mention them? Fuck it, I just have. I couldn’t text Betty, because I had lost my phone, so there then ensued a quite ridiculous three-way communication between myself, Betty and the lady who works on the reception desk downstairs in our building. In the end I decided to just have a stroll down there and just ask for Betty. Waiting for the three-way communication via the receptionists phone was going to see us all off.
Armstrong’s Solicitors (sue me) is set back from Dale Street a little so it is not the easiest to find. I had to ask someone, but when I eventually got there Betty came bounding out all smiles. She handed me my wallet and, it turned out, my phone (which I was half hoping had gone missing forever if I’m honest) and told me that the former had been at one end of Dale Street and the latter at the other. It was all very embarrassing, particularly since it wasn’t just me and Betty in the reception at Armstrong’s but two of her co-workers. I thanked her endlessly for her trouble and tried to offer her some cash for her honesty. She wouldn’t accept any money of course. I can’t even buy a round of drinks for people I have known all my life. I’ve got fuck all chance of convincing a total stranger to take any of my money. All of which led to an amusing discussion in the office during which the girls tried to think of the many, varied and most expensive ways I could thank Betty for her good deed. They concluded that I should send flowers or chocolates but not cakes that are unwrapped because then I could be trying to poison her.
I may yet do this. There aren’t many people left in the world it seems who would find a wallet and return it to its owner with the contents untouched. Good on you Betty, then. You have restored some of my faith in humanity at the end of what has been a total and utter disaster of a day. So thanks Betty, wherever you are tonight.
I mention this because Emma and I like the theatre. You can suggest that is because I have become middle class if you like but then I’m not the one drinking Pimms and watching fat hairy men shout ‘heave’ at each other at the Rugby World Cup. So anyway to get to the theatre we had to take the slightly drastic measure of travelling to Shrewsbury. When we were last in Shrewsbury we visited the Severn Theatre just to have a nose around, but there was nothing much on. We resolved to come back one day, especially given the access limitations closer to home, and so when a Sherlock Holmes-related play hit the stage we thought we would take the opportunity.
With the doors opening at 7.30pm an early evening meal was required. We had been out earlier for a couple of relaxants to watch Jurgen Klopp’s first game in charge at Liverpool, a catatonia-inducing 0-0 draw with Tottenham Hotspur. Even that presented a dilemma with Emma’s Sheffield Wednesday playing Hull City on half of the television sets in The Salopian, reminding us again of our friends from the Springy karaoke. The Salopian is a dinge-hole of a bar but one which is sufficiently 21st century to know that subscribing to BT Sport will be a profitable exercise. One or two others in the town had failed to realise this.
On our travels we had noticed a nice looking pub restaurant type place on the river close to the theatre. In the event it looked far nicer from the outside than it did on the inside. It was far more pub than restaurant. There were some booths (inaccessible unless you are able and inclined to vacate your wheelchair) and just one large round table in one half of the room. There was another rectangular table or two on the other side of the room but one was full and the other had a notice on it indicating that it had been reserved. Not that this stopped the customers on the full table from stealing the empty chairs from the reserved table. We were left with the large round table, so we settled in and picked up a menu.
It was not exactly a rip-roaring success. We only ordered sandwiches with a side order of chips but Emma complained that the chips were not cooked properly on the inside. She got a fiver back for her troubles, which is first of all an admission of guilt on their part and secondly the value of two portions of chips in this place. It is not my local chippy. I didn’t even like my ham sandwich, which Emma said was because it was ‘proper ham’. I ate it anyway but it wasn’t to my tastes. Still, good job I was eating ‘proper ham’ now that other types of ham apparently give you cancer. Aswell as sausages and bacon of course. I read somewhere that these things pose the same risk of cancer as cigarettes, which strikes me as slightly hysterical. I haven’t done the stats, but I’m almost certain that the percentage of bacon, ham and sausage eaters who have developed cancer is much lower than the percentage of smokers who have. Otherwise there would be government health warnings on packets of bacon, wouldn’t there? Who knows, perhaps that’s next. All in all I’m reminded of a scene from The Young Ones in which Rik complains that Neil had kept him awake all night ‘pacing up and down and ringing bells’ to which Neil replies ‘sleep gives you cancer man, everyone knows that’. Everything gives you something and you will die. This is not news.
There was time for some liquid refreshment before the show but predictably this meant fighting through the queues at the bar. In a brilliant initiative geared towards saving time they were taking orders for interval drinks aswell, so we blatantly pushed our way to the front and did the deal. The barman assured us, after scanning our tickets, that we would be able to take our drinks into the theatre. We had to make sure of this before we bought them as it was getting a little close to performance time. The last thing you want to be doing if you have a hiatus hernia is downing a bottle of Budweiser in 10 seconds before you settle down to watch anything as lengthy as a stage play. I’d be thrown out once the wretching started so it was important to know that we would be able to take our time.
Having scrambled around for a few minutes trying to find the right theatre (there are at least three in the building, probably more) we arrived at the door to be advised by the lady on the door that we would not be able to take our drinks in after all. A sense of panic began to take hold at this point, as I faced the prospect of either not drinking a hugely expensive Budweiser (imagine!) or forcing it down and exposing myself to my ailments and subsequent ejection from the premises. We argued that we had been told that we would definitely be able to take our drinks in by the barman but the lady on the door was not budging. The best she could do, she said, was to get the manager up to speak to us about it. We waited a few minutes more before the manager appeared. But all she did was confirm that we would not be taking any drinks into this auditorium any time that night. She mumbled something about accessibility which I didn’t fully understand, probably because I was so focused on the fact that I’d apparently been conned by the barman downstairs.
I was just about to go into a rant about how the only accessible theatre was the one which customers were not allowed to take drinks into. The injustice of it all was sure to fill these pages with months of rants just like this one. And then Emma said;
‘Is this ‘The Game’s Afoot’?’
It wasn’t.
We were in the wrong place. This was Abba or something. I quickly apologised and then pushed away towards the other auditorium at the end of the corner as fast as possible. In mitigation, shit like this always happens to us so it was a natural conclusion to jump to. The idea that we would be misinformed by a barman and that an accessible theatre would turn out to be an alcohol free zone seemed, and still seems completely realistic. But perhaps it would have been prudent of us to ask if we were in the right place before we got into a debate about rules around alcohol. You live and you learn.
‘The Game’s Afoot’ is not strictly a Sherlock Holmes story. It’s about an actor who plays Sherlock Holmes on stage. During one performance he is shot in the arm by a mystery member of the audience. Subsequently the action switches to his large house on Christmas Eve where he and his actor friends contemplate the riddle of who tried to take him out. When of course there is another murder. But all of this bloodshed is done in the right spirit, if that is possible. The deaths are funny and meant to be. There are running jokes, knob gags, slapstick and general silliness aplenty. And the interval drinks thing even worked out well. It was a hugely enjoyable evening from the moment I stopped blushing about the wrong auditorium scenario.
Later, we were in the nearby Wetherspoons having a few to finish the night off. We noticed a bag had been left unattended. It was hanging from a chair at a table which, until a few minutes previously, had been occupied by a large gang of women. We weren’t sure whether they were coming back or not but working on the assumption that only some kind of crazy woman leaves her handbag unattended like that, we told the bar staff about it and they put it behind the bar. Just a few minutes later a panic-stricken woman wandered in and started looking around for something. When we told her that the bag was behind the bar because we weren’t sure who it belonged to and whether they were coming back she wore the look of a woman who had recently won a large sum of money on a hugely unlikely outcome. She must have had a bit of money as it happened because she insisted on giving us some of it for making sure the bag was safe. She had somehow forgotten about it, which I didn’t think women were capable of given that they seem to keep their entire lives inside their handbags. Or maybe that just shows what I know about women. Anyway, despite our protestations she would not take the money back. So we spent it on more beer.
That incident brings me nicely on to the story of how I spent my lunch hour today. I say hour, it was more like two and a half hours in the end. I’d been out of cash for a few days. Not because I’m skint but because I’m lazy. It’s too easy to wave my card at the man who works in the cafe over the road, even if he does charge an extra 75p for admin on card transactions. Today I decided that since it was one of the less freezing days of the week enough was enough and I was going to finally get out there, get some cash and get my hair cut. It was going through that awful bog brush phase that it gets in when it hasn’t been shaved for more than a month. Think John Terry without the mysterious ability to attract women. The whole thing was a bad idea, as it turned out.
I stopped at Sayers to buy my lunch and somewhere between there, failing to find a space in the canteen and getting back up to the office I managed to drop both my wallet and my phone from the bag underneath my chair. This was no doubt largely due to the fact that in the first place I had forgotten to zip up said bag, and in the second place I was playing my MP3 player (which won’t play three quarters of its content in the car but that is another story) at a volume that no sensible hearing specialist would recommend. If all you can hear is Ed Sheeran, you are not going to hear your phone drop on the floor, concrete or not. So I didn’t.
I didn’t realise this until I got up to the office and reached into my bag for my wallet, which contains my staff card which opens the door. Regular readers will know all about what fun I can have with the doors at work, but we won’t go over all that again. There were more pressing matters at hand, like the whereabouts of my wallet and phone, and consequently my cash card and the £85 or so that remained from what I had withdrawn earlier after spending some of it on my hair cut and my lunch. Only slightly panicking I went back down exactly the same path I had travelled between Sayers and the office (including a lap of the canteen after remembering my failed attempt to get a table there). Along the way I asked everyone in the canteen and all the security staff if anything had been handed in and nothing had. I asked the staff at the cafe just on the off chance because they seem to know me there (three visits a week on average will do that for you) and I asked at Sayers. I even asked at the bookmakers next door. Nothing.
So I rolled down towards the bank resigned to the fact that I needed to cancel my card and that I could pretty much kiss goodbye to the money in the wallet. On the way down the hill an extra dimension to my sorry predicament was added when a total arse of a man decided to walk right in front of me on the pavement. Stopping suddenly, I over balanced and hit a crack in the pavement, throwing me forward and on to the ground. If I had taken stock at that particular moment I might have concluded that since I had lost my wallet and my phone and fallen out of my chair I might just aswell stay there on the floor and give up on the whole day. But that would have been embarrassing and potentially expensive since the card had not been cancelled at this point. I got up, brushing away the attempts to help me of a well-meaning passer by. Incidentally the actual culprit merely glanced in my direction and walked on as if the whole thing were my fault. The man was a total, total Jeremy Hunt.
You have to cancel your cards on the phones in the bank. I didn’t know this, and it took quite a long time for anyone to answer. I had considered that the staff there were winding me up and that whoever does Jeremy Beadle’s job these days would soon come bouncing around the corner giggling uncontrollably at the hilarity of it all. Finally I got through and did the necessary, before trudging back up the hill to the office. Whereupon I discovered from my friends and colleagues that the wallet had been found. Now you might think a wave of relief would have swept through me at this point. Yes it is an inconvenience to have to cancel the card and wait up to five days for a replacement but at least I would be getting my money back. But it was just the beginning of another absurd saga in the longest lunchtime on record.
I spoke to security downstairs. They said that actually they did not have the wallet, that a woman called Betty had it. Betty doesn’t work for the same company that I do (you know the one that does a lot for charity and saves puppies from drowning but who unfortunately we can’t name?) but she did leave a number for me to contact her on. But she also left instructions that she must be texted and not phoned, because they are not allowed to receive phone calls where she works, a place called Armstrong’s Solicitors just off Dale Street in the city centre. Am I allowed to mention them? Fuck it, I just have. I couldn’t text Betty, because I had lost my phone, so there then ensued a quite ridiculous three-way communication between myself, Betty and the lady who works on the reception desk downstairs in our building. In the end I decided to just have a stroll down there and just ask for Betty. Waiting for the three-way communication via the receptionists phone was going to see us all off.
Armstrong’s Solicitors (sue me) is set back from Dale Street a little so it is not the easiest to find. I had to ask someone, but when I eventually got there Betty came bounding out all smiles. She handed me my wallet and, it turned out, my phone (which I was half hoping had gone missing forever if I’m honest) and told me that the former had been at one end of Dale Street and the latter at the other. It was all very embarrassing, particularly since it wasn’t just me and Betty in the reception at Armstrong’s but two of her co-workers. I thanked her endlessly for her trouble and tried to offer her some cash for her honesty. She wouldn’t accept any money of course. I can’t even buy a round of drinks for people I have known all my life. I’ve got fuck all chance of convincing a total stranger to take any of my money. All of which led to an amusing discussion in the office during which the girls tried to think of the many, varied and most expensive ways I could thank Betty for her good deed. They concluded that I should send flowers or chocolates but not cakes that are unwrapped because then I could be trying to poison her.
I may yet do this. There aren’t many people left in the world it seems who would find a wallet and return it to its owner with the contents untouched. Good on you Betty, then. You have restored some of my faith in humanity at the end of what has been a total and utter disaster of a day. So thanks Betty, wherever you are tonight.
Monday, 26 October 2015
The Trouble With Football
Watching Liverpool has been a big part of my life for a very long time. On the telly, mind. I’m not rich enough to be paying £50 a throw to actually go to Anfield. Plus whatever it costs these days for some track-suited youngster to ‘watch your car’ while you’re at the game. As anyone who has visited any of my pages before knows, Saints is my match-going guilty pleasure. But Liverpool FC is a much older passion. I only started really watching Saints seriously in about 1989, right after Michael Thomas ruined football with his last minute goal for Arsenal at Anfield which won the Gooners their first title in forever and taught me the harsh lesson that actually it was possible for someone other than Liverpool or Everton to win the league.
I explain my passion merely as a way of justifying the presence of an article about Liverpool FC and its ailing fortunes on these pages. It might not be a subject which is strictly concerned with ‘my life’ and certainly not with the laughable access issues that represent the rare diamonds herein, but it is a part of my life. And this is about my life. And anyway it is my bloody blog and if you don’t want to read about the worst Liverpool team in living memory (if your living memory only stretches as far back as Paul Konchesky’s hay-day) then bugger off and read another meme about love, peace, religion or some such other figment of your imagination. Football is real.
The truth is I can only take so much of watching Liverpool these days before I have to bash my keyboard manically in a forlorn attempt at some sort of catharsis. During the summer I had to have my say on the Raheem Sterling transfer saga which, while threatening to place us all into a coma with the sheer daily tedium of it all, also raised my ire on account of Liverpool FC managing to avoid any blame for his eventual sale to Manchester City. It was all greed on the part of Sterling and his agent, everyone said, with nobody prepared to point out that actually Liverpool FC has long since declared itself a selling club whose policy now is to sell its best player at the end of every season and re-invest the small fortune it makes in several piles of shit. And so it came to pass again as Sterling departed and in came James Milner (that noise you can hear is Bill Shankly turning in his grave).
The result of all of this manifested itself clearly but unattractively with the recent dismissal of Brendan Rodgers. His Liverpool sides had been stumbling around to little effect long before he was finally given his marching orders by the owners. It all begs the not unreasonable question about why he wasn’t invited to clear his desk in the summer, rather than being allowed to bring in seven or eight new signings in as he had done a year earlier. For all their underwhelming football they had only lost twice under his tutelage in 2015-16 when the axe fell. There was no further evidence to suggest that he was not going to turn things around than there had been say…..after they took a 6-1 pummelling at Stoke on the last day of last season…or when they lost 3-1 at home to Crystal Palace a week or so previously in one of the most lethargic and pointless performances in the club’s storied history. The only explanation is that Rodgers’ dismissal was timed to ‘coincide’ exactly with the availability after a short break of Jurgen Klopp.
So we are three games in to the Klopp reign and the best you can say about it is that the German is undefeated. He hasn’t won either, but don’t let that spoil the mood. League games against Tottenham at White Hart Lane and at home to Southampton aswell as the home Europa League clash with Rubin Kazan have all ended level. It was while watching the Southampton game yesterday that I suddenly became compelled to have my say on the current state of play at Anfield. In the now time honoured fashion, Christian Benteke’s dreamy second half header was not enough to take all three points as the clowns at the back contrived to allow Sadio Mane to equalise from around three centimetres. One day soon someone will remove the nine inch nails from the feet of Simon Mignolet to enable him to come off his line to claim something in his area. Until then we can look forward to more of Mahmadou Sakho and Martin Skrtel trying to outdo each other in the field of slap-dash defending. Sakho was described by the Guardian last week as Liverpool’s best defender, which may be true but is the very definition of being damned with faint praise. It’s like being my favourite member of Union J or Little Mix.
If you look further up the field to the midfield the reasons for Klopptimism are hardly any greater. My dad hates Adam Lallana. Every time he gets within a five-mile radius of the ball my dad slaughters him. He’s just got it in for him in the way I have for Milner, or the way I did for Dirk Kuyt when he was somehow deemed good enough for Liverpool all those years ago. The definition of the phrase ‘good enough for Liverpool’ has changed dramatically down the years and not for the better. Anyway, in the case of Lallana I actually think he is one of the few of the current crop who actually possess something approaching a footballing technique. His touch is assured and he can beat a man. The trouble is he can’t beat seven, which he often tries to do as if he is some latter day Diego Maradona. He cannot or will not pass the ball. It might be because he deems it impossible for a team mate to be in a better position than him, given that none of them have any ability on the ball. If you want something doing, do it yourself. Cloning this foolishness on the other side of the field is an increasingly grumpy-looking Phillipe Coutinho, on whom most bookmakers have no doubt stopped taking bets to be the next superstar out of the Anfield door. Barcelona have shown interest, or at least his mate Naymar has, and FSG have probably already spent the money on another Serbian winger.
Milner’s cross for Benteke’s goal was top class, but in many ways the fact that Liverpool have come to rely on a man deemed only a squad player at Manchester City shows the level of ambition at the moment. Klopp’s appointment seems to signal an improvement in this department but how much he can do at the helm of a club run by baseball enthusiasts whose hobbies include penny pinching but not football is questionable. Has anyone considered the possibility that Klopp has been appointed by FSG precisely because he didn’t seem to mind having his Borussia Dortmund squad routinely asset stripped by the likes of Bayern Munich? He’ll put up with it, and they expect him to challenge for major honours regardless. It’s a little easier in Germany, however. Finish above an occasionally off-the-boil Bayern Munich and you are probably going to be Bundesliga champions. In England you have to contend with spend happy LVG at Manchester United before you even start to worry about the dual billionaire threat of Manchester City and Chelsea. Then there’s Arsenal, about whom there might well be some unwritten Premier League law that says they must finish in the top four otherwise there’ll be some point-docking going on.
Where Klopp was able to over-perform in the face of stifling transfer policies was in Europe. Yet the Rubin Kazan game did not suggest that he has particularly prioritised getting out of the Europa League group and going on to consider putting actual silverware in the cabinet. It’s another of my bug-bears on the modern game unfortunately, and Liverpool are among the worst culprits. You spend all season concentrating on the Premier League because it is important to get into Europe. Then you get into Europe and immediately do everything in your power to get yourself out of Europe because it is interfering with your Premier League form which is important because you want to get into Europe. Rodgers’ decision to play what was basically a reserve side against Real Madrid in the Champions League last season was unfathomable and nigh on unforgivable. At what point is one of Europe’s most famous clubs going to think about the glory of the game above the pounds and pence in the bank? A lot of people moaned about the recent international break, calling the lack of Premier League football ‘boring’. Those people haven’t watched Liverpool recently nor must they have seen yesterday’s tedium-fest between Manchester United and Manchester City. International football is just about the only form of top class football left in which winning things is more important than financial power. The stories involving Wales, Northern Ireland, Albania and company in European Championship qualifying have been uplifting amid the daily diet of Mourinho moaning and experts queuing up to try to convince me that Harry Kane is anything but a bloody pub player. By contrast, Holland’s failure to qualify from a group that included Iceland, Turkey, Kazakhstan and Sidac Social Club offers a far more interesting Dutch-related narrative than waiting to hear what song LVG will sing at his next overly rehearsed barm-pot fest in front of the salivating journos on a Friday afternoon.
Oh, do you see what has happened here? This started off as a piece about what is wrong with Liverpool and has just grown legs. Unlike its author. Well, not legs that work, at any rate. This has now become a withering critique of modern day football, a cautionary tale, and a compelling argument on why you should probably pick up the phone right now and buy yourself a season ticket at Saints instead of that BT Sport subscription.
At least Martin Skrtel won’t be involved.
I explain my passion merely as a way of justifying the presence of an article about Liverpool FC and its ailing fortunes on these pages. It might not be a subject which is strictly concerned with ‘my life’ and certainly not with the laughable access issues that represent the rare diamonds herein, but it is a part of my life. And this is about my life. And anyway it is my bloody blog and if you don’t want to read about the worst Liverpool team in living memory (if your living memory only stretches as far back as Paul Konchesky’s hay-day) then bugger off and read another meme about love, peace, religion or some such other figment of your imagination. Football is real.
The truth is I can only take so much of watching Liverpool these days before I have to bash my keyboard manically in a forlorn attempt at some sort of catharsis. During the summer I had to have my say on the Raheem Sterling transfer saga which, while threatening to place us all into a coma with the sheer daily tedium of it all, also raised my ire on account of Liverpool FC managing to avoid any blame for his eventual sale to Manchester City. It was all greed on the part of Sterling and his agent, everyone said, with nobody prepared to point out that actually Liverpool FC has long since declared itself a selling club whose policy now is to sell its best player at the end of every season and re-invest the small fortune it makes in several piles of shit. And so it came to pass again as Sterling departed and in came James Milner (that noise you can hear is Bill Shankly turning in his grave).
The result of all of this manifested itself clearly but unattractively with the recent dismissal of Brendan Rodgers. His Liverpool sides had been stumbling around to little effect long before he was finally given his marching orders by the owners. It all begs the not unreasonable question about why he wasn’t invited to clear his desk in the summer, rather than being allowed to bring in seven or eight new signings in as he had done a year earlier. For all their underwhelming football they had only lost twice under his tutelage in 2015-16 when the axe fell. There was no further evidence to suggest that he was not going to turn things around than there had been say…..after they took a 6-1 pummelling at Stoke on the last day of last season…or when they lost 3-1 at home to Crystal Palace a week or so previously in one of the most lethargic and pointless performances in the club’s storied history. The only explanation is that Rodgers’ dismissal was timed to ‘coincide’ exactly with the availability after a short break of Jurgen Klopp.
So we are three games in to the Klopp reign and the best you can say about it is that the German is undefeated. He hasn’t won either, but don’t let that spoil the mood. League games against Tottenham at White Hart Lane and at home to Southampton aswell as the home Europa League clash with Rubin Kazan have all ended level. It was while watching the Southampton game yesterday that I suddenly became compelled to have my say on the current state of play at Anfield. In the now time honoured fashion, Christian Benteke’s dreamy second half header was not enough to take all three points as the clowns at the back contrived to allow Sadio Mane to equalise from around three centimetres. One day soon someone will remove the nine inch nails from the feet of Simon Mignolet to enable him to come off his line to claim something in his area. Until then we can look forward to more of Mahmadou Sakho and Martin Skrtel trying to outdo each other in the field of slap-dash defending. Sakho was described by the Guardian last week as Liverpool’s best defender, which may be true but is the very definition of being damned with faint praise. It’s like being my favourite member of Union J or Little Mix.
If you look further up the field to the midfield the reasons for Klopptimism are hardly any greater. My dad hates Adam Lallana. Every time he gets within a five-mile radius of the ball my dad slaughters him. He’s just got it in for him in the way I have for Milner, or the way I did for Dirk Kuyt when he was somehow deemed good enough for Liverpool all those years ago. The definition of the phrase ‘good enough for Liverpool’ has changed dramatically down the years and not for the better. Anyway, in the case of Lallana I actually think he is one of the few of the current crop who actually possess something approaching a footballing technique. His touch is assured and he can beat a man. The trouble is he can’t beat seven, which he often tries to do as if he is some latter day Diego Maradona. He cannot or will not pass the ball. It might be because he deems it impossible for a team mate to be in a better position than him, given that none of them have any ability on the ball. If you want something doing, do it yourself. Cloning this foolishness on the other side of the field is an increasingly grumpy-looking Phillipe Coutinho, on whom most bookmakers have no doubt stopped taking bets to be the next superstar out of the Anfield door. Barcelona have shown interest, or at least his mate Naymar has, and FSG have probably already spent the money on another Serbian winger.
Milner’s cross for Benteke’s goal was top class, but in many ways the fact that Liverpool have come to rely on a man deemed only a squad player at Manchester City shows the level of ambition at the moment. Klopp’s appointment seems to signal an improvement in this department but how much he can do at the helm of a club run by baseball enthusiasts whose hobbies include penny pinching but not football is questionable. Has anyone considered the possibility that Klopp has been appointed by FSG precisely because he didn’t seem to mind having his Borussia Dortmund squad routinely asset stripped by the likes of Bayern Munich? He’ll put up with it, and they expect him to challenge for major honours regardless. It’s a little easier in Germany, however. Finish above an occasionally off-the-boil Bayern Munich and you are probably going to be Bundesliga champions. In England you have to contend with spend happy LVG at Manchester United before you even start to worry about the dual billionaire threat of Manchester City and Chelsea. Then there’s Arsenal, about whom there might well be some unwritten Premier League law that says they must finish in the top four otherwise there’ll be some point-docking going on.
Where Klopp was able to over-perform in the face of stifling transfer policies was in Europe. Yet the Rubin Kazan game did not suggest that he has particularly prioritised getting out of the Europa League group and going on to consider putting actual silverware in the cabinet. It’s another of my bug-bears on the modern game unfortunately, and Liverpool are among the worst culprits. You spend all season concentrating on the Premier League because it is important to get into Europe. Then you get into Europe and immediately do everything in your power to get yourself out of Europe because it is interfering with your Premier League form which is important because you want to get into Europe. Rodgers’ decision to play what was basically a reserve side against Real Madrid in the Champions League last season was unfathomable and nigh on unforgivable. At what point is one of Europe’s most famous clubs going to think about the glory of the game above the pounds and pence in the bank? A lot of people moaned about the recent international break, calling the lack of Premier League football ‘boring’. Those people haven’t watched Liverpool recently nor must they have seen yesterday’s tedium-fest between Manchester United and Manchester City. International football is just about the only form of top class football left in which winning things is more important than financial power. The stories involving Wales, Northern Ireland, Albania and company in European Championship qualifying have been uplifting amid the daily diet of Mourinho moaning and experts queuing up to try to convince me that Harry Kane is anything but a bloody pub player. By contrast, Holland’s failure to qualify from a group that included Iceland, Turkey, Kazakhstan and Sidac Social Club offers a far more interesting Dutch-related narrative than waiting to hear what song LVG will sing at his next overly rehearsed barm-pot fest in front of the salivating journos on a Friday afternoon.
Oh, do you see what has happened here? This started off as a piece about what is wrong with Liverpool and has just grown legs. Unlike its author. Well, not legs that work, at any rate. This has now become a withering critique of modern day football, a cautionary tale, and a compelling argument on why you should probably pick up the phone right now and buy yourself a season ticket at Saints instead of that BT Sport subscription.
At least Martin Skrtel won’t be involved.
Thursday, 22 October 2015
(Car) Park Life
I do this far less often that I intend to. Stuff gets in the way. There’s probably a certain irony, or a certain something if not irony, about life getting in the way of writing a blog which is essentially about life. Or my life in particular. But there it is. You get up, you go to work, you have a shit day, you come home, you eat, you watch 5% of the programmes you naively recorded thinking you would have time to watch, you go to bed. Life, right there.
Last week was a particular doozy. Outstanding in the field of Shit Weeks. If there is such a field. There is such a field and it is covered, I can tell you, in shit. It all started the previous weekend when Emma went out to the car only to find that the glass was missing from the passenger side wing mirror. We have had this car for less than three weeks. Ordinarily it might be quite difficult to get the glass out of a wing mirror without someone noticing that you are needlessly stealing it, so there is either a thief with a lot of time and patience doing the rounds or it simply fell out. A friend of mine told me that this once happened to his dad’s Ford Focus so it’s possible. Yet this is my second Ford Focus and the first occasion I have been left deficient in the glass department.
So the upshot of all this is that I had to take the car into St Helens Ford on Monday morning when I should have been in work. I had been quoted £46 for a piece of glass over the phone (this includes VAT you’ll be relieved to learn) but in the event they only charged me £33. I don’t know why and I didn’t ask. It’s best not to lest you get a patronising answer. I’m lucky I wasn’t sent on my way with a lollipop and a Mr Bump plaster to boot.
So anyway off I went then to work, arriving in the car park at around 10.45am. I’m normally in around 8.30 so as you can imagine by this time the car park was heavily populated. Handily, there was one disabled space left. I couldn’t believe my luck, truth be told. Normally if I go in late there are no disabled spaces left and I either have to find two free spaces to give myself enough room to get my chair out (Emma’s already caught the train into Liverpool at this point) or, as is more common, I end up driving around and around the one-way system around Tithebarn Street contemplating whether or not I should re-mortgage the house in order to be able to afford to leave it in one of the public car parks nearby. So a free space was a gift, a lollipop and a Mr Bump plaster all rolled into one.
The problem was that there was someone blocking the space. Helpfully, a man working for a Fire and Security firm had parked his car facing the space, but just close enough to it so that I couldn’t get my car past to be able to move into the space. Clearly he was not concerned with all aspects of health & safety. Just those he was paid to worry about. Mortified at the prospect of spending what remained of the morning driving around the one way system I tried anyway. I like to play my music loud enough for people in Hemel Hempstead to hear, so I’m not sure at exactly what point I made contact with a small concrete post just next to the space, but I was first alerted to it by the fact that the car would not roll forward any further. There was almost certainly some damage, which was most infuriating given the positively embryonic stage of life at which the car sat.
I phoned the security desk, which is what I should have done in the first place, and asked them if they would kindly locate the considerate Fire and Security man and get him to shift his heap of shit. Ten minutes or so later he came from behind me (the nearest exit is right in front of where I was parked) and nonchalantly got into his car and moved it without a word of apology. That would come later. I got out of the car to find that, predictably, the car had sustained a small scratch on the driver’s side. Wearily, I consoled myself in the knowledge that Motability have changed the rules so that anything short of setting fire to your car and rolling it over a cliff is now considered to be fair wear and tear, so I’m banking on them not charging me for it. Just like they didn’t with the last one after I suffered a similar incident in a multi-storey car park. I’m not good with car parks, especially when berks park in places which appear to have been carefully designed to prevent the disabled from gaining proper access.
This was the second such incident in the space of a few days by the way, as previously I had been stuck in the very same car park for 45 minutes waiting for someone who had parked illegally and thus blocked me in to move his heap of shit. There’s a lot of shit in this story, you’ll note. He had left a note in the window with both his mobile and his office number on it which would have been most helpful had he been inclined to answer either of them. As it turned out he never did show up until the next morning when it transpired that the car belonged to a colleague that I know quite well and get on perfectly well with. He was at pains to apologise. He apologised so much that I am now able to crow-bar the word ‘profusely’ into this blog, a word which much like ‘aplomb’ is never used in any other context. So anyway…What do you say? You just force a smile and forget about it, don’t you? If I hadn’t been guided out by the security staff (having gone back inside the building to try and get a message to the driver of the offending vehicle) then I might have been there all night and might not have been so good at accepting the apology.
Which I had to do again, as we hurtle forward through time again to end this sorry tale. Having got out of the scratched car following the removal of the Fire and Security van I trundled up to the office. I was about to regale my colleagues (loudly and irritably, no doubt) about the ordeal I had suffered when the driver of the Fire and Security van poked his head out of a door he had been crouched behind and apologised for his errant motoring ways. Turns out he had spent the morning working on the fire alarms in the very office in which I carry out my own mundane contribution to society.
It was awkward. Like David Cameron turning up for the Cabinet’s annual ball to find the main course on a spit amid the distinct whiff of pork.
Last week was a particular doozy. Outstanding in the field of Shit Weeks. If there is such a field. There is such a field and it is covered, I can tell you, in shit. It all started the previous weekend when Emma went out to the car only to find that the glass was missing from the passenger side wing mirror. We have had this car for less than three weeks. Ordinarily it might be quite difficult to get the glass out of a wing mirror without someone noticing that you are needlessly stealing it, so there is either a thief with a lot of time and patience doing the rounds or it simply fell out. A friend of mine told me that this once happened to his dad’s Ford Focus so it’s possible. Yet this is my second Ford Focus and the first occasion I have been left deficient in the glass department.
So the upshot of all this is that I had to take the car into St Helens Ford on Monday morning when I should have been in work. I had been quoted £46 for a piece of glass over the phone (this includes VAT you’ll be relieved to learn) but in the event they only charged me £33. I don’t know why and I didn’t ask. It’s best not to lest you get a patronising answer. I’m lucky I wasn’t sent on my way with a lollipop and a Mr Bump plaster to boot.
So anyway off I went then to work, arriving in the car park at around 10.45am. I’m normally in around 8.30 so as you can imagine by this time the car park was heavily populated. Handily, there was one disabled space left. I couldn’t believe my luck, truth be told. Normally if I go in late there are no disabled spaces left and I either have to find two free spaces to give myself enough room to get my chair out (Emma’s already caught the train into Liverpool at this point) or, as is more common, I end up driving around and around the one-way system around Tithebarn Street contemplating whether or not I should re-mortgage the house in order to be able to afford to leave it in one of the public car parks nearby. So a free space was a gift, a lollipop and a Mr Bump plaster all rolled into one.
The problem was that there was someone blocking the space. Helpfully, a man working for a Fire and Security firm had parked his car facing the space, but just close enough to it so that I couldn’t get my car past to be able to move into the space. Clearly he was not concerned with all aspects of health & safety. Just those he was paid to worry about. Mortified at the prospect of spending what remained of the morning driving around the one way system I tried anyway. I like to play my music loud enough for people in Hemel Hempstead to hear, so I’m not sure at exactly what point I made contact with a small concrete post just next to the space, but I was first alerted to it by the fact that the car would not roll forward any further. There was almost certainly some damage, which was most infuriating given the positively embryonic stage of life at which the car sat.
I phoned the security desk, which is what I should have done in the first place, and asked them if they would kindly locate the considerate Fire and Security man and get him to shift his heap of shit. Ten minutes or so later he came from behind me (the nearest exit is right in front of where I was parked) and nonchalantly got into his car and moved it without a word of apology. That would come later. I got out of the car to find that, predictably, the car had sustained a small scratch on the driver’s side. Wearily, I consoled myself in the knowledge that Motability have changed the rules so that anything short of setting fire to your car and rolling it over a cliff is now considered to be fair wear and tear, so I’m banking on them not charging me for it. Just like they didn’t with the last one after I suffered a similar incident in a multi-storey car park. I’m not good with car parks, especially when berks park in places which appear to have been carefully designed to prevent the disabled from gaining proper access.
This was the second such incident in the space of a few days by the way, as previously I had been stuck in the very same car park for 45 minutes waiting for someone who had parked illegally and thus blocked me in to move his heap of shit. There’s a lot of shit in this story, you’ll note. He had left a note in the window with both his mobile and his office number on it which would have been most helpful had he been inclined to answer either of them. As it turned out he never did show up until the next morning when it transpired that the car belonged to a colleague that I know quite well and get on perfectly well with. He was at pains to apologise. He apologised so much that I am now able to crow-bar the word ‘profusely’ into this blog, a word which much like ‘aplomb’ is never used in any other context. So anyway…What do you say? You just force a smile and forget about it, don’t you? If I hadn’t been guided out by the security staff (having gone back inside the building to try and get a message to the driver of the offending vehicle) then I might have been there all night and might not have been so good at accepting the apology.
Which I had to do again, as we hurtle forward through time again to end this sorry tale. Having got out of the scratched car following the removal of the Fire and Security van I trundled up to the office. I was about to regale my colleagues (loudly and irritably, no doubt) about the ordeal I had suffered when the driver of the Fire and Security van poked his head out of a door he had been crouched behind and apologised for his errant motoring ways. Turns out he had spent the morning working on the fire alarms in the very office in which I carry out my own mundane contribution to society.
It was awkward. Like David Cameron turning up for the Cabinet’s annual ball to find the main course on a spit amid the distinct whiff of pork.
Saturday, 10 October 2015
40
It’s been a strange week. I was sick for the first part of it. Riddled with infection. Ecoli, the medical report from my last visit to the consultant said. That makes it sound like the World Health Organisation should form a perimeter around my house and keep me there in my own private little quarantine lest I spread this deadly bug all over England. It’s really just a water infection, which for someone with Spina Bifida is hardly unusual. Not life threatening, but not exactly pleasant either. I threw up violently at lunchtime on my first day back at work on Wednesday and again on Thursday. That was after I’d had to take half a day’s flexi having comically forgotten to take my catheter to work with me. It was half a day’s flexi or piss your pants. What are you going to do?
Before this small oversight I became the owner, or at least joint owner, of a cat. His name is Mowinkle (I think that is how you spell it but I very much doubt whether you can prove otherwise in any case) and he is three and a half years old. He is named after a Norwegian skier. I don’t even remember her first name but Emma and I were watching the skiing during the Winter Olympics in Sochi last year when she came gliding into view with her name emblazoned on the screen. And then I said, sarcastically as I say everything else sarcastically like that character Robert Newman used to do on the telly, that Mowinkle would be a good name for a cat. We were always getting a cat after we had finished the rebuild of the bathroom and extension this summer, so the name stuck and now he is stuck with it too. He doesn’t seem to mind. He doesn’t seem to know.
I haven’t exactly bonded with him yet. He spent all of his first day with us hiding behind the sofa. As I write he is still hiding behind the sofa but thankfully he has done some other stuff in between. He seems to like Emma. He’ll go to her but only if she is on the floor. He also likes to smell her hair. This preference might be down to the fact that she has been feeding him because I couldn’t stand the smell of his food during my illness. But the one time I did put his bowl down for him he looked up at me and ran away.
I can only conclude that Mowinkel has a problem with disability. The only time he has ever come anywhere near me until today is when I have been sat on the sofa, away from my chair. Even then he couldn’t walk past me on the back of the sofa without drooling on me from a great height. Who would have thought I’d need an umbrella to sit on my own sofa watching Only Connect. That’s the best quiz show on telly isn’t it? If only because it’s so bloody hard and because it is presented by Victoria Coren-Mitchell who is the funniest woman on television. But then if you are up against Miranda…..
If I get in my wheelchair Mowinkle stares at me intently and if I move he runs away. If he is eating in the kitchen and I go in there he leaves abruptly. He has a real problem with the way I move around the house, but at least he is honest and open enough to admit it. That’s half the battle with overcoming these things, isn’t it? I should send him on some sort of disability awareness course.
Back to Thursday. Not only did I experience an equipment failure I also managed to turn 40 years old that day. I have mixed feelings about this. It doesn’t seem much different from being 39 in all honesty, but then you sit and think that you were only 21 five minutes ago so what happened? It doesn’t help that work is making me feel particularly miserable at the moment but we can’t talk about that. Then there is another part of me that wants to celebrate because firstly that will involve seeing my friends and drinking lots of beer, but secondly because it is something of an achievement to reach 40 when you have kidneys like mashed potatoes. There’s a distinct feeling of victory at having not let the bastards get me yet. That may sound negative, but I have seen far more of my friends with similar disabilities to mine leave this world than is comfortable for anyone. This life shit is a dangerous business and so my main reflection upon reaching 40 is that I’m sick of the fact that for eight hours of every day five days a week I bloody hate it. Something has to change. I should start by refusing point blank to get stressed by it, but that is much easier to say than it is to do. I realise I am not alone in feeling like this by the way, but turning 40 makes you think. Like I said, dangerous…
To celebrate on the night I just went out for a meal with Emma, my mum and dad, Helen and Patrick. Joe is 16 now and so understandably has a myriad of better things to do than visit his local Flaming Grill. My mum told a story about how she got an email advising her about re-training to be a plumber. She’s not that far away from retiring but perhaps it is one of Jeremy Hunt’s new policies aimed at getting people to work harder. Did you see that in the news? If I were a doctor in particular I would refuse to treat Jeremy Hunt if he came into my hospital with his appendage stuck inside a farmyard animal. Or I’d separate them using a chainsaw. Years from now, Jeremy Hunt will pass into the lexicon as a valid and accepted form of rhyming slang. If it hasn’t already.
The final act of a mixed but mostly turgid week was when Emma went outside to the car this morning only to find that someone had taken the glass out of the passenger side wing mirror. Not the wing mirror itself, just the glass. We have had this new car for three weeks and already it has been violated by some screv with a steady hand and light fingers. My world was rocked when Motability presented me with a £250 cheque for keeping my last car in good condition (imagine? LOL, as the cool kids say) but life giveth and it taketh away. A new piece of glass for the wing mirror will cost £46 to be fitted and this is the best bit…they do not have any in stock. So I have to rock up there on Monday morning at 9.00 and see if they have arrived after they were ordered today. If not I am either leaving my car there and getting on the bone shaker to work, or I am driving to Liverpool deficient in the wing mirror department to the tune of one.
The girl was very polite on the phone though.
Before this small oversight I became the owner, or at least joint owner, of a cat. His name is Mowinkle (I think that is how you spell it but I very much doubt whether you can prove otherwise in any case) and he is three and a half years old. He is named after a Norwegian skier. I don’t even remember her first name but Emma and I were watching the skiing during the Winter Olympics in Sochi last year when she came gliding into view with her name emblazoned on the screen. And then I said, sarcastically as I say everything else sarcastically like that character Robert Newman used to do on the telly, that Mowinkle would be a good name for a cat. We were always getting a cat after we had finished the rebuild of the bathroom and extension this summer, so the name stuck and now he is stuck with it too. He doesn’t seem to mind. He doesn’t seem to know.
I haven’t exactly bonded with him yet. He spent all of his first day with us hiding behind the sofa. As I write he is still hiding behind the sofa but thankfully he has done some other stuff in between. He seems to like Emma. He’ll go to her but only if she is on the floor. He also likes to smell her hair. This preference might be down to the fact that she has been feeding him because I couldn’t stand the smell of his food during my illness. But the one time I did put his bowl down for him he looked up at me and ran away.
I can only conclude that Mowinkel has a problem with disability. The only time he has ever come anywhere near me until today is when I have been sat on the sofa, away from my chair. Even then he couldn’t walk past me on the back of the sofa without drooling on me from a great height. Who would have thought I’d need an umbrella to sit on my own sofa watching Only Connect. That’s the best quiz show on telly isn’t it? If only because it’s so bloody hard and because it is presented by Victoria Coren-Mitchell who is the funniest woman on television. But then if you are up against Miranda…..
If I get in my wheelchair Mowinkle stares at me intently and if I move he runs away. If he is eating in the kitchen and I go in there he leaves abruptly. He has a real problem with the way I move around the house, but at least he is honest and open enough to admit it. That’s half the battle with overcoming these things, isn’t it? I should send him on some sort of disability awareness course.
Back to Thursday. Not only did I experience an equipment failure I also managed to turn 40 years old that day. I have mixed feelings about this. It doesn’t seem much different from being 39 in all honesty, but then you sit and think that you were only 21 five minutes ago so what happened? It doesn’t help that work is making me feel particularly miserable at the moment but we can’t talk about that. Then there is another part of me that wants to celebrate because firstly that will involve seeing my friends and drinking lots of beer, but secondly because it is something of an achievement to reach 40 when you have kidneys like mashed potatoes. There’s a distinct feeling of victory at having not let the bastards get me yet. That may sound negative, but I have seen far more of my friends with similar disabilities to mine leave this world than is comfortable for anyone. This life shit is a dangerous business and so my main reflection upon reaching 40 is that I’m sick of the fact that for eight hours of every day five days a week I bloody hate it. Something has to change. I should start by refusing point blank to get stressed by it, but that is much easier to say than it is to do. I realise I am not alone in feeling like this by the way, but turning 40 makes you think. Like I said, dangerous…
To celebrate on the night I just went out for a meal with Emma, my mum and dad, Helen and Patrick. Joe is 16 now and so understandably has a myriad of better things to do than visit his local Flaming Grill. My mum told a story about how she got an email advising her about re-training to be a plumber. She’s not that far away from retiring but perhaps it is one of Jeremy Hunt’s new policies aimed at getting people to work harder. Did you see that in the news? If I were a doctor in particular I would refuse to treat Jeremy Hunt if he came into my hospital with his appendage stuck inside a farmyard animal. Or I’d separate them using a chainsaw. Years from now, Jeremy Hunt will pass into the lexicon as a valid and accepted form of rhyming slang. If it hasn’t already.
The final act of a mixed but mostly turgid week was when Emma went outside to the car this morning only to find that someone had taken the glass out of the passenger side wing mirror. Not the wing mirror itself, just the glass. We have had this new car for three weeks and already it has been violated by some screv with a steady hand and light fingers. My world was rocked when Motability presented me with a £250 cheque for keeping my last car in good condition (imagine? LOL, as the cool kids say) but life giveth and it taketh away. A new piece of glass for the wing mirror will cost £46 to be fitted and this is the best bit…they do not have any in stock. So I have to rock up there on Monday morning at 9.00 and see if they have arrived after they were ordered today. If not I am either leaving my car there and getting on the bone shaker to work, or I am driving to Liverpool deficient in the wing mirror department to the tune of one.
The girl was very polite on the phone though.
Wednesday, 26 August 2015
Shouting Into The Void - Goodbye Facebook
I deleted my Facebook account today. Or should I say I ‘deactivated’ it. It doesn’t let you just delete it. It’s like trying to leave Reader’s Digest used to be or, for a more modern update, trying to get out of LoveFilm or Netflix. Before you are released you get asked whether or not you are sure at least three times, and then you are asked to give a reason for your exit. You are given a list of possible reasons for leaving and are forced to choose one. It’s like trying to get a divorce and having to attend marriage guidance counselling to ‘be sure’. Or at least I imagine that’s what divorce is like. I wouldn’t bloody know. Anyway, If none apply and you just tick ‘other’, you are then compelled to explain exactly what you mean by ‘other’. People have left the military during times of raging conflict with less scrutiny than is placed on you by Zuckerberg if you have the temerity to no longer take part in his world domination project. In the end I declared that I no longer find Facebook useful, which is true but not exactly the main reason why I left Facebook. After all, it has never been particularly useful.
I left Facebook because of people. Me included. I’m sick of them. I’m sick of myself. Sick of shouting into the void at nobody. Time was when I could write a status and at least elicit a response, make someone laugh or start a debate. Not now. Now there is a deathly, whispered silence greeting my every inane wittering. Which is probably justified. I’m not complaining about that. I’ve alienated a lot of people through Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard. I lost one reader because I expressed the opinion that Disability Awareness Day is a rotten pile of bullshit because disability awareness should be every day and become second nature to people. Shouting about it for one day of the year does fuck all. He didn’t agree and I haven’t heard from him since. Probably never will. Other than that it has been mostly just religious types and people who like rugby union and Karl Pilkington who have been offended, but that’s quite a large portion of the population. Oh and the able bodied. Nobody seems to have caught on to the fact that Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard’s liberal use of the phrase ‘able bodied bastards’ is actually a brilliant satire on modern society.
But I’m not arguing that people should want to read my shit. It’s just that frankly I would rather save myself the bother if I know that they don’t. Lately I had been using it just to post these blogs and the pieces I do for redvee but even that was beginning to get futile. I must have been down to about three interested parties through Facebook, none of whom were me and all of whom were probably only reading out of a muddled mixture of loyalty and habit. Twitter is a much better barometer of where you are with your writing, and much more rewarding with it. I have much more interest in my work there and the vast majority of it comes from people who have never even met me. These are the true judges of your work. All bias is removed and nobody is afraid to tell you that you are a bellend if you write something stupid. You get a lot more out of your work that way and you will develop better as a result.
Back to Facebook, and contrast my interaction with that of a former acquaintance of mine who won a Paralympic gold medal in London in 2012. Shortly after his victory he posted on Facebook that he was going outside for a walk and received 592 ‘likes’ for his troubles. Now life isn’t all about likes but there comes a point where you don’t want to spend time mulling over a potentially amusing status which will be ritually ignored in favour of the mundane details of a minor celebrity’s gentle exercise plans. There seems to be an imbalance there somewhere. Nowhere is this more evident than when people post information about their child’s latest bowel movement. You would think that nobody but the proud parents would be interested. Everyone you talk to says they are not interested in ‘baby bores’ yet every post of this kind is littered with responses, ‘likes’ and gushing praise for the individual’s ability to pro-create. You should have to pass stringent tests to be able to have children, but the fact that any old gobshite can still do it doesn’t stop those around them from treating it like a never before seen miracle.
Yet you don’t need to have children to bore the arse off everyone or to do enough to persuade me to fold in my Facebook cards. My last timeline before I zapped Facebook into the wilderness was chock full of what are irritatingly called memes. I don’t even know how you fucking pronounce that, but what I do know is that it usually consists of some drippy truism which the poster has no hope of actually adhering to due to their basic humanity. They’re all about love and honesty and how good people do this and good people don’t do that. Who the fuck says what good people do or do not do? You could argue that good people don’t post pictures of tortured animals to ‘raise awareness’ while simultaneously doing fuck all about it, the net result of which is just to upset people who don’t want to see it on their timelines. You could argue that. You could. Why don’t these people get the fuck off Facebook and get involved in animal charities or put their hand in their pockets to help? Because posting a picture of something dreadful is much easier and is a very public badge of honour which shows that you care, you bloody saint you. Fucking stop it.
So anyway goodbye Facebook. I have enjoyed you, at times. Long ago. I just no longer feel the need to keep in touch with 250 people who don’t give two shits about me. That’s the honesty that Twitter has that you just simply do not. I know nobody on Twitter gives two shits about me and nobody on there ever said they did. I could prolong the agony and just have another cull, but there is only so many times that you can delete anyone you think would not talk to you if you met them on the street before you find yourself with only you, your mrs and your best mate on your friends list. And well….that would just be boring.
I left Facebook because of people. Me included. I’m sick of them. I’m sick of myself. Sick of shouting into the void at nobody. Time was when I could write a status and at least elicit a response, make someone laugh or start a debate. Not now. Now there is a deathly, whispered silence greeting my every inane wittering. Which is probably justified. I’m not complaining about that. I’ve alienated a lot of people through Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard. I lost one reader because I expressed the opinion that Disability Awareness Day is a rotten pile of bullshit because disability awareness should be every day and become second nature to people. Shouting about it for one day of the year does fuck all. He didn’t agree and I haven’t heard from him since. Probably never will. Other than that it has been mostly just religious types and people who like rugby union and Karl Pilkington who have been offended, but that’s quite a large portion of the population. Oh and the able bodied. Nobody seems to have caught on to the fact that Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard’s liberal use of the phrase ‘able bodied bastards’ is actually a brilliant satire on modern society.
But I’m not arguing that people should want to read my shit. It’s just that frankly I would rather save myself the bother if I know that they don’t. Lately I had been using it just to post these blogs and the pieces I do for redvee but even that was beginning to get futile. I must have been down to about three interested parties through Facebook, none of whom were me and all of whom were probably only reading out of a muddled mixture of loyalty and habit. Twitter is a much better barometer of where you are with your writing, and much more rewarding with it. I have much more interest in my work there and the vast majority of it comes from people who have never even met me. These are the true judges of your work. All bias is removed and nobody is afraid to tell you that you are a bellend if you write something stupid. You get a lot more out of your work that way and you will develop better as a result.
Back to Facebook, and contrast my interaction with that of a former acquaintance of mine who won a Paralympic gold medal in London in 2012. Shortly after his victory he posted on Facebook that he was going outside for a walk and received 592 ‘likes’ for his troubles. Now life isn’t all about likes but there comes a point where you don’t want to spend time mulling over a potentially amusing status which will be ritually ignored in favour of the mundane details of a minor celebrity’s gentle exercise plans. There seems to be an imbalance there somewhere. Nowhere is this more evident than when people post information about their child’s latest bowel movement. You would think that nobody but the proud parents would be interested. Everyone you talk to says they are not interested in ‘baby bores’ yet every post of this kind is littered with responses, ‘likes’ and gushing praise for the individual’s ability to pro-create. You should have to pass stringent tests to be able to have children, but the fact that any old gobshite can still do it doesn’t stop those around them from treating it like a never before seen miracle.
Yet you don’t need to have children to bore the arse off everyone or to do enough to persuade me to fold in my Facebook cards. My last timeline before I zapped Facebook into the wilderness was chock full of what are irritatingly called memes. I don’t even know how you fucking pronounce that, but what I do know is that it usually consists of some drippy truism which the poster has no hope of actually adhering to due to their basic humanity. They’re all about love and honesty and how good people do this and good people don’t do that. Who the fuck says what good people do or do not do? You could argue that good people don’t post pictures of tortured animals to ‘raise awareness’ while simultaneously doing fuck all about it, the net result of which is just to upset people who don’t want to see it on their timelines. You could argue that. You could. Why don’t these people get the fuck off Facebook and get involved in animal charities or put their hand in their pockets to help? Because posting a picture of something dreadful is much easier and is a very public badge of honour which shows that you care, you bloody saint you. Fucking stop it.
So anyway goodbye Facebook. I have enjoyed you, at times. Long ago. I just no longer feel the need to keep in touch with 250 people who don’t give two shits about me. That’s the honesty that Twitter has that you just simply do not. I know nobody on Twitter gives two shits about me and nobody on there ever said they did. I could prolong the agony and just have another cull, but there is only so many times that you can delete anyone you think would not talk to you if you met them on the street before you find yourself with only you, your mrs and your best mate on your friends list. And well….that would just be boring.
Tuesday, 21 July 2015
Amy Versus The Cinema-Going Public
Britain, I'd like a word with you. I say Britain, I mean anywhere where there might be people bored enough to be reading this on a Tuesday night. This involves you wherever you live. You're all equally bloody culpable.
I've just been to the cinema with my sister to see Amy, a film documentary about the late, great Amy Winehouse. Emma didn't want to go because she's not a fan but that's alright. I'm not here to foist my musical tastes upon everyone. We can't all drive around singing Joss Stone songs at 250 decibels. That would be stupid. I can understand that not everybody likes their drug-addled, deceased jazz singers as much as I do either. That's not my problem, my problem is this.
We never got to see Amy and it is your fault, Britain (and other parts this blog may reach and in which rabid commercialism takes precedence over genuine art). We arrived at Cineworld about 20 minutes before the scheduled start of the film only to be told, upon ordering the tickets, that Amy has been cancelled. A screen has broken. Oh how unlucky, right? On the very night I want to go to see Amy the screen upon which it is being shown is broken. What bad luck. Except it wasn't bad luck, it was bad taste. And you're responsible.
You see, the screen which broke was not the one scheduled to be showing Amy at 7.45 this evening. It was another one, but as a result of this they had to have a 'reshuffle' we were told. Amy was brutally and tastelessly sacrificed so that they could carry on showing moronic guff like Minions, fucking Ant-Man and the latest in a long line of absurd Arnie vehicles. It doesn't take a genius to work out that this is because these turgid titles make more money at the box office than Amy will. And that is because you, Britain and other parts this blog may reach and in which rabid commercialism takes precedence over genuine art, are more likely to spend your money on the latter than you are on Amy. Why would you want to watch a film about one of the greatest musical talents this country has ever produced when you can watch another twat in spandex showing off his bogus, trumped up super power? Or a band of annoying little yellow creatures who tried but failed to ruin the humour in Despicable Me. Or a wrinkly old grope-meister and Republican shooting up shit with Khaleesi by his side.
Not wishing to fly in the face of public opinion in too controversial a fashion I have kept quiet about this for a long time now but the truth is I am bored shitless with superhero films. What is it about our daily lives which forces us to lap up this dense wtfery so regularly? Put a group of caped bellends together in the same film and the country wets itself in anticipation. Even the idea of Ben Affleck in a batsuit has managed to get past the studio bosses who know all too well that they'll make millions out of it. There's no place for realism, even among an audience whom I assume stopped believing in men that could fly a long, long time ago. Often they will have retarded titles like Batman Versus Superman, Alien Versus Predator or A Big Sack Of Cash Versus Worthwhile Musical Endeavour. Are we so desperate for escapism that we want all semblance of reality removed from our cinema entertainment? I weep for a society that places special effects, explosions and dodgy masks above story telling and character. One in which acting is an afterthought and it is entirely possible, advisable even, to start your Hollywood career in the wrestling ring.
I suppose I should be glad that Amy is showing in my local cinema at all. It was scheduled for cinema release on July 3 but only hit Satan's Little Acre this past week. There was no room for it, no demand for it. No money in it. It is still not showing in either Widnes or Warrington, both of which we checked in a doomed attempt to avoid the evening becoming a complete write-off. Which to my mind, apart from being infuriating and a waste of my time and petrol and the ruination of what would have been a perfectly good evening, is one of the saddest things about the world we live in. If there was any justice people would be queuing around the corner to see documentary film making of this kind. Instead the man selling the tickets barely remembered that it was due on, much less that it had been cancelled. He actually had to refer to a sign on the kiosk desk.
Just like you reading this perhaps, nobody working in Cineworld seemed to care. When we asked a member of staff if they could guarantee that it would be shown tomorrow night at the scheduled time she could not confirm. All she could do was give us a direct line to the cinema so that we could ring ahead to check on their latest reshuffle. If the screen cannot be fixed by then it is reasonable to assume that it will be Amy that gets the boot again. And as much as I loathe the capitalist, commercialism behind this sort of decision I can't really blame them. They only exist to make money and I know this and don't expect any better of them.
It's you I blame.
I've just been to the cinema with my sister to see Amy, a film documentary about the late, great Amy Winehouse. Emma didn't want to go because she's not a fan but that's alright. I'm not here to foist my musical tastes upon everyone. We can't all drive around singing Joss Stone songs at 250 decibels. That would be stupid. I can understand that not everybody likes their drug-addled, deceased jazz singers as much as I do either. That's not my problem, my problem is this.
We never got to see Amy and it is your fault, Britain (and other parts this blog may reach and in which rabid commercialism takes precedence over genuine art). We arrived at Cineworld about 20 minutes before the scheduled start of the film only to be told, upon ordering the tickets, that Amy has been cancelled. A screen has broken. Oh how unlucky, right? On the very night I want to go to see Amy the screen upon which it is being shown is broken. What bad luck. Except it wasn't bad luck, it was bad taste. And you're responsible.
You see, the screen which broke was not the one scheduled to be showing Amy at 7.45 this evening. It was another one, but as a result of this they had to have a 'reshuffle' we were told. Amy was brutally and tastelessly sacrificed so that they could carry on showing moronic guff like Minions, fucking Ant-Man and the latest in a long line of absurd Arnie vehicles. It doesn't take a genius to work out that this is because these turgid titles make more money at the box office than Amy will. And that is because you, Britain and other parts this blog may reach and in which rabid commercialism takes precedence over genuine art, are more likely to spend your money on the latter than you are on Amy. Why would you want to watch a film about one of the greatest musical talents this country has ever produced when you can watch another twat in spandex showing off his bogus, trumped up super power? Or a band of annoying little yellow creatures who tried but failed to ruin the humour in Despicable Me. Or a wrinkly old grope-meister and Republican shooting up shit with Khaleesi by his side.
Not wishing to fly in the face of public opinion in too controversial a fashion I have kept quiet about this for a long time now but the truth is I am bored shitless with superhero films. What is it about our daily lives which forces us to lap up this dense wtfery so regularly? Put a group of caped bellends together in the same film and the country wets itself in anticipation. Even the idea of Ben Affleck in a batsuit has managed to get past the studio bosses who know all too well that they'll make millions out of it. There's no place for realism, even among an audience whom I assume stopped believing in men that could fly a long, long time ago. Often they will have retarded titles like Batman Versus Superman, Alien Versus Predator or A Big Sack Of Cash Versus Worthwhile Musical Endeavour. Are we so desperate for escapism that we want all semblance of reality removed from our cinema entertainment? I weep for a society that places special effects, explosions and dodgy masks above story telling and character. One in which acting is an afterthought and it is entirely possible, advisable even, to start your Hollywood career in the wrestling ring.
I suppose I should be glad that Amy is showing in my local cinema at all. It was scheduled for cinema release on July 3 but only hit Satan's Little Acre this past week. There was no room for it, no demand for it. No money in it. It is still not showing in either Widnes or Warrington, both of which we checked in a doomed attempt to avoid the evening becoming a complete write-off. Which to my mind, apart from being infuriating and a waste of my time and petrol and the ruination of what would have been a perfectly good evening, is one of the saddest things about the world we live in. If there was any justice people would be queuing around the corner to see documentary film making of this kind. Instead the man selling the tickets barely remembered that it was due on, much less that it had been cancelled. He actually had to refer to a sign on the kiosk desk.
Just like you reading this perhaps, nobody working in Cineworld seemed to care. When we asked a member of staff if they could guarantee that it would be shown tomorrow night at the scheduled time she could not confirm. All she could do was give us a direct line to the cinema so that we could ring ahead to check on their latest reshuffle. If the screen cannot be fixed by then it is reasonable to assume that it will be Amy that gets the boot again. And as much as I loathe the capitalist, commercialism behind this sort of decision I can't really blame them. They only exist to make money and I know this and don't expect any better of them.
It's you I blame.
Monday, 6 July 2015
The Ticket Saga Rumbles On
First the good news, because what follows does not contain very much of that. So here goes. I have tickets for the Challenge Cup semi-final between Saints and Leeds on July 31. In the North East corner, which is sort of near the Saints fans maybe. Or something.
So anyway you will remember how I was blatantly misled by the Saints website into believing that I, as a season ticket holder of our exalted and glorious club, would be able to purchase tickets for the game ahead of the general sale just like everyone else who has a season ticket? And then how I turned up to the stadium only to be told that my money was no good there (or words to that effect) and that I would have to contact the RFL. And you remember the ensuing, 1,000 word whinge about this incident?
Well I received a tweet from Saints telling me that they would look into it for me. All very generous, except that all they did was confirm what we already knew, which was that they were not able to sell them to me. They haven’t quite explained why the information on their website was incorrect although I suspect they are not arguing the point. Something has made them feel guilty enough to contact me following my earlier blog.
The best (or worst) part of all of this preamble to actually getting the tickets was the gentleman on Facebook who was arguing with me hammer and tongs about whether I should have the right to buy tickets through the club first because of my season ticket holder status. He had a disabled daughter, he told me, and he has won awards for championing the rights of disabled people and it was his view that it is entirely fair and sensible that wheelchair users should contact the RFL. The argument seems to be that there are only a limited number of spaces and so…..and so what? There are only a limited number of spaces for everyone and that has been the case at sports events probably since the Taylor report made stadia more safe. If clubs can’t sell tickets to wheelchair users then how can they reasonably suggest that they can sell them to anyone? However many you have available, why would you not split that figure between the clubs and allow the respective season ticket holders first dibs, as you do with non-disabled tickets? The reasons why this cannot happen are unknown and my head hurts just thinking about it frankly. Incidentally I’m sure the gentleman on Facebook has done an awful lot for disability in this country but you know, Ron Atkinson did an awful lot for black footballers in Britain and still got the sack for being a racist. Like Lee Harvey Oswald, sometimes we are judged on our one-offs.
And so to today’s absurd correspondence with the RFL over the actual tickets. The semi-final is 25 days away as I write and so there was no other way I was going to get them than to comply with their discriminatory policy and call the ticket line. When I did, and made the booking, I asked the customer service operator why it was the RFL’s policy not to allow wheelchair users to buy tickets for these events through their clubs in the same way that non wheelchair users do. Of course this is an unfair question. Part of my work involves dealing with telephone enquiries and I am all too aware that it is not his decision, and that actually it is just his misfortune to be employed to deal with angry people who are questioning shit decisions made higher up. I know how that feels and I explained to him that I was not blaming him, I just wanted to see if he knew what the reason was for the bizarre policy.
He actually went away to double check it. Double check it? Fuck. Brilliantly, the answer to this now well-worn riddle is that only the RFL know the stadia that are being used to host the events and so the clubs would not have a very good grasp on where the best places would be to sit wheelchair users. Yes, it is impossible in the view of the RFL to train staff employed by a rugby league club to be able to tell wheelchair using customers where the accessible seating might be in another team’s stadium, and to let them make an informed choice on buying tickets based on that information. Forgive me….how do they know where the best place is to sit for non-disabled people? A stadium plan you say? On a bit of paper? Using things like colours, numbers and letters to identify sections of the ground. Fuck off. Can’t be done.
There’s more, as a famous and utterly crap Irish comedian of the 80’s used to say. The RFL’s man had not asked me if I was a season ticket holder before he sold me the tickets. When I pointed this out he adopted what can only be described as the stance of a rabbit caught in a very bright set of headlights, fumbling his words like Mumbles from Dick Tracey and then admitting that actually, it’s a fair cop, having a season ticket has no bearing on whether you get a ticket or not for an RFL event if you are a wheelchair user. Non-disabled season ticket holders at Saints have this week to secure their tickets before they go on general sale to the rest of you next week. I don’t. Wheelchair accessible tickets have been available from the RFL to any Thomas, Richard or Harold presumably since the dates and venues of the semi-finals were announced. It’s an open and shut case. As clear a case of discrimination as having separate shops for selling bread to black people and white people. Everyone gets their bread, but it doesn’t make it right, does it? And isn’t there a high risk that it might not be the bread they wanted?
Does anyone care except those of us affected? You’d be surprised at how many people do not. One person on Facebook accused me of thinking that the world owed me a living which is quite laughable. He went strangely quiet when I politely explained to him that actually I work Monday to Friday the same as everyone else and pay for a season ticket the same as everyone else. Despite some strides having been made in the field of equality, it is clear that some people still assume that to be disabled is to sit around on your ‘arris all day claiming benefit and trawling through social media so you can scream when something goes against you. There may be disabled people like that, in fact I can assure you that there are, but I’m not one of them and I resent the implication that I am. I don’t sit behind a boring desk in a boring office all day to be disrespected by clowns with pre-conceived ideas from 1964.
It’s very likely that I won’t be able to change this policy and the attitudes which perpetuate it with any number of angry phone calls, social media rants or even eloquent blogs. But I’m buggered if I am going to put up with it quietly.
So anyway you will remember how I was blatantly misled by the Saints website into believing that I, as a season ticket holder of our exalted and glorious club, would be able to purchase tickets for the game ahead of the general sale just like everyone else who has a season ticket? And then how I turned up to the stadium only to be told that my money was no good there (or words to that effect) and that I would have to contact the RFL. And you remember the ensuing, 1,000 word whinge about this incident?
Well I received a tweet from Saints telling me that they would look into it for me. All very generous, except that all they did was confirm what we already knew, which was that they were not able to sell them to me. They haven’t quite explained why the information on their website was incorrect although I suspect they are not arguing the point. Something has made them feel guilty enough to contact me following my earlier blog.
The best (or worst) part of all of this preamble to actually getting the tickets was the gentleman on Facebook who was arguing with me hammer and tongs about whether I should have the right to buy tickets through the club first because of my season ticket holder status. He had a disabled daughter, he told me, and he has won awards for championing the rights of disabled people and it was his view that it is entirely fair and sensible that wheelchair users should contact the RFL. The argument seems to be that there are only a limited number of spaces and so…..and so what? There are only a limited number of spaces for everyone and that has been the case at sports events probably since the Taylor report made stadia more safe. If clubs can’t sell tickets to wheelchair users then how can they reasonably suggest that they can sell them to anyone? However many you have available, why would you not split that figure between the clubs and allow the respective season ticket holders first dibs, as you do with non-disabled tickets? The reasons why this cannot happen are unknown and my head hurts just thinking about it frankly. Incidentally I’m sure the gentleman on Facebook has done an awful lot for disability in this country but you know, Ron Atkinson did an awful lot for black footballers in Britain and still got the sack for being a racist. Like Lee Harvey Oswald, sometimes we are judged on our one-offs.
And so to today’s absurd correspondence with the RFL over the actual tickets. The semi-final is 25 days away as I write and so there was no other way I was going to get them than to comply with their discriminatory policy and call the ticket line. When I did, and made the booking, I asked the customer service operator why it was the RFL’s policy not to allow wheelchair users to buy tickets for these events through their clubs in the same way that non wheelchair users do. Of course this is an unfair question. Part of my work involves dealing with telephone enquiries and I am all too aware that it is not his decision, and that actually it is just his misfortune to be employed to deal with angry people who are questioning shit decisions made higher up. I know how that feels and I explained to him that I was not blaming him, I just wanted to see if he knew what the reason was for the bizarre policy.
He actually went away to double check it. Double check it? Fuck. Brilliantly, the answer to this now well-worn riddle is that only the RFL know the stadia that are being used to host the events and so the clubs would not have a very good grasp on where the best places would be to sit wheelchair users. Yes, it is impossible in the view of the RFL to train staff employed by a rugby league club to be able to tell wheelchair using customers where the accessible seating might be in another team’s stadium, and to let them make an informed choice on buying tickets based on that information. Forgive me….how do they know where the best place is to sit for non-disabled people? A stadium plan you say? On a bit of paper? Using things like colours, numbers and letters to identify sections of the ground. Fuck off. Can’t be done.
There’s more, as a famous and utterly crap Irish comedian of the 80’s used to say. The RFL’s man had not asked me if I was a season ticket holder before he sold me the tickets. When I pointed this out he adopted what can only be described as the stance of a rabbit caught in a very bright set of headlights, fumbling his words like Mumbles from Dick Tracey and then admitting that actually, it’s a fair cop, having a season ticket has no bearing on whether you get a ticket or not for an RFL event if you are a wheelchair user. Non-disabled season ticket holders at Saints have this week to secure their tickets before they go on general sale to the rest of you next week. I don’t. Wheelchair accessible tickets have been available from the RFL to any Thomas, Richard or Harold presumably since the dates and venues of the semi-finals were announced. It’s an open and shut case. As clear a case of discrimination as having separate shops for selling bread to black people and white people. Everyone gets their bread, but it doesn’t make it right, does it? And isn’t there a high risk that it might not be the bread they wanted?
Does anyone care except those of us affected? You’d be surprised at how many people do not. One person on Facebook accused me of thinking that the world owed me a living which is quite laughable. He went strangely quiet when I politely explained to him that actually I work Monday to Friday the same as everyone else and pay for a season ticket the same as everyone else. Despite some strides having been made in the field of equality, it is clear that some people still assume that to be disabled is to sit around on your ‘arris all day claiming benefit and trawling through social media so you can scream when something goes against you. There may be disabled people like that, in fact I can assure you that there are, but I’m not one of them and I resent the implication that I am. I don’t sit behind a boring desk in a boring office all day to be disrespected by clowns with pre-conceived ideas from 1964.
It’s very likely that I won’t be able to change this policy and the attitudes which perpetuate it with any number of angry phone calls, social media rants or even eloquent blogs. But I’m buggered if I am going to put up with it quietly.
Saturday, 4 July 2015
Piss Off Saints....Just Piss Off
I'm characteristically fuming. At Saints. And not about last night's shambolic performance at Leeds. That was bad enough. Suffering through the ineptitude of Matty Dawson and Kyle Amor was enough to drive anyone over the edge, and when you add that to the embarrassing lack of effort on show from the likes of Luke Walsh you could easily start tearing up your season ticket before you have had a chance to think about it properly.
But no, the reason for my unfettered rage at our champion and completely tin-pot organisation is their policy on selling wheelchair accessible tickets for the Challenge Cup semi-final against Leeds at Warrington at the end of the month. I am a season ticket holder and have been since the club moved to Langtree Park in 2012. I'm pretty keen on all things Saints and rugby league. I also work very hard to promote both the club and the game by writing for an independent Saints website at least twice a week. So it was with some anticipation that I was checking the club's website daily this week for ticket information for the semi final against the Rhinos. Now keeping in mind that the club could not be contacted by phone this week as tickets were only available in person at the ticket office, this is what is written on the website in regards to ticket information for disabled supporters;
"Disabled (Wheelchair and Ambulant) are entitled to receive a complimentary carer's ticket upon production of valid ID. Disabled tickets are charged depending on age."
Now let's ignore the offensive and boring implication that all disabled fans need a carer, and focus on what that statement tells us about how to go about acquiring wheelchair accessible tickets. Does it say that they are not available from the club and that you should contact the RFL? Does it bollocks. And if it did say that, would it then explain why this should be? Why are disabled season ticket holders not afforded the same pre-sale rights as their able bodied counterparts? Do the powers that be at the clubs and at the RFL really consider it that much of a stretch to believe that a disabled season ticket holder would bother themselves to travel 20 minutes down the road for one of the biggest games of the season? If I didn't know better I would suggest that some suit full of shite at the RFL and Saints have looked at the DDA over a brew, decided what they need to do to comply with it to the bare minimum and gone out for a round of golf! It won't matter, they probably thought, nobody is actually going to try to turn up at the ticket office and attempt to buy a ticket. Fuck, why would they do that?
Anyone who has stuck by this column long enough may remember that something similar happened to me in my quest to get tickets for the Grand Final in October. The club threw it's hands up in the air and denied any responsibility for the sale of wheelchair accessible tickets and just directed me to the RFL. But at least they did so over the phone on that occasion. When I phoned the RFL they informed me that the only tickets available were in a 'neutral' area of the Old Trafford stadium. Quite when the definition of 'neutral' became 'right in the middle of the Wiganers' I'm not sure. We made the best of it and had an amusing exchange with a Wigan Walker near the end of the game, but if I'm being brutally honest I would rather have been in among the Saints fans on such a great day. I was denied this right despite being a season ticket holder and between them, the RFL and Saints seem to be trying to ensure that I am denied that right again for the Challenge Cup semi-final this year.
It's a shameful, shambolic encore to the tripe served up on the field by the team at Headingley last night.
But no, the reason for my unfettered rage at our champion and completely tin-pot organisation is their policy on selling wheelchair accessible tickets for the Challenge Cup semi-final against Leeds at Warrington at the end of the month. I am a season ticket holder and have been since the club moved to Langtree Park in 2012. I'm pretty keen on all things Saints and rugby league. I also work very hard to promote both the club and the game by writing for an independent Saints website at least twice a week. So it was with some anticipation that I was checking the club's website daily this week for ticket information for the semi final against the Rhinos. Now keeping in mind that the club could not be contacted by phone this week as tickets were only available in person at the ticket office, this is what is written on the website in regards to ticket information for disabled supporters;
"Disabled (Wheelchair and Ambulant) are entitled to receive a complimentary carer's ticket upon production of valid ID. Disabled tickets are charged depending on age."
Now let's ignore the offensive and boring implication that all disabled fans need a carer, and focus on what that statement tells us about how to go about acquiring wheelchair accessible tickets. Does it say that they are not available from the club and that you should contact the RFL? Does it bollocks. And if it did say that, would it then explain why this should be? Why are disabled season ticket holders not afforded the same pre-sale rights as their able bodied counterparts? Do the powers that be at the clubs and at the RFL really consider it that much of a stretch to believe that a disabled season ticket holder would bother themselves to travel 20 minutes down the road for one of the biggest games of the season? If I didn't know better I would suggest that some suit full of shite at the RFL and Saints have looked at the DDA over a brew, decided what they need to do to comply with it to the bare minimum and gone out for a round of golf! It won't matter, they probably thought, nobody is actually going to try to turn up at the ticket office and attempt to buy a ticket. Fuck, why would they do that?
Anyone who has stuck by this column long enough may remember that something similar happened to me in my quest to get tickets for the Grand Final in October. The club threw it's hands up in the air and denied any responsibility for the sale of wheelchair accessible tickets and just directed me to the RFL. But at least they did so over the phone on that occasion. When I phoned the RFL they informed me that the only tickets available were in a 'neutral' area of the Old Trafford stadium. Quite when the definition of 'neutral' became 'right in the middle of the Wiganers' I'm not sure. We made the best of it and had an amusing exchange with a Wigan Walker near the end of the game, but if I'm being brutally honest I would rather have been in among the Saints fans on such a great day. I was denied this right despite being a season ticket holder and between them, the RFL and Saints seem to be trying to ensure that I am denied that right again for the Challenge Cup semi-final this year.
It's a shameful, shambolic encore to the tripe served up on the field by the team at Headingley last night.
Wednesday, 24 June 2015
Our Number One
It feels a bit like a death in the family. Not a shocking, sudden death in the family that might be the result of a grotesque accident or massive and sudden organ failure. More like the death of an ageing relative who had been suffering from ill health for years but who you never thought would actually pass on in to the next world. Paul Wellens has announced his retirement from professional rugby league with immediate effect.
It follows months of uncertainty about his future as a result of a serious hip injury to which he finally succumbed during a 12-4 defeat at Wigan on Good Friday. That he took to that field that day at all said everything about this modern great of a man and gem of a player. He was in no fit state really, but with seven or eight team-mates similarly crocked his home town club, the only club he ever played for in a 17-year career, needed him badly. It was just one example of how Paul Wellens put St.Helens Rugby Football Club and its fans before his own interests.
Yet amid all the glowing tributes on social media and on the forums which seem to focus on his commitment, bravery and inspirational leadership qualities, few have done justice to the standard of his performances. Wellens was easily the best British fullback of his generation and quite possibly the best in either hemisphere during that time. Those of us who wrote him off as a halfback suggesting he was too slow were left looking very silly indeed and with no option but to just marvel at his brilliance from the fullback position. The positional switch was a masterstroke from Ian Millward and changed the course of Wellens' career forever. He never did get much quicker, but any coach who thought this might be a good enough reason to target him with raking territorial kicks downfield soon discovered that having the first defender bring Wellens to a halt was an impossible dream. He was too deceptively elusive and he could make the best of defenders look very average indeed. Go aerial against Wellens and you got the ultimate in bomb disposal, a man so calm under pressure that he often gave the impression that opponents on the field were hardly a factor in his thinking. A minor inconvenience only slightly complicating the task in hand. Just go up and catch the ball, no fuss. Everything from the timing of his leap to his handling technique was just about perfect. If you were at a game where you saw him drop a high ball you got a t-shirt printed as a memento.
Wellens was an excellent support player from fullback also. He scored over 230 tries during his career, 199 of which came in Super League. He used that same deception and elusiveness employed when returning kicks to find gaps in the league’s tightest defences close to the line, and was always on the shoulder of the man in possession when the opposition’s defensive line was broken. In some ways it is cruel that he has been denied the opportunity to get that 200th try, and the five appearances he needed to hit 500 for his boyhood club. Yet these are minor irritations in a career which has taken in a record 10 Grand Final appearances, 5 Super League title wins (including winning the Harry Sunderland Trophy for Man Of The Match in the 2006 final against Hull FC), 5 Challenge Cup wins (winning the Lance Todd Trophy as Man Of The Match in both 2007 and 2008) and 2 World Club Championship titles. There are many, many rugby league clubs who have not and will never win that amount of silverware in their entire histories. He was also named Man Of Steel in 2006, a year in which Saints won everything in their path if you include the World Club Challenge which was played early in 2007.
Wellens’ leadership qualities earned him a chance at the club captaincy in 2011 when he was appointed joint skipper alongside James Graham. It was a very difficult time to be handed the role with greats like Keiron Cunningham, Sean Long and Paul Sculthorpe recently departing the playing scene. All of that added to the temporary move to Widnes that season as Langtree Park had its finishing touches applied meant that Wellens was charged with helping to lead the team through a transitional period. Wellens still managed to help his team to the Grand Final that year, losing narrowly to a Leeds Rhinos side which had won three of the previous four Grand Finals, all against Saints who had managed to stay competitive almost despite themselves and the events conspiring against them. By the time Graham headed to Canterbury in the NRL Wellens was left to lead the team in his own right as they entered a new era in a new home in 2012. The first two seasons there continued to be turbulent on the field but as the team improved under Nathan Brown, so Wellens' influence on it grew and grew. His performance (ironically in the halves in the midst of yet another injury crisis) in the 14-6 Grand Final success over Wigan last year was heroic, and his emotional, exhausted reaction to it remains an iconic image for the thousands who were at Old Trafford that night or who saw it on the television.
If we are talking about Wellens the man aswell as Wellens the rugby league player, then perhaps the greatest compliment you can pay him comes from the reaction to his retirement from outside the Saints bubble. Fans of other clubs on social media have been unanimous in their praise and respect for one of the modern era’s greatest players, while former team-mates and opponents alike have followed suit in paying tribute to his achievements and wishing him the best of luck as he enters a new chapter in his life. BBC Sport are reporting that he has already been welcomed on to the Saints coaching staff alongside former team-mates Cunningham, Long and Ade Gardner. If so it is a shrewd if rather obvious move by the club’s hierarchy. Players with Wellens’ level of game intelligence seem the best placed to make the transition from player to coach and if he can pass on half of what he knows to the next generation then the club will be developing home-grown stars for years to come.
Paul Wellens should never have to buy another pint in his home town again. So many of us are indebted to him for the great entertainment, the glory and the wonderful memories that he has provided us with for more than a decade and a half. Wello, we salute you…
It follows months of uncertainty about his future as a result of a serious hip injury to which he finally succumbed during a 12-4 defeat at Wigan on Good Friday. That he took to that field that day at all said everything about this modern great of a man and gem of a player. He was in no fit state really, but with seven or eight team-mates similarly crocked his home town club, the only club he ever played for in a 17-year career, needed him badly. It was just one example of how Paul Wellens put St.Helens Rugby Football Club and its fans before his own interests.
Yet amid all the glowing tributes on social media and on the forums which seem to focus on his commitment, bravery and inspirational leadership qualities, few have done justice to the standard of his performances. Wellens was easily the best British fullback of his generation and quite possibly the best in either hemisphere during that time. Those of us who wrote him off as a halfback suggesting he was too slow were left looking very silly indeed and with no option but to just marvel at his brilliance from the fullback position. The positional switch was a masterstroke from Ian Millward and changed the course of Wellens' career forever. He never did get much quicker, but any coach who thought this might be a good enough reason to target him with raking territorial kicks downfield soon discovered that having the first defender bring Wellens to a halt was an impossible dream. He was too deceptively elusive and he could make the best of defenders look very average indeed. Go aerial against Wellens and you got the ultimate in bomb disposal, a man so calm under pressure that he often gave the impression that opponents on the field were hardly a factor in his thinking. A minor inconvenience only slightly complicating the task in hand. Just go up and catch the ball, no fuss. Everything from the timing of his leap to his handling technique was just about perfect. If you were at a game where you saw him drop a high ball you got a t-shirt printed as a memento.
Wellens was an excellent support player from fullback also. He scored over 230 tries during his career, 199 of which came in Super League. He used that same deception and elusiveness employed when returning kicks to find gaps in the league’s tightest defences close to the line, and was always on the shoulder of the man in possession when the opposition’s defensive line was broken. In some ways it is cruel that he has been denied the opportunity to get that 200th try, and the five appearances he needed to hit 500 for his boyhood club. Yet these are minor irritations in a career which has taken in a record 10 Grand Final appearances, 5 Super League title wins (including winning the Harry Sunderland Trophy for Man Of The Match in the 2006 final against Hull FC), 5 Challenge Cup wins (winning the Lance Todd Trophy as Man Of The Match in both 2007 and 2008) and 2 World Club Championship titles. There are many, many rugby league clubs who have not and will never win that amount of silverware in their entire histories. He was also named Man Of Steel in 2006, a year in which Saints won everything in their path if you include the World Club Challenge which was played early in 2007.
Wellens’ leadership qualities earned him a chance at the club captaincy in 2011 when he was appointed joint skipper alongside James Graham. It was a very difficult time to be handed the role with greats like Keiron Cunningham, Sean Long and Paul Sculthorpe recently departing the playing scene. All of that added to the temporary move to Widnes that season as Langtree Park had its finishing touches applied meant that Wellens was charged with helping to lead the team through a transitional period. Wellens still managed to help his team to the Grand Final that year, losing narrowly to a Leeds Rhinos side which had won three of the previous four Grand Finals, all against Saints who had managed to stay competitive almost despite themselves and the events conspiring against them. By the time Graham headed to Canterbury in the NRL Wellens was left to lead the team in his own right as they entered a new era in a new home in 2012. The first two seasons there continued to be turbulent on the field but as the team improved under Nathan Brown, so Wellens' influence on it grew and grew. His performance (ironically in the halves in the midst of yet another injury crisis) in the 14-6 Grand Final success over Wigan last year was heroic, and his emotional, exhausted reaction to it remains an iconic image for the thousands who were at Old Trafford that night or who saw it on the television.
If we are talking about Wellens the man aswell as Wellens the rugby league player, then perhaps the greatest compliment you can pay him comes from the reaction to his retirement from outside the Saints bubble. Fans of other clubs on social media have been unanimous in their praise and respect for one of the modern era’s greatest players, while former team-mates and opponents alike have followed suit in paying tribute to his achievements and wishing him the best of luck as he enters a new chapter in his life. BBC Sport are reporting that he has already been welcomed on to the Saints coaching staff alongside former team-mates Cunningham, Long and Ade Gardner. If so it is a shrewd if rather obvious move by the club’s hierarchy. Players with Wellens’ level of game intelligence seem the best placed to make the transition from player to coach and if he can pass on half of what he knows to the next generation then the club will be developing home-grown stars for years to come.
Paul Wellens should never have to buy another pint in his home town again. So many of us are indebted to him for the great entertainment, the glory and the wonderful memories that he has provided us with for more than a decade and a half. Wello, we salute you…
Tuesday, 23 June 2015
5 Talking Points From Saints' Loss To Castleford Tigers
5 Talking Points From Saints’ Loss At Castleford Tigers
If You Live By The Sword……
Ben Roberts’ last gasp drop-goal was a perfectly wretched way for Saints to lose a match they had been in full control of. Particularly in view of the fact that they had a scrum feed deep inside the Tigers’ half of the field with barely a minute and a half on the clock. You could argue that a professional rugby league team should never lose a game from that position. But a sneaky glance into the history, indeed the very DNA of Saints reveals that they have been doing exactly this sort of thing to others for years. Who can forget Sean Long’s winning one-pointer in the 2002 Grand Final against Bradford Bulls, or a similar effort which put paid to Warrington’s hopes of ending their losing streak against Saints in Ian Millward’s last game in charge? Warrington were a serial victim as Saints mastered the art of winning games that they had barely bothered to turn up for. It was almost a sport within a sport. The Castleford defeat just shows that if you live by the sword you are occasionally going to die by it. Best get it out of the way now than have it happen when the pots are on offer in August and October. So let’s cheer up just a little bit, eh?
The Humanity Of James Roby
Not to labour a point, but Keiron Cunningham has declared twice recently that in his opinion James Roby is a better hooker than Cunningham himself used to be. Now this might be false modesty on the part of the head coach. He’s probably not going to come out after a game and say ‘yeah, he’s alright but have you seen who’s on that statue outside the stadium?’ However, it is nevertheless an indication of just how brilliant Roby is that a legend such as Cunningham is prepared to concede ground even if it is politeness combined perhaps with a desire to boost his star man’s confidence. Whatever the truth of the Cunningham-Roby debate there is no doubting that the latter is a freak of a player in his own right. All of which makes it all the more shocking to note that the normally robotic Roby broke down a little at The Jungle. His 40-20 attempt sailed out on the full at a crucial time for Saints, and the winning drop-goal was only made possible after Roby failed to pick the ball up cleanly from the base of the scrum. In mitigation he did have Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook doing his level best to confuse the situation by plodding around clumsily in the vicinity of the ball as it lay on the ground, but the fact of the matter is still that Roby should have picked the ball up and that, had he done so, Saints would likely have run down a fair proportion of the clock and not conceded the possession and territory which allowed Cas to set up for Roberts’ winning effort.
So that’s his two errors for the season out of the way, then. You wouldn’t want to be Widnes Vikings…..
Does Anyone Have A Spare Fullback Lying Around?
I really had hoped to avoid banging on about injuries AGAIN in this column but fate has again conspired against me. Shannon McDonnell is the latest to join Saints’ long-term injury list and in so doing becomes the fourth fullback to be forced out of action this season. Jonny Lomax’s season ended early amid fears for his future in the sport, before time finally caught up with and overtook Paul Wellens. Tommy Makinson filled in ably before McDonnell returned to the club, and now both face months on the sidelines in any case. Adam Swift has been mooted as a possible candidate to take over the role but he suffered a nasty bang on the head at Castleford and will presumably need to pass all of the concussion tests during the week if he is to make the starting line-up for this weekend’s cup quarter-final with Widnes. There are no more cabs left on the rank and everyone is getting very angry about it indeed. It’s like town on a Saturday night before the advent of 24-hour drinking. Step forward Mark Percival who, it has been suggested, will be the last line of defence against Dennis Betts’ side on Sunday. If he can handle the defensive side of the role it could work out wonderfully well. Percival needs to get his hands on the ball more and where better to do that than at fullback which often affords players with his sort of gifts all the time and space they need to prosper. It might just work…… Or if not it has also been suggested that Saints could move for former New Zealand international Kevin Locke, whose resignation from Salford Red Devils has been accepted by Marwan Koukash at a press conference this week.
And So To The Good News……
Just as Saints were out losing fullbacks, they also acquired one of the best scrum halves in the Super League and one of its emerging back row talents as both Luke Walsh and Joe Greenwood made try-scoring returns to action against Daryl Powell’s side. Ok so it was in vain, but it was still uplifting to see Walsh scheming in tandem with Travis Burns, even if the latter is still too fond of a step back on the inside and a drop ball to a barely moving front rower. With Walsh now committed to the club for 2016 what we would really like to see is him enjoying a lengthy spell without injuries. It’s abundantly clear that the men in the red vee are a transformed outfit in attack with Walsh out there directing traffic, while Greenwood’s form before his broken leg was impressive also. If he can reach those heights again at the back end of the season then there is every reason to be optimistic for the Super 8’s and the subsequent play-off series. It just doesn’t feel a lot like it when you have just lost to a last minute drop-goal.
Wembley Dreams
Saints are regulars at the Grand Final. We’re still Super League champions in fact, which is something you might want to ponder before you sink into despair watching re-runs of the Tigers game. However, we haven’t been to a Challenge Cup Final since 2008. A full seven years ago. Even if you just miss having the chance to crack open a beer at 6.00 in the morning before the coach leaves you must be as desperate as I am to get back down to the capital for the more traditional of the game’s showpiece events. Opportunity is knocking with a home quarter final against the Widnes Vikings coming up this Sunday (June 28). The Vikings have slipped out of the top eight of Super League in recent weeks following defeats to Hull KR and Huddersfield Giants and come to Langtree Park with confidence somewhat shaken. Yet it was a very competitive struggle when the two teams met there in the league earlier this season, with Saints pulling away in the last quarter to record a 34-16 success. These stakes are higher this time around, with the winner’s Wembley dream alive while the loser goes home to ‘concentrate on the league’ and gaze longingly into the distance with thoughts of another crack at it in 12 months time. Every minute matters in Super League, but none more so than the 80 that will be played in the Challenge Cup between two old local rivals this weekend. Saints have their best chance of reaching Wembley in recent years. They just need one big performance…
And maybe a favourable semi-final draw……….
If You Live By The Sword……
Ben Roberts’ last gasp drop-goal was a perfectly wretched way for Saints to lose a match they had been in full control of. Particularly in view of the fact that they had a scrum feed deep inside the Tigers’ half of the field with barely a minute and a half on the clock. You could argue that a professional rugby league team should never lose a game from that position. But a sneaky glance into the history, indeed the very DNA of Saints reveals that they have been doing exactly this sort of thing to others for years. Who can forget Sean Long’s winning one-pointer in the 2002 Grand Final against Bradford Bulls, or a similar effort which put paid to Warrington’s hopes of ending their losing streak against Saints in Ian Millward’s last game in charge? Warrington were a serial victim as Saints mastered the art of winning games that they had barely bothered to turn up for. It was almost a sport within a sport. The Castleford defeat just shows that if you live by the sword you are occasionally going to die by it. Best get it out of the way now than have it happen when the pots are on offer in August and October. So let’s cheer up just a little bit, eh?
The Humanity Of James Roby
Not to labour a point, but Keiron Cunningham has declared twice recently that in his opinion James Roby is a better hooker than Cunningham himself used to be. Now this might be false modesty on the part of the head coach. He’s probably not going to come out after a game and say ‘yeah, he’s alright but have you seen who’s on that statue outside the stadium?’ However, it is nevertheless an indication of just how brilliant Roby is that a legend such as Cunningham is prepared to concede ground even if it is politeness combined perhaps with a desire to boost his star man’s confidence. Whatever the truth of the Cunningham-Roby debate there is no doubting that the latter is a freak of a player in his own right. All of which makes it all the more shocking to note that the normally robotic Roby broke down a little at The Jungle. His 40-20 attempt sailed out on the full at a crucial time for Saints, and the winning drop-goal was only made possible after Roby failed to pick the ball up cleanly from the base of the scrum. In mitigation he did have Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook doing his level best to confuse the situation by plodding around clumsily in the vicinity of the ball as it lay on the ground, but the fact of the matter is still that Roby should have picked the ball up and that, had he done so, Saints would likely have run down a fair proportion of the clock and not conceded the possession and territory which allowed Cas to set up for Roberts’ winning effort.
So that’s his two errors for the season out of the way, then. You wouldn’t want to be Widnes Vikings…..
Does Anyone Have A Spare Fullback Lying Around?
I really had hoped to avoid banging on about injuries AGAIN in this column but fate has again conspired against me. Shannon McDonnell is the latest to join Saints’ long-term injury list and in so doing becomes the fourth fullback to be forced out of action this season. Jonny Lomax’s season ended early amid fears for his future in the sport, before time finally caught up with and overtook Paul Wellens. Tommy Makinson filled in ably before McDonnell returned to the club, and now both face months on the sidelines in any case. Adam Swift has been mooted as a possible candidate to take over the role but he suffered a nasty bang on the head at Castleford and will presumably need to pass all of the concussion tests during the week if he is to make the starting line-up for this weekend’s cup quarter-final with Widnes. There are no more cabs left on the rank and everyone is getting very angry about it indeed. It’s like town on a Saturday night before the advent of 24-hour drinking. Step forward Mark Percival who, it has been suggested, will be the last line of defence against Dennis Betts’ side on Sunday. If he can handle the defensive side of the role it could work out wonderfully well. Percival needs to get his hands on the ball more and where better to do that than at fullback which often affords players with his sort of gifts all the time and space they need to prosper. It might just work…… Or if not it has also been suggested that Saints could move for former New Zealand international Kevin Locke, whose resignation from Salford Red Devils has been accepted by Marwan Koukash at a press conference this week.
And So To The Good News……
Just as Saints were out losing fullbacks, they also acquired one of the best scrum halves in the Super League and one of its emerging back row talents as both Luke Walsh and Joe Greenwood made try-scoring returns to action against Daryl Powell’s side. Ok so it was in vain, but it was still uplifting to see Walsh scheming in tandem with Travis Burns, even if the latter is still too fond of a step back on the inside and a drop ball to a barely moving front rower. With Walsh now committed to the club for 2016 what we would really like to see is him enjoying a lengthy spell without injuries. It’s abundantly clear that the men in the red vee are a transformed outfit in attack with Walsh out there directing traffic, while Greenwood’s form before his broken leg was impressive also. If he can reach those heights again at the back end of the season then there is every reason to be optimistic for the Super 8’s and the subsequent play-off series. It just doesn’t feel a lot like it when you have just lost to a last minute drop-goal.
Wembley Dreams
Saints are regulars at the Grand Final. We’re still Super League champions in fact, which is something you might want to ponder before you sink into despair watching re-runs of the Tigers game. However, we haven’t been to a Challenge Cup Final since 2008. A full seven years ago. Even if you just miss having the chance to crack open a beer at 6.00 in the morning before the coach leaves you must be as desperate as I am to get back down to the capital for the more traditional of the game’s showpiece events. Opportunity is knocking with a home quarter final against the Widnes Vikings coming up this Sunday (June 28). The Vikings have slipped out of the top eight of Super League in recent weeks following defeats to Hull KR and Huddersfield Giants and come to Langtree Park with confidence somewhat shaken. Yet it was a very competitive struggle when the two teams met there in the league earlier this season, with Saints pulling away in the last quarter to record a 34-16 success. These stakes are higher this time around, with the winner’s Wembley dream alive while the loser goes home to ‘concentrate on the league’ and gaze longingly into the distance with thoughts of another crack at it in 12 months time. Every minute matters in Super League, but none more so than the 80 that will be played in the Challenge Cup between two old local rivals this weekend. Saints have their best chance of reaching Wembley in recent years. They just need one big performance…
And maybe a favourable semi-final draw……….
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)