Most of you will already have worked out why this column is called Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard. You're a particularly clever and pretty bunch after all. But for those of you who haven't, I have again today experienced another fine example of the reason for this somewhat unusual title.
First things first I have been off work today. I had to take Emma to the hospital. She's ok. There's no fire. But it's always best to set your mind at rest and get things sorted quickly if you can. Unless you're me, in which case you find out that you have kidney problems and then spend the next seven years avoiding any medical advice whatsoever. Anyway, while we were winding our way through the new building at Whiston Hospital, through its various mult-coloured sections (we wanted yellow and it is a very, very good job we knew that) we came a cross a sign which said;
WHEELCHAIRS
Beside it was an arrow pointing left and the bog-standard, spike-up-its-arse disabled persons symbol. It's no wonder none of us can walk when we spend our time impaled on protruding objects. So anyway even though I could see a door in front of me leading to where I thought we should be going, I followed the arrow. It's instinctive. Every time you see that symbol and an arrow you think it means that this is the way you should go if you need wheelchair access. In fact, on this occasion, it meant literally what it said;
WHEELCHAIRS
Behind the screen where the arrow led were three or four battered, old-style NHS wheelchairs which must pass as the hospital's supply of loan chairs for day visitors without one. Or who knows? People who are stupid enough to have turned up without theirs. It happens, as anyone who read the story about me arriving at work without my wheels will testify. Since I was not the patient today the worst part of our visit after that is having to sit in the waiting room for 35 minutes after Emma's appointment time with Jeremy Kyle on the small television in the corner. That show is just one long argument and I really, really don't get why anyone would want to sit through it. If you want an argument, go and tell your other half they need to lose a few pounds.
So after doing something a little unpleasant we had decided we would do something nice later on in the day. That meant a visit to Reel Cinema in Widnes to see Iron Man 3. We chose Reel because we like Nandos which is just nearby. What with the hospital and everything and the way the wind was blowing and the alignment of the stars and whatever, it transpired that it was better to see the film first before we ate. Now previous experience at Reel tells me that I have to ask them if I can have a seat, and not just a space for my wheelchair. Believe it or not I prefer to take the opportunity to get out of my wheelchair when I am watching a film. Yes I know, I don't sleep in it either. Incredible.
So I ask the girl if I can have a seat;
"Yes of course, you'll need to leave your chair outside, though."
Excuse me?
She wants me to leave my chair outside. The one thing without which I shall be spending the night in the theatre, she wants me to leave outside by the side of the popcorn kiosk. People don't steal wheelchairs in the way that dogs don't bite. And besides, you will find that most wheelchair users are very reluctant to let their wheelchairs out of their sight even if they are not currently using them. I have this problem on planes whenever Emma and I fly anywhere. Airline staff seem to think a replacement which is 20 times wider than my arse and 40 times longer than my legs is acceptable. A wheelchair is a very personal thing, much like your legs. And if that sounds like we want it both ways then yes we do, what's so wrong with that? We want to be treated as humans, independent of a piece of metal and rubber, but at the same time we don't want to leave that piece of metal unattended in a public place. And we don't want to use anyone else's till we get to the fucking carousel. Is any of this making sense?
"No, I'm afraid I can't do that." I say, quite prepared to leave if need be;
"It's company policy, because of health and safety."
And there we have it right there. I'm a health and safety risk. A Fire Hazard, if you will. I stick to my guns because I know it has rock all to do with health and safety and more to do with the fact that they know that if I buy a seat and put my chair in a space then they will have one less ticket to sell. But there is no fucker here anyway so the debate is utterly puerile. And besides I'm right. As fucking usual, eh?
Eventually we convince the girl that it will be ok for me to leave my chair in the space and transfer my person (remember him?) to a chair. This is also probably a good time to mention that there were signs all over the place apologising for the fact that they had no 'carbonated drinks'. That means coke and everything like it. And they have the cheek to grumble over where my empty fucking wheelchair will sit? Christ's Arse!
The film itself was all good fun. I used to have a film column but I found that nobody read it because they didn't want to spoil anything they wanted to go and see later, and they didn't want to read about anything they weren't interested in seeing. I really don't know how Roger Ebert made a living. Save for the fact that he was a lot better at writing than I am. The girls at work had told me that Iron Man 3 was really good but they would, they're girls, and girls are pre-programmed to like Robert Downey Jr especially when he is throwing bad guys around and making cheap gags and behaving with an unpalatable amount of smugness. And no I am not bitter. Much. Look, it's a super-hero film and inevitably in super-hero films the climactic scenes tend to drag for me because you know what is going to happen. At one point I was sure that characters were dying more than once, which I found a stretch, but then I might have missed something important.
But not as important as MY wheelchair.
Tuesday, 30 April 2013
Monday, 29 April 2013
The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Biff
I'm so fucking sick of myself. Why don't I, instead of updating my Facebook status 100 times a day, do a few more lengthier articles with a bit more depth? Honestly, yesterday (Sunday) I updated my status no less than six fucking times throughout the day. On one occasion I did so just to vent my spleen at James Fucking Nesbitt for the heinous crime of being a Manchester United fan. Ok so there is some justification for that, but it doesn't make it any more interesting. By the end of the day I was reduced to simpy announcing that I was 'not feeling too chipper'. By which point nobody was listening not even, as the Hootie song might have it, the trees.
So let me tell you about my foray into the world of roadwork. Not wearing a hard helmet (please) and digging around randomly to cause traffic congestion, but actually getting out there on the roads to try and improve my general fitness. Since my not-trumpeted retirement from wheelchair basketball nearly seven years ago I have morphed into a Homer-shaped ball of biffiness and something has to be done. I've tried the gym but it's useless. You can't get much aerobic fitness from lifting weights, so sessions quickly become dispiriting. Especially when the rugby players and the plastic glamour models are pounding the steppers all around you. Actually, I quite liked the plastic glamour models.
On the road you can be on your own, with nobody to have to compare yourself to. I was inspired to do this by a friend of mine who has recently taken to running and has lost a good few stones in weight in the process. Both my technological duncery and my disinclination to take the trouble to top up my phone meant that I had to download the free version of the Runkeeper app for my phone, which uses GPS to track how far I go. All well and good, except it takes a full minute to find your location when you activate it. It's a minute you can spend either on your way regardless, or sat outside your house waiting for it to find you while the clock ticks, robbing you of precious seconds for your records. I choose the latter and just knock a minute off when I get back. It's unscientific, but it is at least consistent.
I started with a gentle push to Sherdley Park with Emma. We did one circuit around the park and came home, which left us with a grand total of 3.2 miles that first day. Since when she has come down with a cold, a cough and problems with her ears. Exercise makes you ill, officially. All of which has meant that I have had to go out on my own for the last couple of weeks. The first of those occasions I chose to try and make it towards Prescot. This quickly turned into the worst decision since Bowie's latest comeback. Don't you hate that fucking advert? It's just noise? And this man is a legend. Anyway, I'm digressing just a little there. It was a poor decision because between my house and Prescot is Scholes Lane, and Scholes Lane is long, uphill and incredibly steep. It seems to go on forever, and you cannot imagine how soul destroying it is to reach the top, haul yourself over the road to The Grapes and find that you have managed a quite apologetic 1.7 miles. If I had gone straight back home at that point I would have made it to 3.4, which is more than I had managed on my first attempt but not as many as I wanted. So I carried on to The Wellington which took me to just a tick over 2 miles, and within a hare's bollock of a coronary.
Typically, and in keeping with my fuckwittery, I had to share this information on Facebook immediately. As if sharing it with others would somehow motivate me or keep my interest. When I did I was informed by a friend that he goes on a 14 mile push around the roads near his home. I couldn't get near 14 miles in my sorry state, but I knew that if I could find a flatter route than the one to The Wellington then I could manage more than the 4.1 miles I eventually ended up with by the time I got back from The Welly.
So the next time I decided to push to the retail park on the edge of St.Helens town centre. There's a Boots there where I get my meds, but I declined to go in because whenever I do there is a near unresolvable misunderstanding and ensuing drama which simply does not allow time for getting fit. I took the long route down Dorothy Street, all the way up Elephant Lane (if you live outside Thatto Heath I assure you I am quite aware that I might aswell be describing areas on Mars), down the linkway past the gyppo caravan park, and then left at the McDonalds and on through the retail park past Boots. When I got to Smyth's toy store next door I looked at the Runkeeper and it crushed my spirit once more, informing me that I had managed 1.9 miles. It felt like 1.9 marathons. Determined to get past the 4.1 miles I had already done I began an absurd lap of honour around the retail park. Bemused shoppers looked on as I pointlessly rolled around the car park with no intention of entering a shop, much less buy anything. This might have provided a mild moment of interest for the several men I saw who's spirits looked utterly drained at the prospect of another four hours in B & Q, but this is an optimistic view. Back at Smyth's five minutes later and I had still only managed 2.3 miles. Add that to the 1.9 to get back (the reverse journey) and I was still only looking at 4.2 miles. Another lap. More bemused onlookers, one suspicious glance from security at PC World. Ironic that they might think I am the thief.
On the way back I bumped into the inevitable dog-walker down by the caravan park. Now, I am not scared of dogs, but I do detest it when the dog is straining on his leash to get to you, eyeballing you and salivating and his owners says;
"It's alright, he doesn't bite."
Surely this is what every dog owner says 40 seconds before their beloved pet locks his jaws around some poor unfortunate's head?
There's also a brief exchange of pleasantries with a couple of gyppo children and a quite agonising last few hundred yards past the League Of Gentleman shop on Elephant Lane before I get back and whack my unimpressive achievements straight on to Facebook. This time, I aim for irony with the admission that the marathon is looking a long way off. About 21.5 miles off to be precise. And anyway, if I enter the London Marathon there is a good chance that some female runner will step in front of me and ruin my chair and my race, and then I'll get all the blame from the BBC. And nobody wants that. But maybe I will enter a shorter charity event in the not too distant future. A five or a 10K might not be beyond me judging by what I have done so far.
Just don't expect me to keep it off fucking Facebook.
So let me tell you about my foray into the world of roadwork. Not wearing a hard helmet (please) and digging around randomly to cause traffic congestion, but actually getting out there on the roads to try and improve my general fitness. Since my not-trumpeted retirement from wheelchair basketball nearly seven years ago I have morphed into a Homer-shaped ball of biffiness and something has to be done. I've tried the gym but it's useless. You can't get much aerobic fitness from lifting weights, so sessions quickly become dispiriting. Especially when the rugby players and the plastic glamour models are pounding the steppers all around you. Actually, I quite liked the plastic glamour models.
On the road you can be on your own, with nobody to have to compare yourself to. I was inspired to do this by a friend of mine who has recently taken to running and has lost a good few stones in weight in the process. Both my technological duncery and my disinclination to take the trouble to top up my phone meant that I had to download the free version of the Runkeeper app for my phone, which uses GPS to track how far I go. All well and good, except it takes a full minute to find your location when you activate it. It's a minute you can spend either on your way regardless, or sat outside your house waiting for it to find you while the clock ticks, robbing you of precious seconds for your records. I choose the latter and just knock a minute off when I get back. It's unscientific, but it is at least consistent.
I started with a gentle push to Sherdley Park with Emma. We did one circuit around the park and came home, which left us with a grand total of 3.2 miles that first day. Since when she has come down with a cold, a cough and problems with her ears. Exercise makes you ill, officially. All of which has meant that I have had to go out on my own for the last couple of weeks. The first of those occasions I chose to try and make it towards Prescot. This quickly turned into the worst decision since Bowie's latest comeback. Don't you hate that fucking advert? It's just noise? And this man is a legend. Anyway, I'm digressing just a little there. It was a poor decision because between my house and Prescot is Scholes Lane, and Scholes Lane is long, uphill and incredibly steep. It seems to go on forever, and you cannot imagine how soul destroying it is to reach the top, haul yourself over the road to The Grapes and find that you have managed a quite apologetic 1.7 miles. If I had gone straight back home at that point I would have made it to 3.4, which is more than I had managed on my first attempt but not as many as I wanted. So I carried on to The Wellington which took me to just a tick over 2 miles, and within a hare's bollock of a coronary.
Typically, and in keeping with my fuckwittery, I had to share this information on Facebook immediately. As if sharing it with others would somehow motivate me or keep my interest. When I did I was informed by a friend that he goes on a 14 mile push around the roads near his home. I couldn't get near 14 miles in my sorry state, but I knew that if I could find a flatter route than the one to The Wellington then I could manage more than the 4.1 miles I eventually ended up with by the time I got back from The Welly.
So the next time I decided to push to the retail park on the edge of St.Helens town centre. There's a Boots there where I get my meds, but I declined to go in because whenever I do there is a near unresolvable misunderstanding and ensuing drama which simply does not allow time for getting fit. I took the long route down Dorothy Street, all the way up Elephant Lane (if you live outside Thatto Heath I assure you I am quite aware that I might aswell be describing areas on Mars), down the linkway past the gyppo caravan park, and then left at the McDonalds and on through the retail park past Boots. When I got to Smyth's toy store next door I looked at the Runkeeper and it crushed my spirit once more, informing me that I had managed 1.9 miles. It felt like 1.9 marathons. Determined to get past the 4.1 miles I had already done I began an absurd lap of honour around the retail park. Bemused shoppers looked on as I pointlessly rolled around the car park with no intention of entering a shop, much less buy anything. This might have provided a mild moment of interest for the several men I saw who's spirits looked utterly drained at the prospect of another four hours in B & Q, but this is an optimistic view. Back at Smyth's five minutes later and I had still only managed 2.3 miles. Add that to the 1.9 to get back (the reverse journey) and I was still only looking at 4.2 miles. Another lap. More bemused onlookers, one suspicious glance from security at PC World. Ironic that they might think I am the thief.
On the way back I bumped into the inevitable dog-walker down by the caravan park. Now, I am not scared of dogs, but I do detest it when the dog is straining on his leash to get to you, eyeballing you and salivating and his owners says;
"It's alright, he doesn't bite."
Surely this is what every dog owner says 40 seconds before their beloved pet locks his jaws around some poor unfortunate's head?
There's also a brief exchange of pleasantries with a couple of gyppo children and a quite agonising last few hundred yards past the League Of Gentleman shop on Elephant Lane before I get back and whack my unimpressive achievements straight on to Facebook. This time, I aim for irony with the admission that the marathon is looking a long way off. About 21.5 miles off to be precise. And anyway, if I enter the London Marathon there is a good chance that some female runner will step in front of me and ruin my chair and my race, and then I'll get all the blame from the BBC. And nobody wants that. But maybe I will enter a shorter charity event in the not too distant future. A five or a 10K might not be beyond me judging by what I have done so far.
Just don't expect me to keep it off fucking Facebook.
Friday, 26 April 2013
The Myth Of Friday
A little analysis of one's own work is a scary but a good thing. Looking back on some of the recent entries on these pages I have noticed that there has been far too much mention of Friday, and how absolutely fucking awful it is and how I hate it.
This is not a fault with my work, exactly. It's just that too much repetition is a bad thing. Originality is what we are after and so now, once and for all, I will attempt to put the whole Friday Is Shit thing to bed by dedicating an entire column to it.
The reason that Friday has become an issue is because whenever it rears its ugly head, once a week usually, a colleague of mine revels in pointing out to me that it is indeed Friday. The implication is that I should therefore be happy. Unfortunately I am a depressive, and therefore unlikely to be happy at any given moment. Annoyingly, I am not the kind of depressive who is blessed with a level of genius and who swings between manic highs and crashing lows. Either I feel utterly rubbish but not rubbish enough to start the car with the exhaust sealed, or I feel neutral. OK. Alright. Getting by. I am not at home to happiness.
Even if I were the type of person who filled easily with the joys of the blooming season, I still can't see the logic in being happy on a Friday morning, or at any hour before that when you arrive home from work. You still have to get through the working day, just like any other day of the week. That's ok if you like your job. I have heard some people claim that they do. But then I have also heard some people claim to be happy and I don't really believe that either. As I alluded to on a recent Facebook status (microblog, anyone?) only the deeply stupid among us can be happy all the time. Fine, if you want to pat Friday on the back do it when you get home when it is actually going in your favour, and you can put your feet up and watch whatever mind-crushing shite floats your boat.
No my friends Friday is a teasing whore. It is a bitch who fills you with promise and then, just as you are about to enjoy it, slaps you round the chops shouting 'it's Monday!' at you and laughing. Friday is massively over-rated. It is the 'Mad Men' of weekdays. The day I left my wheels at home was a Friday. Logic demands that this could have happened any day of the week, but by the same token it is also true that any other day of the week brings the same promise as Friday's supporters claim that it brings. If something good were to happen to me, and I am not for a moement suggesting that it will, it could just as easily be on a Tuesday as a Friday. The same Tuesday that my colleague says is the work of the devil himself, based on the quite berserk logic that you have just got over Monday and you are still no nearer to Friday. No nearer to another mundane day of the week which you will spend nailed to your desk looking at a spreadsheet wishing your life away and wondering what else you could be doing. In my case, it is a desk which is so soundproof and bricked up as to render me socially excluded. My desk at work socially excludes me more than my disability. My disability looks on in envy at my desk as the standard bearer in the field of socially excluding me.
So let us dispel the Myth Of Friday and instead accept the fact that the only days of the week that we really enjoy are Saturdays and Sundays. Saturdays and Sundays for me consist mainly of lounging around watching sport, eating and drinking badly and never, under any circumstances, paying even the remotest attention to a spreadsheet or a fucking travel claim. I do keep in touch with some work colleagues via the gift of Facebook over the weekend but that is not the same thing at all as something which is work-related. They are all extremely nice people and in no way represent the drudgery of my daily grind. They just happen to be unfortunate enough to share an office with a miserable, depressive, Friday-hating little fuck like me.
It'll soon be Saturday........
This is not a fault with my work, exactly. It's just that too much repetition is a bad thing. Originality is what we are after and so now, once and for all, I will attempt to put the whole Friday Is Shit thing to bed by dedicating an entire column to it.
The reason that Friday has become an issue is because whenever it rears its ugly head, once a week usually, a colleague of mine revels in pointing out to me that it is indeed Friday. The implication is that I should therefore be happy. Unfortunately I am a depressive, and therefore unlikely to be happy at any given moment. Annoyingly, I am not the kind of depressive who is blessed with a level of genius and who swings between manic highs and crashing lows. Either I feel utterly rubbish but not rubbish enough to start the car with the exhaust sealed, or I feel neutral. OK. Alright. Getting by. I am not at home to happiness.
Even if I were the type of person who filled easily with the joys of the blooming season, I still can't see the logic in being happy on a Friday morning, or at any hour before that when you arrive home from work. You still have to get through the working day, just like any other day of the week. That's ok if you like your job. I have heard some people claim that they do. But then I have also heard some people claim to be happy and I don't really believe that either. As I alluded to on a recent Facebook status (microblog, anyone?) only the deeply stupid among us can be happy all the time. Fine, if you want to pat Friday on the back do it when you get home when it is actually going in your favour, and you can put your feet up and watch whatever mind-crushing shite floats your boat.
No my friends Friday is a teasing whore. It is a bitch who fills you with promise and then, just as you are about to enjoy it, slaps you round the chops shouting 'it's Monday!' at you and laughing. Friday is massively over-rated. It is the 'Mad Men' of weekdays. The day I left my wheels at home was a Friday. Logic demands that this could have happened any day of the week, but by the same token it is also true that any other day of the week brings the same promise as Friday's supporters claim that it brings. If something good were to happen to me, and I am not for a moement suggesting that it will, it could just as easily be on a Tuesday as a Friday. The same Tuesday that my colleague says is the work of the devil himself, based on the quite berserk logic that you have just got over Monday and you are still no nearer to Friday. No nearer to another mundane day of the week which you will spend nailed to your desk looking at a spreadsheet wishing your life away and wondering what else you could be doing. In my case, it is a desk which is so soundproof and bricked up as to render me socially excluded. My desk at work socially excludes me more than my disability. My disability looks on in envy at my desk as the standard bearer in the field of socially excluding me.
So let us dispel the Myth Of Friday and instead accept the fact that the only days of the week that we really enjoy are Saturdays and Sundays. Saturdays and Sundays for me consist mainly of lounging around watching sport, eating and drinking badly and never, under any circumstances, paying even the remotest attention to a spreadsheet or a fucking travel claim. I do keep in touch with some work colleagues via the gift of Facebook over the weekend but that is not the same thing at all as something which is work-related. They are all extremely nice people and in no way represent the drudgery of my daily grind. They just happen to be unfortunate enough to share an office with a miserable, depressive, Friday-hating little fuck like me.
It'll soon be Saturday........
Wednesday, 24 April 2013
The Meds
I don't think, even in my blogging heyday, I ever published two pieces on the same day.
Blogging heyday. What the fuck? By this I mean the halcyon age when I had....oh.....10 regular readers I could name and a new, interesting and challenging subject to barf on about every day.
Regardless I feel the need to give it a go for a second time today. All of which conjures up dull analogies about waiting for buses for hours before 26 turn up at once. Only these buses are all going to Dullsville, via a stupid story about medication and whatever else springs forth into my distorted, tortured mind this Wednesday night along the way.
So the medication. To cut an agonisingly long story short I need to take a type of medication which protects my kidneys. We could go over old ground about how I went to the doctor one day to ask about a problem with my bladder and ended up in what looked and sounded like a tumble dryer. I was having an MRI, and there followed the interesting hypothesis that my kidneys may not last until tea-time that same day, followed by several weeks of depression as I contemplated the end of the life which, at that time and at various points even now, depresses me in any case. There is no point trying to understand the mind of someone who has bouts of depression but who at the same time finds the thought of ending his depression via the outlet of death to be...wait for it.... depressing. We're a different breed. Actually, I'm not sure there are any others like me.
All of that was six years ago. By now, the realisation that my kidneys are going to last somewhat longer than predicted has kicked in. Death is off the table. Just get on with it, and go and get your meds every month. I collect these from the same branch of Boots on the retail park once a month, and had had several discussions with Emma about the need to do this before last weekend. Her parents were coming to stay (which is a blog that nobody dare write) so there would be no opportunity over the weekend itself. And we could have sworn I was running out.
Now probably because Emma was off sick last Monday and Tuesday it slipped my mind on those days. And then on Thursday she had ordered an online shopping delivery from Tesco. We've long since given up the pretence that we actually intend to physically go shopping. Except for French loaves. Emma says she doesn't trust the online system to come up with fresh enough French loaves. It seems to me that if a system is sophisticated enough to arrange for two men to drive to your home in a large van containing everything you ordered (or close to it) at the touch of a few buttons, then fresh French loaves should be do-able. But not so. Since Emma's parents were coming up on the Friday that just left the Wednesday. But we must have forgotten to do it then also.
Only I didn't know this until today. On Monday night I noticed that my current supply of meds was running a bit low. Normally I just leave the opened box on the kitchen worktop but, with guests due, there had been much tidying of such items and general spring cleaning going on. The meds were not on the kitchen worktop and, when I asked Emma she said that the only box she had thrown away had been empty. At this point I will accept culpability for failing to conduct a more thorough search. It is a terribly male problem, that of seemingly being unable to search for and therefore find anything that is not placed directly under the nose. If it was not where I thought I left it, and in the only other place which I considered logically possible, then we had either not picked them up or Emma had thrown them away.
The story was much the same on Tuesday, so today after work I gave them a call that went a little something like this;
'Hello Boots Pharmacy!", voice going up as if they were asking me if they were indeed Boots Pharmacy. Surely they should know? But I do this myself, to be fair. Hello PLSU? Well, yes it is, obviously. Anyway.....
'Yeah, I just wanted to check something. This is going to sound a bit stupid but can you tell me if my prescription has been collected?'
There isn't a pause but I imagine one nonetheless. One which begins with supressed giggles and turns into a full blown conversation between the entire United Kingdom Boots staff about how some mad old bloke has rung up because he can't remember whether he has picked up his prescription, or even what his name is or where he lives. Maybe he doesn't know because he can't get here himself and he can't find out from the person who is supposed to go on his behalf. Either way I am being pitied in my mind about now, and anyone in my situation treats pity with the kind of disdain with which Elvis Costello regards Margaret Thatcher. Finally, the response comes....
"OK, what's your name please?"
I'm certain she's still giggling.
"Stephen Orford."
There I said it. Stephen Orford is someone who can't remember whether he went to the chemist to pick up his potentially life-saving meds (though even the specialist must be starting to question his original forecast after all these years) less than a week ago.
"I'll just check for you, Mr Orford."
Long, drawn out, awkward pause, last experienced when I naively phoned a girl who had given me her phone number in 1996. That didn't end well....
"Oh yes, Mr Orford, that's here for you to collect."
I end the call sharply and with as much dignity as I can muster, and when I arrive at the pharmacy an hour later nobody makes mention of it except me. Why don't I just stop with the self-mockery at this point? It's like I'm doing it to make conversation because otherwise we'll be talking about the weather or, God forbid, my all-time most hated topic of dullard conversation, that one about how fucking close we are to Friday. Or worse than that, how it actually is Friday when it is Friday. Friday's a fucking working day!
I can't remember whether or not I picked up my meds less than a week ago, but I know that Friday is no different to any other fucking day of the week.
I'll leave you to it now. I think the pulsating rush of being able to blog twice in a day after such a long drought has got to me a little.
Blogging heyday. What the fuck? By this I mean the halcyon age when I had....oh.....10 regular readers I could name and a new, interesting and challenging subject to barf on about every day.
Regardless I feel the need to give it a go for a second time today. All of which conjures up dull analogies about waiting for buses for hours before 26 turn up at once. Only these buses are all going to Dullsville, via a stupid story about medication and whatever else springs forth into my distorted, tortured mind this Wednesday night along the way.
So the medication. To cut an agonisingly long story short I need to take a type of medication which protects my kidneys. We could go over old ground about how I went to the doctor one day to ask about a problem with my bladder and ended up in what looked and sounded like a tumble dryer. I was having an MRI, and there followed the interesting hypothesis that my kidneys may not last until tea-time that same day, followed by several weeks of depression as I contemplated the end of the life which, at that time and at various points even now, depresses me in any case. There is no point trying to understand the mind of someone who has bouts of depression but who at the same time finds the thought of ending his depression via the outlet of death to be...wait for it.... depressing. We're a different breed. Actually, I'm not sure there are any others like me.
All of that was six years ago. By now, the realisation that my kidneys are going to last somewhat longer than predicted has kicked in. Death is off the table. Just get on with it, and go and get your meds every month. I collect these from the same branch of Boots on the retail park once a month, and had had several discussions with Emma about the need to do this before last weekend. Her parents were coming to stay (which is a blog that nobody dare write) so there would be no opportunity over the weekend itself. And we could have sworn I was running out.
Now probably because Emma was off sick last Monday and Tuesday it slipped my mind on those days. And then on Thursday she had ordered an online shopping delivery from Tesco. We've long since given up the pretence that we actually intend to physically go shopping. Except for French loaves. Emma says she doesn't trust the online system to come up with fresh enough French loaves. It seems to me that if a system is sophisticated enough to arrange for two men to drive to your home in a large van containing everything you ordered (or close to it) at the touch of a few buttons, then fresh French loaves should be do-able. But not so. Since Emma's parents were coming up on the Friday that just left the Wednesday. But we must have forgotten to do it then also.
Only I didn't know this until today. On Monday night I noticed that my current supply of meds was running a bit low. Normally I just leave the opened box on the kitchen worktop but, with guests due, there had been much tidying of such items and general spring cleaning going on. The meds were not on the kitchen worktop and, when I asked Emma she said that the only box she had thrown away had been empty. At this point I will accept culpability for failing to conduct a more thorough search. It is a terribly male problem, that of seemingly being unable to search for and therefore find anything that is not placed directly under the nose. If it was not where I thought I left it, and in the only other place which I considered logically possible, then we had either not picked them up or Emma had thrown them away.
The story was much the same on Tuesday, so today after work I gave them a call that went a little something like this;
'Hello Boots Pharmacy!", voice going up as if they were asking me if they were indeed Boots Pharmacy. Surely they should know? But I do this myself, to be fair. Hello PLSU? Well, yes it is, obviously. Anyway.....
'Yeah, I just wanted to check something. This is going to sound a bit stupid but can you tell me if my prescription has been collected?'
There isn't a pause but I imagine one nonetheless. One which begins with supressed giggles and turns into a full blown conversation between the entire United Kingdom Boots staff about how some mad old bloke has rung up because he can't remember whether he has picked up his prescription, or even what his name is or where he lives. Maybe he doesn't know because he can't get here himself and he can't find out from the person who is supposed to go on his behalf. Either way I am being pitied in my mind about now, and anyone in my situation treats pity with the kind of disdain with which Elvis Costello regards Margaret Thatcher. Finally, the response comes....
"OK, what's your name please?"
I'm certain she's still giggling.
"Stephen Orford."
There I said it. Stephen Orford is someone who can't remember whether he went to the chemist to pick up his potentially life-saving meds (though even the specialist must be starting to question his original forecast after all these years) less than a week ago.
"I'll just check for you, Mr Orford."
Long, drawn out, awkward pause, last experienced when I naively phoned a girl who had given me her phone number in 1996. That didn't end well....
"Oh yes, Mr Orford, that's here for you to collect."
I end the call sharply and with as much dignity as I can muster, and when I arrive at the pharmacy an hour later nobody makes mention of it except me. Why don't I just stop with the self-mockery at this point? It's like I'm doing it to make conversation because otherwise we'll be talking about the weather or, God forbid, my all-time most hated topic of dullard conversation, that one about how fucking close we are to Friday. Or worse than that, how it actually is Friday when it is Friday. Friday's a fucking working day!
I can't remember whether or not I picked up my meds less than a week ago, but I know that Friday is no different to any other fucking day of the week.
I'll leave you to it now. I think the pulsating rush of being able to blog twice in a day after such a long drought has got to me a little.
This Is What Happens When You Forget To Charge Your Kindle
It's been on my mind that I haven't written for a while. In fact, my lack of input recently undoubtedly contributes to my general lack of self worth. I just had to go back and delete an extra 'l' from the word 'general'. It's been a long time.
March 15, in fact, when last I soiled these pages with tales of how Emma and I managed to leave my wheels at home after driving to work one day. That's far too long but what do you do? Write something for the sake of writing it? In which case it is likely to be a stream-of-consciousness, formless lot of bollocks which it is so far, or do you wait for something significant or interesting to happen? It could be a while if you do that. I have just spent the morning inserting data on a spreadsheet. Significance and interest seem a world away. In fact, they have fucked off on holiday with joy and hope.
It's lunchtime. I have just been downstairs where I intended to read my book. Nothing life-changing, just a bog-standard Grisham novel about two half-arsed lawyers (very much after my own heart, then) who try to litigate against a massive drug manufacturer. So anyway I switched on the kindle and basically it said no. I had forgotten to charge it. Again. Even had I remembered I would have been out of luck, because I have had my phone on charge all morning. It's limited battery-life has buckled under the strain of my endless Facebook rambles in leiu of anything substantial enough to transfer on to these pages. In leiu of any real writing talent, then.
There's nothing worse than switching on your kindle at lunchtime and realising it has no battery and you have forgotten to charge it. Well there probably is but right now it doesn't seem like there is. Not when I have another afternoon of data entry to look forward to, beginning in approximately 27 minutes time. The race is on for this piece to make any sort of sense before then. If you thought I rambled on Facebook, you have entered a whole new world of rambling by visiting me here. But I thank you for it anyway. It makes it all worthwhile. And anyway, I promised myself that I would get something down on these pages today. Or if not today then certainly this week. The lack of a kindle gave me a window, and has very probably given all of us a headache. I'm trying to work out what to write and you're trying to work out what the fuck I am on about.
I was going to write a piece about Thatcher. For those of you who don't know or who have been living under a rock for the last two weeks the old hag bought it a couple of weeks ago. Now this is undoubtedly sad for somebody somewhere, but it does not justify spending £10million of tax-payers money to send her off in the manner of a war-hero. Personally I'd have paid someone ten bob to drop her down a secret chute into the Mersey (what? you didn't know about the secret chute into the Mersey? Well, it is a secret) but I'm sure the appropriate arrangements were somewhere in between these two extremes. Anyway it all got me very mad, as regular readers of my Facebook 'wisdom' will already know. But in the end I did't write about it here because I had already said it all there. And far more people are likely to read a status on Facebook than a blog like this. That's life. That's 'microblogging', if that word isn't too pretentious and hurl-inducing.
What else could I write about? Luis Suarez is in trouble again. He bit someone. Again. The club have stuck by him. Again. Reputations no longer matter in Premier League football. It's all about business and flipping great sacks of cash and Suarez, his flesh-chomping tomfoolery notwithstanding, is Liverpool's most valuable asset. The club's owners are Americans, making it even less likely that they will take any action which could weaken their overall position. All of which is immoral and makes you feel a bit queasy. But there is not another club in the Premier League who would do anything different to what Liverpool have done. Furthermore, Fergie would probably have Bratislav Ivanovic up on an FA charge for putting his arm in Suarez's mouth if he were the manager of Liverpool. Suarez may choose to leave anyway given the lack of European football on offer at Anfield next season. Ignoring the moral debate, they're taking an awfully big gamble if they are relying on Suarez to repay the faith they have shown in him by sticking around and, perish the thought, behaving himself for five minutes.
Now that I have used the phrase 'perish the thought' in one of my pieces it occurs to me just how rusty I am at all this. I suppose the only answer to that it is to try and do it more often but with all the work I am doing for Redvee, and with spending my days looking at spreadsheets and engaging in some of the most puerile banter since Ziggy Greaves' heyday, I just haven't had the time or, if I'm honest, the dedication. But most of all, what has been lacking, is the inspiration. As crap as it has been over this past month, life has been pretty much devoid of any comedy cock-ups, blatant episodes of discrimination or sickening patronisation to rattle on about with smug, pompous abandon. I'm not in a good literary place at the moment.
But what do you expect? I've just written this piece in 20 minutes in my lunch break. If only that fucking kindle had been charged we could have all saved some valuable time. See you on Facebook.
March 15, in fact, when last I soiled these pages with tales of how Emma and I managed to leave my wheels at home after driving to work one day. That's far too long but what do you do? Write something for the sake of writing it? In which case it is likely to be a stream-of-consciousness, formless lot of bollocks which it is so far, or do you wait for something significant or interesting to happen? It could be a while if you do that. I have just spent the morning inserting data on a spreadsheet. Significance and interest seem a world away. In fact, they have fucked off on holiday with joy and hope.
It's lunchtime. I have just been downstairs where I intended to read my book. Nothing life-changing, just a bog-standard Grisham novel about two half-arsed lawyers (very much after my own heart, then) who try to litigate against a massive drug manufacturer. So anyway I switched on the kindle and basically it said no. I had forgotten to charge it. Again. Even had I remembered I would have been out of luck, because I have had my phone on charge all morning. It's limited battery-life has buckled under the strain of my endless Facebook rambles in leiu of anything substantial enough to transfer on to these pages. In leiu of any real writing talent, then.
There's nothing worse than switching on your kindle at lunchtime and realising it has no battery and you have forgotten to charge it. Well there probably is but right now it doesn't seem like there is. Not when I have another afternoon of data entry to look forward to, beginning in approximately 27 minutes time. The race is on for this piece to make any sort of sense before then. If you thought I rambled on Facebook, you have entered a whole new world of rambling by visiting me here. But I thank you for it anyway. It makes it all worthwhile. And anyway, I promised myself that I would get something down on these pages today. Or if not today then certainly this week. The lack of a kindle gave me a window, and has very probably given all of us a headache. I'm trying to work out what to write and you're trying to work out what the fuck I am on about.
I was going to write a piece about Thatcher. For those of you who don't know or who have been living under a rock for the last two weeks the old hag bought it a couple of weeks ago. Now this is undoubtedly sad for somebody somewhere, but it does not justify spending £10million of tax-payers money to send her off in the manner of a war-hero. Personally I'd have paid someone ten bob to drop her down a secret chute into the Mersey (what? you didn't know about the secret chute into the Mersey? Well, it is a secret) but I'm sure the appropriate arrangements were somewhere in between these two extremes. Anyway it all got me very mad, as regular readers of my Facebook 'wisdom' will already know. But in the end I did't write about it here because I had already said it all there. And far more people are likely to read a status on Facebook than a blog like this. That's life. That's 'microblogging', if that word isn't too pretentious and hurl-inducing.
What else could I write about? Luis Suarez is in trouble again. He bit someone. Again. The club have stuck by him. Again. Reputations no longer matter in Premier League football. It's all about business and flipping great sacks of cash and Suarez, his flesh-chomping tomfoolery notwithstanding, is Liverpool's most valuable asset. The club's owners are Americans, making it even less likely that they will take any action which could weaken their overall position. All of which is immoral and makes you feel a bit queasy. But there is not another club in the Premier League who would do anything different to what Liverpool have done. Furthermore, Fergie would probably have Bratislav Ivanovic up on an FA charge for putting his arm in Suarez's mouth if he were the manager of Liverpool. Suarez may choose to leave anyway given the lack of European football on offer at Anfield next season. Ignoring the moral debate, they're taking an awfully big gamble if they are relying on Suarez to repay the faith they have shown in him by sticking around and, perish the thought, behaving himself for five minutes.
Now that I have used the phrase 'perish the thought' in one of my pieces it occurs to me just how rusty I am at all this. I suppose the only answer to that it is to try and do it more often but with all the work I am doing for Redvee, and with spending my days looking at spreadsheets and engaging in some of the most puerile banter since Ziggy Greaves' heyday, I just haven't had the time or, if I'm honest, the dedication. But most of all, what has been lacking, is the inspiration. As crap as it has been over this past month, life has been pretty much devoid of any comedy cock-ups, blatant episodes of discrimination or sickening patronisation to rattle on about with smug, pompous abandon. I'm not in a good literary place at the moment.
But what do you expect? I've just written this piece in 20 minutes in my lunch break. If only that fucking kindle had been charged we could have all saved some valuable time. See you on Facebook.
Friday, 15 March 2013
Wheels Of Misfortune
There was nothing unusual about the journey to work today.
We were late because we can't get out of bed. We had to stop for petrol because we couldn't be bothered to do so on the way home last night. Emma had to use my card to pay for it because I couldn't be bothered to go out to the cash machine in my lunch hour yesterday. I have too many books to read. None of these things are in any way unusual.
We got stuck in traffic. No matter how late you are, even on a Friday, you can expect to find yourself stuck in traffic on the way to work in the morning. So we crept along in the usual fashion. I sang GooGoo Dolls songs badly and, in places, wrongly, aswell as a few highly similar sounding tunes by The Script. None of these things are remotely unusual.
When we got to work the LJMU catering delivery man was blocking the disabled car park. This is not unusual. There was just enough room to squeeze by him into the first bay which, on a daily basis, seems to have more and more obstacles around it. Wheelie bins mostly, the odd skip makes an appearance to test your driving skills further. None of this is unusual.
Emma got out of the car and as I opened my door she said;
"We're going to have to go home."
She was half-smiling, not seeming overly concerned.
"Why?" I said.
"We haven't brought the wheels with us."
The wheels she is referring to are those usually found on either side of my wheelchair. Somehow we have managed to avoid bringing them with us. At this point I should take a little responsibility. A little. Emma puts the chair in the car in the morning because if I did it then she would have to sit in the back, because I can only put it in the front seat beside me in the driver's seat. I am guilty of taking this rather for granted. Only today she has not done it so she's right. We have to go home.
Before we get out of the gate I compound our error by scratching the car. While I am incredulously taking in the fact that we have come to work without my wheels several new and interesting obstacles appear to have sprouted up behind me in the car park. They may have been there all along actually but I'm too flustered to be sure either way. In any event I reverse straight into one of the wheelie bins, this despite the fact that my car beeps furiously at me whenever I get within the proverbial country mile of colliding with anything located behind me. Call it annoyance, bewilderment, whatever, I have ignored the beeps and bumped the car.
The drive home is particularly quiet. We're not screaming and shouting at each other in the manner of a couple who between them have fucked things up spectacularly and yes, royally. There's just a stunned silence and probably a mutual acceptance that any futher discussion of the situation is superfluous. We just have to get back and pick the bloody wheels up. Emma rings my sister, Helen, firstly to ask if she can find them and reclaim them before they are stolen from the front of my house (Helen lives just down the road, like every member of my family going back about 36 generations), and then when it emerges that Helen is on her way to work, to find out if she has seen the wheels when she passed our house. She hadn't. Not unnaturally, Helen finds the whole situation highly amusing.
Thankfully when we arrive at the house we find the wheels. There is a scary moment when I think that we won't, because they are not strewn across the pavement outside the house in the way I had predicted they would be. Someone, probably our next door neighbour, has very kindly picked them up and rested them against the front door. Emma gets out of the car (I can't, remember?) and puts the wheels back in their rightful place. I phone a work colleague to explain the farcical situation. We go back to work.
By the time I arrive I am almost two hours late. I switch on my phone to find several text messages from my work colleagues, all of which are in various ways mocking me for my lunacy. Replies are as superfluous as trying to discuss how something like this happens, so instead I take it all on the chin and don't mention it to any of them. They'd enjoy it rather too much for my liking and I'm still a bit steamed up about the fact that I have bumped my car to add to my woes.
All of which proves beyond any reasonable doubt that, contrary to the persisent claims of one of my colleagues in particular, Friday is shite. There is no more chance of a Friday at work being enjoyable than there is of any other day at work being enjoyable. It is arrant nonsense to believe it any better just because you get two days off at the end of it. You still have to live it. Friday is fucking crap.
Nothing unusual about that.
We were late because we can't get out of bed. We had to stop for petrol because we couldn't be bothered to do so on the way home last night. Emma had to use my card to pay for it because I couldn't be bothered to go out to the cash machine in my lunch hour yesterday. I have too many books to read. None of these things are in any way unusual.
We got stuck in traffic. No matter how late you are, even on a Friday, you can expect to find yourself stuck in traffic on the way to work in the morning. So we crept along in the usual fashion. I sang GooGoo Dolls songs badly and, in places, wrongly, aswell as a few highly similar sounding tunes by The Script. None of these things are remotely unusual.
When we got to work the LJMU catering delivery man was blocking the disabled car park. This is not unusual. There was just enough room to squeeze by him into the first bay which, on a daily basis, seems to have more and more obstacles around it. Wheelie bins mostly, the odd skip makes an appearance to test your driving skills further. None of this is unusual.
Emma got out of the car and as I opened my door she said;
"We're going to have to go home."
She was half-smiling, not seeming overly concerned.
"Why?" I said.
"We haven't brought the wheels with us."
The wheels she is referring to are those usually found on either side of my wheelchair. Somehow we have managed to avoid bringing them with us. At this point I should take a little responsibility. A little. Emma puts the chair in the car in the morning because if I did it then she would have to sit in the back, because I can only put it in the front seat beside me in the driver's seat. I am guilty of taking this rather for granted. Only today she has not done it so she's right. We have to go home.
Before we get out of the gate I compound our error by scratching the car. While I am incredulously taking in the fact that we have come to work without my wheels several new and interesting obstacles appear to have sprouted up behind me in the car park. They may have been there all along actually but I'm too flustered to be sure either way. In any event I reverse straight into one of the wheelie bins, this despite the fact that my car beeps furiously at me whenever I get within the proverbial country mile of colliding with anything located behind me. Call it annoyance, bewilderment, whatever, I have ignored the beeps and bumped the car.
The drive home is particularly quiet. We're not screaming and shouting at each other in the manner of a couple who between them have fucked things up spectacularly and yes, royally. There's just a stunned silence and probably a mutual acceptance that any futher discussion of the situation is superfluous. We just have to get back and pick the bloody wheels up. Emma rings my sister, Helen, firstly to ask if she can find them and reclaim them before they are stolen from the front of my house (Helen lives just down the road, like every member of my family going back about 36 generations), and then when it emerges that Helen is on her way to work, to find out if she has seen the wheels when she passed our house. She hadn't. Not unnaturally, Helen finds the whole situation highly amusing.
Thankfully when we arrive at the house we find the wheels. There is a scary moment when I think that we won't, because they are not strewn across the pavement outside the house in the way I had predicted they would be. Someone, probably our next door neighbour, has very kindly picked them up and rested them against the front door. Emma gets out of the car (I can't, remember?) and puts the wheels back in their rightful place. I phone a work colleague to explain the farcical situation. We go back to work.
By the time I arrive I am almost two hours late. I switch on my phone to find several text messages from my work colleagues, all of which are in various ways mocking me for my lunacy. Replies are as superfluous as trying to discuss how something like this happens, so instead I take it all on the chin and don't mention it to any of them. They'd enjoy it rather too much for my liking and I'm still a bit steamed up about the fact that I have bumped my car to add to my woes.
All of which proves beyond any reasonable doubt that, contrary to the persisent claims of one of my colleagues in particular, Friday is shite. There is no more chance of a Friday at work being enjoyable than there is of any other day at work being enjoyable. It is arrant nonsense to believe it any better just because you get two days off at the end of it. You still have to live it. Friday is fucking crap.
Nothing unusual about that.
Wednesday, 13 March 2013
Fight Night
I'm not really into violence. Compared with other men my age I suppose I am a bit of a wuss. I don't like too much violence in films (particularly if it doesn't really add anything to the story and is just a gimmick or a chance to show off the talents of the make-up department), I don't watch any of that homo-erotic UFC nonsense, and if there is any sign of the real thing, an actual fight within my vicinity, I can make myself disappear.
Strange then that I chose to go to the David Price fight at the Echo Arena recently. Despite everything I have just said about violence boxing is something that I do have more than a passing interest in. It probably goes back to being brought up on Rocky films or something but there is something different, less immediately vicious about the noble art. It's called the noble art, for starters. Noble or otherwise, I can often be found tuning in to some scrap or other on a Saturday night when I am not belting out bad boy band tunes at the ever declining Springfield.
The more fights I have seen the more I have wondered what it would be like to actually be there. It's something I had never done before and I knew my cousin Alex would be up for it. He considers himself a proper boxing fan and he probably watches UFC. So I said I would sort us some tickets out for the Price fight. Besides, we hardly spend any time together these days as he is a very elusive individual with about thirty different addresses and probably a dozen passports. It is at this point that I should warn you that, if you are thinking of taking my lead and attending a boxing match in the near future, you should make sure that your bank account is sufficiently stacked. These things do not come cheap. It cost over £150 for the two of us which, as anyone who knows Alex will not be aware, can lead to a nervous few days wondering about whether he will a) turn up and b) pay for his ticket.
Happily he comes good on both counts. He really does love his boxing, you know. Unfortunately there is a problem on the morning of the fight. Someone has chosen this particular Saturday, the only Saturday in living memory that I have to get to Liverpool city centre, to die at Broadgreen railway station. Now, being the proud owner of some mental health issues myself I have every sympathy with anyone who might have felt the need to take their own life. But do they have to do it today, this way? Isn't that just a little bit beyond the pale? Because now all the trains are off and Alex and I are having a stupid argument about how best to get to Liverpool. I'm happy to slum it on the bus but he's adamant that he should drive us to Wavertree where he works and get a taxi from there. The plan being that I will drive him to Wavertree to pick his car up in the morning. I'm not enamoured by this idea. I intend to be in no fit state to drive by the following morning. I point this out but we still don't have an agreement until it transpires that normal service is being resumed on the railways at 1.30. They must have mopped up the dead person.
Everton are playing today. Alex is an Evertonian. All of which means that he is very keen when we get there to find somehwere to watch the game. We settle upon a dingy little place across the road from Lime Street and St.John's market. We're hungry and we can get a burger here, and it is across the road also from a bookmakers so we can have a bet on the Saturday football coupon. We don't get to see Everton, however. Though the pub has the highly illegal foreign channel which shows Saturday afternoon games live it is not Everton against Norwich City but Manchester United's visit to QPR which is on all the screens. If there is one thing that Alex and I agree on it is that if Manchester United were playing in our front garden we would each draw the curtains. So instead we concentrate on the bet, the burgers and obviously a few beers.
From there it is on to the Beehive, one of the least accessible pubs in the city which is a fact that had somehow managed to escape my memory when I suggested it. Funny how that happens. You would think a man in my position would know every single detail about accessibility in places that I have been to, but I seem to have forgotten. Maybe I have got this place confused with another pub I have been in. That's easily done. I have worked in Liverpool for five years but can still get lost on my lunch hour if I take the risk of having a wander through the city centre. Of course, wandering through city centres is a summer pursuit so I haven't done it for a while. Liverpool is a whole lot less scenic when the women are strutting about in winter coats, hats and scarves. So anyway our bet is going down. We have agreed that if either of us win we will share the winnings, but I have taken Hartlepool who are 2-0 down at Scunthorpe, while he is relying on Brentford to beat Walsall. By the time they don't we have progressed to Yates on Queen Square, watching the results go through on Soccer Saturday without having to listen to Matt Le Tissier climax every time the ball goes near to this penalty area or that.
Soon enough it is fight time. With hindsight you may mock us for paying £70 each for what turns out to be a very brief glimpse of David Price. However, to do so would be to reckon without the fact that there are no fewer than 11 fights on this card. Our view is fairly spectacular. We're high enough without being too far away from the ring. Down below us we can see Frank Maloney strolling around full of his own self importance. There's a secluded area behind a curtain where we can see tables and chairs laid out. Someone is entertaining. A succession of fancily dressed (as opposed to fancy dress) people are turned away by security staff as they try to pass through. Not Frank. One security man tries to stop him but he brushes him aside with a 'do you know who I am' hand gesture. All night there are intermittentn glances of Frank and his self importance. He makes me want to spew, frankly. No pun intended. Frankly. See what I did unintentionally there? Anyway, Frank and boxing promoters in general are everything that is wrong with boxing itself. Governing bodies should decide who fights who, when, where and for what. Not mega-rich capitalist playboys. Yes, I'm ranting a little.
The first fight on the card is a Cruiserweight contest between local boy Louis Cuddy and a Hungarian man whose name escapes me. What I do know is that it is quite unpronouncable. Alex can tell me who it is because he has just shelled out £10 for a programme. It seemed like a good idea to him when he thought it might set him back £4 or £5, but £10? That's called being stung. I decline the opportunity to get my own copy and instead refer to his when I need to. Cuddy has a large enough following and he's fairly handy. Some of the nobility is taken out of boxing when you see it this closely. Punches which are hardly noticeable on television seem to thud into the recipient with infeasible force. And yet they stand there, unaffected for the most part. By the middle of the fourth round Cuddy is well on top of his opponent and forces a stoppage.
Next up a man named Sean Lewis, nicknamed the Ginger Mexican, earns a highly debatable points decision over four rounds against a Scotsman called Craig. Craig is a good deal better than the judges give him credit for and it is during this contest that we spot another difference between live boxing and televised boxing. Ring girls. Have you ever been watching the boxing and felt slightly cheated by the fact that between rounds you are listening to some trainer or other tell his charge how to avoid getting his face punched in when you could instead be watching some glamour model walk around the ring holding up a large card with a number on it? I have, but this is rectified here as two unspeakably glamourous women take it in turns to hold up the numbered cards. While it is true that they are not exactly overdressed, I have seen worse in pubs and clubs on a Saturday night. I really can't fathom why the television companies find it so tasteless.
From the Ginger Mexican we move on to see another fight finish at the round four mark, as David Burke is sparked clean out by Dean Mills. Now this is clearly a violent incident which, had it happened on the street would be highly unsavoury, but there is something exciting about it here, now, in this arena. It's up there with the ring girls in terms of fascination factor. It takes a good few minutes for Burke to come around but thankfully he does and manages to walk out of the ring. I would have hated for my first foray into the world of live boxing to have ended in a tragedy of some sort. Mills looks like he might do that to one or two more fighters before his career is out.
The well-knowns on the card (apart from Price and his opponent Tony Thompson) are up now. British and Commonwealth flyweight champion Kevin Satchell is up against Northern Ireland's Luke Wilton. If Cuddy's crowd were loud they haven't seen nothing yet with Wilton. To the tune of American Trilogy they bafflingly sing 'we're not Brazil, we're Northern Ireland' and monotonously chant 'East, east, east Belfast' throughout the fight. It goes the distance but Satchell is well in control throughout. Not that his fans agree. I go outside to pay a visit after the scores are read out and hear a group of his fans absolutely fume at the injustice of it all. No fucking way can those judges score that fight that way. They did.
Darren Hamilton is also a British champion, but at light-welterweight. He takes on and beats Wirral's Steve Williams which is not a very popular result. It's also a fight that is strangely devoid of ring girls. Perhaps they are taking a rest before the real business of the Price fight. When the giant scouser walks into the ring a little while later both he and his opponent have a ring girl in tow, each draped in the national flag of their fighter. Then they stand around looking lovely while the fighters are introduced. When Price walks in there is also a rousing, spine-tingling rendition of You'll Never Walk Alone. He's a big Liverpool fan and his fans seem to be too. They're into it. Alex is not and nor am I really. I'm more of a Saint than a Liverpool fan but Alex looks as though he is going to vomit at any moment.
The first round is uneventful. Thompson is 41 years old and is supposed to be just another name to be added to Price's unbeaten record. Neither men throw very much in the first three minutes, but if anyone has the upper hand it is Price who seems able to keep Thompson away with his reach and looks to be just sizing him up for a straight right. More of the same in round two until, about 40 seconds from the bell, Thompson unleashes a mighty club around the side of Price's head. He goes down and at first a recovery looks likely. He stands up, wobbles around a bit, then a bit more, before the referee decides he is in no fit state to continue. His eyes have glazed over and that is that. The main event is over, and Price's record has bitten the dust. Like David Burke before him he walks out of the ring unaided, and looks embarrassed more than physically hurt. The crowd are incandescent. Curiously, the event is not yet finished as there are three or four lesser fights on after the main event. But many of Price's fans are not sticking around to find out what happens. There's a good deal of booing going on, and dark mutterings about how much it cost per second for what we have just seen. Personally, I don't see a problem. That's sport. David Price may or may not lose again. He may or may not become a world champion. If he does, then we have seen something significant here tonight.
Adil Anwar follows, another light welterweight who is most notable for having won one of Sky's Prizefighter shebangs. That's an eight-man tournament with fights over three rounds on one night at one central venue on a knock-out basis. Boxing's equivalent of T20 cricket, if you like. Anwar is scheduled to go 10 here, but ends it in 7 with a classy display. It is the end for us too. One can only drink so much crappy arena lager after having been out all day. There is just time to see one man drunken man jump over a barrier in an attempt to get closer to the ring before being escorted from the arena. We get outside and search for a taxi. I am promptly sick in the street, something which invariably happens to me when I have spent the day drinking. My doctor could explain it to you. I'm not even that drunk. Alex is in a worse state. You know it's bad when he can't drink any more. There's always a story, some stag night or something he has been on which hinders his drinking. He's probably just getting old. Believe it or not, he's not 25.
The next morning I discover that Tony Bellew (an Evertonian who would be much more popular with Alex) is fighting at the Echo on March 30. I toy with the idea of booking but only for a few seconds until I realise that Saints are at Wigan on Good Friday, March 29 and so on March 30 I will have the kind of raging hangover that is totally incompatible with Fight Night.
There'll be others.
Strange then that I chose to go to the David Price fight at the Echo Arena recently. Despite everything I have just said about violence boxing is something that I do have more than a passing interest in. It probably goes back to being brought up on Rocky films or something but there is something different, less immediately vicious about the noble art. It's called the noble art, for starters. Noble or otherwise, I can often be found tuning in to some scrap or other on a Saturday night when I am not belting out bad boy band tunes at the ever declining Springfield.
The more fights I have seen the more I have wondered what it would be like to actually be there. It's something I had never done before and I knew my cousin Alex would be up for it. He considers himself a proper boxing fan and he probably watches UFC. So I said I would sort us some tickets out for the Price fight. Besides, we hardly spend any time together these days as he is a very elusive individual with about thirty different addresses and probably a dozen passports. It is at this point that I should warn you that, if you are thinking of taking my lead and attending a boxing match in the near future, you should make sure that your bank account is sufficiently stacked. These things do not come cheap. It cost over £150 for the two of us which, as anyone who knows Alex will not be aware, can lead to a nervous few days wondering about whether he will a) turn up and b) pay for his ticket.
Happily he comes good on both counts. He really does love his boxing, you know. Unfortunately there is a problem on the morning of the fight. Someone has chosen this particular Saturday, the only Saturday in living memory that I have to get to Liverpool city centre, to die at Broadgreen railway station. Now, being the proud owner of some mental health issues myself I have every sympathy with anyone who might have felt the need to take their own life. But do they have to do it today, this way? Isn't that just a little bit beyond the pale? Because now all the trains are off and Alex and I are having a stupid argument about how best to get to Liverpool. I'm happy to slum it on the bus but he's adamant that he should drive us to Wavertree where he works and get a taxi from there. The plan being that I will drive him to Wavertree to pick his car up in the morning. I'm not enamoured by this idea. I intend to be in no fit state to drive by the following morning. I point this out but we still don't have an agreement until it transpires that normal service is being resumed on the railways at 1.30. They must have mopped up the dead person.
Everton are playing today. Alex is an Evertonian. All of which means that he is very keen when we get there to find somehwere to watch the game. We settle upon a dingy little place across the road from Lime Street and St.John's market. We're hungry and we can get a burger here, and it is across the road also from a bookmakers so we can have a bet on the Saturday football coupon. We don't get to see Everton, however. Though the pub has the highly illegal foreign channel which shows Saturday afternoon games live it is not Everton against Norwich City but Manchester United's visit to QPR which is on all the screens. If there is one thing that Alex and I agree on it is that if Manchester United were playing in our front garden we would each draw the curtains. So instead we concentrate on the bet, the burgers and obviously a few beers.
From there it is on to the Beehive, one of the least accessible pubs in the city which is a fact that had somehow managed to escape my memory when I suggested it. Funny how that happens. You would think a man in my position would know every single detail about accessibility in places that I have been to, but I seem to have forgotten. Maybe I have got this place confused with another pub I have been in. That's easily done. I have worked in Liverpool for five years but can still get lost on my lunch hour if I take the risk of having a wander through the city centre. Of course, wandering through city centres is a summer pursuit so I haven't done it for a while. Liverpool is a whole lot less scenic when the women are strutting about in winter coats, hats and scarves. So anyway our bet is going down. We have agreed that if either of us win we will share the winnings, but I have taken Hartlepool who are 2-0 down at Scunthorpe, while he is relying on Brentford to beat Walsall. By the time they don't we have progressed to Yates on Queen Square, watching the results go through on Soccer Saturday without having to listen to Matt Le Tissier climax every time the ball goes near to this penalty area or that.
Soon enough it is fight time. With hindsight you may mock us for paying £70 each for what turns out to be a very brief glimpse of David Price. However, to do so would be to reckon without the fact that there are no fewer than 11 fights on this card. Our view is fairly spectacular. We're high enough without being too far away from the ring. Down below us we can see Frank Maloney strolling around full of his own self importance. There's a secluded area behind a curtain where we can see tables and chairs laid out. Someone is entertaining. A succession of fancily dressed (as opposed to fancy dress) people are turned away by security staff as they try to pass through. Not Frank. One security man tries to stop him but he brushes him aside with a 'do you know who I am' hand gesture. All night there are intermittentn glances of Frank and his self importance. He makes me want to spew, frankly. No pun intended. Frankly. See what I did unintentionally there? Anyway, Frank and boxing promoters in general are everything that is wrong with boxing itself. Governing bodies should decide who fights who, when, where and for what. Not mega-rich capitalist playboys. Yes, I'm ranting a little.
The first fight on the card is a Cruiserweight contest between local boy Louis Cuddy and a Hungarian man whose name escapes me. What I do know is that it is quite unpronouncable. Alex can tell me who it is because he has just shelled out £10 for a programme. It seemed like a good idea to him when he thought it might set him back £4 or £5, but £10? That's called being stung. I decline the opportunity to get my own copy and instead refer to his when I need to. Cuddy has a large enough following and he's fairly handy. Some of the nobility is taken out of boxing when you see it this closely. Punches which are hardly noticeable on television seem to thud into the recipient with infeasible force. And yet they stand there, unaffected for the most part. By the middle of the fourth round Cuddy is well on top of his opponent and forces a stoppage.
Next up a man named Sean Lewis, nicknamed the Ginger Mexican, earns a highly debatable points decision over four rounds against a Scotsman called Craig. Craig is a good deal better than the judges give him credit for and it is during this contest that we spot another difference between live boxing and televised boxing. Ring girls. Have you ever been watching the boxing and felt slightly cheated by the fact that between rounds you are listening to some trainer or other tell his charge how to avoid getting his face punched in when you could instead be watching some glamour model walk around the ring holding up a large card with a number on it? I have, but this is rectified here as two unspeakably glamourous women take it in turns to hold up the numbered cards. While it is true that they are not exactly overdressed, I have seen worse in pubs and clubs on a Saturday night. I really can't fathom why the television companies find it so tasteless.
From the Ginger Mexican we move on to see another fight finish at the round four mark, as David Burke is sparked clean out by Dean Mills. Now this is clearly a violent incident which, had it happened on the street would be highly unsavoury, but there is something exciting about it here, now, in this arena. It's up there with the ring girls in terms of fascination factor. It takes a good few minutes for Burke to come around but thankfully he does and manages to walk out of the ring. I would have hated for my first foray into the world of live boxing to have ended in a tragedy of some sort. Mills looks like he might do that to one or two more fighters before his career is out.
The well-knowns on the card (apart from Price and his opponent Tony Thompson) are up now. British and Commonwealth flyweight champion Kevin Satchell is up against Northern Ireland's Luke Wilton. If Cuddy's crowd were loud they haven't seen nothing yet with Wilton. To the tune of American Trilogy they bafflingly sing 'we're not Brazil, we're Northern Ireland' and monotonously chant 'East, east, east Belfast' throughout the fight. It goes the distance but Satchell is well in control throughout. Not that his fans agree. I go outside to pay a visit after the scores are read out and hear a group of his fans absolutely fume at the injustice of it all. No fucking way can those judges score that fight that way. They did.
Darren Hamilton is also a British champion, but at light-welterweight. He takes on and beats Wirral's Steve Williams which is not a very popular result. It's also a fight that is strangely devoid of ring girls. Perhaps they are taking a rest before the real business of the Price fight. When the giant scouser walks into the ring a little while later both he and his opponent have a ring girl in tow, each draped in the national flag of their fighter. Then they stand around looking lovely while the fighters are introduced. When Price walks in there is also a rousing, spine-tingling rendition of You'll Never Walk Alone. He's a big Liverpool fan and his fans seem to be too. They're into it. Alex is not and nor am I really. I'm more of a Saint than a Liverpool fan but Alex looks as though he is going to vomit at any moment.
The first round is uneventful. Thompson is 41 years old and is supposed to be just another name to be added to Price's unbeaten record. Neither men throw very much in the first three minutes, but if anyone has the upper hand it is Price who seems able to keep Thompson away with his reach and looks to be just sizing him up for a straight right. More of the same in round two until, about 40 seconds from the bell, Thompson unleashes a mighty club around the side of Price's head. He goes down and at first a recovery looks likely. He stands up, wobbles around a bit, then a bit more, before the referee decides he is in no fit state to continue. His eyes have glazed over and that is that. The main event is over, and Price's record has bitten the dust. Like David Burke before him he walks out of the ring unaided, and looks embarrassed more than physically hurt. The crowd are incandescent. Curiously, the event is not yet finished as there are three or four lesser fights on after the main event. But many of Price's fans are not sticking around to find out what happens. There's a good deal of booing going on, and dark mutterings about how much it cost per second for what we have just seen. Personally, I don't see a problem. That's sport. David Price may or may not lose again. He may or may not become a world champion. If he does, then we have seen something significant here tonight.
Adil Anwar follows, another light welterweight who is most notable for having won one of Sky's Prizefighter shebangs. That's an eight-man tournament with fights over three rounds on one night at one central venue on a knock-out basis. Boxing's equivalent of T20 cricket, if you like. Anwar is scheduled to go 10 here, but ends it in 7 with a classy display. It is the end for us too. One can only drink so much crappy arena lager after having been out all day. There is just time to see one man drunken man jump over a barrier in an attempt to get closer to the ring before being escorted from the arena. We get outside and search for a taxi. I am promptly sick in the street, something which invariably happens to me when I have spent the day drinking. My doctor could explain it to you. I'm not even that drunk. Alex is in a worse state. You know it's bad when he can't drink any more. There's always a story, some stag night or something he has been on which hinders his drinking. He's probably just getting old. Believe it or not, he's not 25.
The next morning I discover that Tony Bellew (an Evertonian who would be much more popular with Alex) is fighting at the Echo on March 30. I toy with the idea of booking but only for a few seconds until I realise that Saints are at Wigan on Good Friday, March 29 and so on March 30 I will have the kind of raging hangover that is totally incompatible with Fight Night.
There'll be others.
Thursday, 28 February 2013
The National Football Museum
England is the home of football. We've only won one meaningful trophy in the FA's 150-year history, and that came some 47 years ago. There are even those who cheapen this record still further by reminding us that that particular triumph was on home soil, where we got to play every game at Wembley and benefited more than a little from the questionable eyesight of a linesman (referees assistant to you younger readers) from Azerbaijan. No, he wasn't Russian. Not strictly speaking. Yet despite this inglorious bastard of a record, England is the home of football. It's birthplace.
Fitting then that it should be home to the National Football Museum. Fitting yes, but somewhat perplexing that I hadn't been through the doors of the museum until just over a week ago. Though I consider myself more of a rugby league man these days, I am and always have been a football follower too. The shift to rugby league probably owes a lot to the decline of Liverpool FC over the last 20 years and almost certainly has its roots in a certain Michael Thomas goal at Anfield in 1989. The funny thing about Thomas' goal is that aswell as providing the lowest on-field moment in my football-watching life, it is also the backdrop to the finale of Fever Pitch. Nick Hornby's seminal account of a life watching Arsenal between the late 1960's and the early 1990's is by far the best sports book I have ever read and one of the main reasons I took to writing and why you find yourself about to sit through yet more of my meanderings. I know, shocking as it is, you can stick your Ashley Cole autobiography up your arse. Fifty Shades Of Shite.
I drive to the museum with my nephew Joe, my cousin's son Jamie and my mum. A lot of my footballing memories as a boy seem to include my mum complaining about having to watch it on television. Now she's a committed fan. Liverpool of course. I am still nominally a Liverpool fan as is my dad, while Joe remains as much a fanatic as I was when I was almost 14 years old. Before Michael Thomas and Brian Moore and 'up for grabs now'. I keep wondering what his Michael Thomas moment might be. I was spoiled as a kid watching Liverpool. It seemed like we won the league and/or the European Cup every year. We. See, Hornby is right, it's in there, all the time, waiting to get out. By contrast Joe has seen one Champions League win as a six-year-old in 2005, but by and large he has spent his time watching his heroes trail in the wake of Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and now Manchester City. He has been with me to Langtree Park a couple of times but he remains a devoted red. What is it going to take to get him to commit further to the Saints cause? Relegation? It seems a stretch to imagine that, even as you see Jonjo Shelvey fall over the ball or Stewart Downing limply turn down another blind alley. They're just not bad enough to test Joe's resolve.
It takes a while to park. I had looked on the museum's website but in a manner that is consistent with the half-arsed, lazy way that I do most things, decided not to print anything out or write anything down for reference. I'd just turn up and the parking would look after itself. It doesn't quite. We end up in a large multi-story behind the Printworks, which is not a Printworks at all but a thriving shopping and dining complex. There's a banner draped over the wall as we wind up the ramp to the parking spaces that advertises parking for the day for £3.90. All of which seems very reasonable and besides, we have been driving around Manchester for 20 minutes. Despite passing the museum when looking for a parking space, we still have to ask a lady on the street how to get there on foot. Navigational skills are in short supply here.
The museum has four floors but from the outside it doesn't seem like a particularly huge building. It's an L-shaped affair, and we pass the café on the way towards the entrance. There we are greeted by a young lady who informs us that today we will be treated to a number of performances from John Farnworth, the World Freestyle Football Champion. At this point I am not entirely sure what Freestyle Football is, but I have a pretty good idea that it is a glorified form of keepy-uppy. Speaking of which, when I was around Joe's age there was a slightly older boy who lived in our street called Spike Vaughton who could keep the ball up almost at will. Terms like Freestyle Football were just a marketing man's dream back then, but if such a thing had existed Spike Vaughton would have excelled. I now live in his grandparents' old house. There's lots of our family within a stones throw of each other. It's a bit like that in Thatto Heath. We can't all be Johnny Vegas.
The entrance to the museum is, in fine but clunkingly obvious footballing tradition, a turnstile. Unfortunately, just like in real stadia, wheelchair users are unable to pass through turnstiles so instead at the push of a button a gate opens. Very slowly. It moves slower than Bully's dartboard as the least hapless of each episode's three couples decide whether they are going to gamble or that in fact that they have 'had a great day' and will take home their £30. We spend some time at the Hall Of Fame video wall where, bizarrely, Joe shows both his age and mine. The wall flashes up a whole host of football legends past and present, their career highlights, some stats, that sort of thing. Up pops Bryan Robson, possibly the most over-rated footballer ever to stalk the Earth;
"I thought that was Kevin Keegan!" says Joe as the caption appears. Evidently, Robson is not that highly rated by the under 14's, whereas if you are as old as me it is absolute heresy to suggest he is anything short of a genius. I sit and watch some more and to be honest I could spend hours here. Everyone is chronicled from George Best to Peter Shilton, to Franz Beckenbauer to David Beckham. Further information passes through on a brightly lit ticker which I think is meant to look like a stadium scoreboard. Even the one at Langtree is grander than that, however. Soon the others are harassing me to go upstairs and though I could easily spend more time with the game's legends, I find myself in the lift heading for the first floor. The lift is not your bog-standard, straight up, straight down lift. This lift travels on an incline, and is made completely of glass so that you can see perfectly well that you are climbing at an angle as you travel between floors. I like it, but I'm not quite sure I see the need for it, or it's relevance to football. It's an imponderable I don't have time for as we move out onto the first floor. The doors open and as we vacate the lift a familiar face steps in. I look up to see the haggard, serious-looking features of PFA Chief Executive Gordon Taylor. I manage to avoid the complete and utter twattery that would be saying hello to him, but can't resist trying to explain to my unimpressed mum who he is.
Soon I am separated from my mum and the boys. I am one of those awkward bastards who feels the need to actually read the information at museums. I'm a bugger for it, really. As they excitedly hop around glancing at exhibits I am reading up thoroughly on the fate of wartime footballers. They have disappeared around a corner when a young lady approaches me and tells me that the film is about to start at the cinema, and would I like to go in? Why not? I take a break from the wartime stuff then and find myself in a small, dark auditorium with an infeasibly large screen. It's made to look even larger by how close it is to the audience. For the next 10 or 12 minutes I sit, if I'm honest, trying to figure out the point of the film. There's no narrative as such, no narrator certainly. What there is, is a series of fly-on-the-wall style clips of people playing and watching football. From Hackney Marshes to the Premier League and all levels in between, the film demonstrates the sights and sounds of football without saying very much about the game. People like football. Well, shit. I knew that.
I go back to the exhibits. There's Gordon Smith's shirt from the 1983 FA Cup Final between Brighton & Hove Albion and Manchester United. We're back to Brian Moore again. Only instead of telling us it's 'up for grabs now' just before Michael Thomas makes me a die-hard Saint, he's declaring that 'Smith must score!' just before Gordon smashes his shot straight at Gary Bailey in the United goal. It's the final minutes of a 2-2 draw at Wembley and Smith has just blown the chance to win the game at the last gasp. United win the replay 4-0 and 'Smith Must Score' becomes the title of a Brighton & Hove Albion fanzine. On such moments history changes forever. There's also Mark Lawrenson's track-suit top from the 1984 European Cup Final in Rome, which Liverpool won on penalties and for which I was still a serious fan with nothing bad to say about the club. Not even about these tracksuits which are now more famous for being the outfit of choice of Harry Enfield characters. Tash not included. Dullard, overly superior Match Of The Day punditry optional.
Eventually my mum catches up with me but she does not have Joe or Jamie with her. She has left them on the second floor, the interactive zone. They're taking penalties or some such. And queuing for the privilege. We've been here a couple of hours and it is lunch time. My mum suggests a quick break. As we have already agreed to go out for an evening meal when we finish I reluctantly agree. The honest truth is that I would rather read up on more memorabilia. There's Spitting Image puppets of Eric Cantona and Gary Lineker to browse. But she insists and goes off to find the boys. She can't. What is more she can't phone Joe because his phone is in her handbag. He had asked her to mind it because the battery went some time during the journey. She doesn't have Jamie's number. We resolve to go for lunch and then ring either Helen (Joe's mum, my sister) or Joanne (Jamie's mum, my cousin) to get Jamie's number to let them know where we are. This plan would have worked perfectly had Helen had the right number for Jamie and had Joanne been available. Instead we have to wait it out in the café until they get hungry and come and find us. Fortunately it doesn't take that long.
After lunch (the least impressive ham sandwich I have ever tasted, which is some achievement when you consider that I often have lunch in the Liverpool John Moores University canteen) I go for a pit stop. Or whatever the equivalent footballing term might be. Whatever, I mention this only because there are actually small goalnets in the mens urinals, with something green laid across in front of it to possibly resemble the patch of grass in a goalmouth. They designers probably think it's cute but I think it is fairly tasteless. It puts me in mind of some Scottish football club or other who have urinals emblazoned with the images of rival players. I saw it on tv but I can't rightly remember when or why? But as we both know, tv is never wrong.
After lunch I am waiting around for the others to finish their bathroom stops when I roll on over towards where John Farnworth is performing. My journalistic curiosity has got the better of me and I am soon watching him with interest from just a few feet away. A minute or so later I think I've seen enough and turn to leave, but as I turn around I see that the security people have placed a barrier all the way around the audience who are gathered to watch. We are trapped in for the duration. Patiently, I sit through his full 15-minute repertoire. While some of the skills are mind-boggling and consist of things that even Spike Vaughton couldn't manage, there's one smug look to the audience too many for me, one inappropriate, fuck-all-to-do-with-football dance move more than I can reasonably stand. I'm relieved when it's over and I rejoin my mum and the boys. As I turn to leave the area, now free from the barrier, I bump into Gordon Taylor again. He looks serious still, and impossibly self-important. I'm concerned that he might be stalking me.
Joe and I go back up to the first floor briefly as my determination to read everything and anything shows no sign of wavering. Yet soon we are up on the second, and interacting. It's not all about taking penalties you will be relieved to know if, like me, kicking footballs is something you have just never got the hang of. I listen on telephones to Larry Lloyd and Steve Coppell among others talk tactics and motivational speeches, play 'you are the ref' so brilliantly illustrated by Paul Trevellion, and get beat 2-1 by Joe in an impromptu game of Football Top Trumps. We're outraged that our decision to give a penalty during one 'you are the ref' clip turns out to be the wrong one (I remain adamant that the handball in the clip was deliberate) and not everything works but it is all good fun. There's something ironic about a touch screen video wall showcasing televisual milestones in football being faulty. Try as I might I cannot get the clip from 1983 to work and so I guess will never know what happened that year to change the way football was broadcast in this country.
Finally we advance to the third floor which is a temporary themed exhibition. For the moment it focuses on football fashion. If you are interested in what the wags are wearing, what Bestie had on in the 1960's, or even Liverpool's infamous cream suits of 1996 or Jose Mourinho's long coat, it's all here for you. My mum remarks that George Best might not have been a very big fellow but he would never have squeezed into the shirt which is claimed to be his property. She's probably right. Indeed, a lot of the shirts on display which are said to belong to famous players from famous games seem a little on the small side. Either they bred footballers a little smaller in those days, or there is some serious shrinkage going on as the years pass by in these display cabinets. I'm dissuaded from going up to the fourth floor because it's 'only kids stuff, all about learning, it's crap honest' and we resolve to end our visit. But not before we pay a full £12.00 at the car parking meter. What happened to £3.90? Does car parking at the National Football Museum go up in line with the rate of inflation normally reserved for football players' wages and transfer fees?
I get us lost on the way home because I know about as much about Manchester geography as I do about Polish literature. Nevertheless we somehow make it back in time to meet up with Joanne and Helen (aswell as my other nephew, Patrick, who had declined the opportunity to join us in favour of a day out ten-pin bowling with Joanne) for a bit of early evening pub food. It's all very agreeable.
As is the National Football Museum, for the most part.
Fitting then that it should be home to the National Football Museum. Fitting yes, but somewhat perplexing that I hadn't been through the doors of the museum until just over a week ago. Though I consider myself more of a rugby league man these days, I am and always have been a football follower too. The shift to rugby league probably owes a lot to the decline of Liverpool FC over the last 20 years and almost certainly has its roots in a certain Michael Thomas goal at Anfield in 1989. The funny thing about Thomas' goal is that aswell as providing the lowest on-field moment in my football-watching life, it is also the backdrop to the finale of Fever Pitch. Nick Hornby's seminal account of a life watching Arsenal between the late 1960's and the early 1990's is by far the best sports book I have ever read and one of the main reasons I took to writing and why you find yourself about to sit through yet more of my meanderings. I know, shocking as it is, you can stick your Ashley Cole autobiography up your arse. Fifty Shades Of Shite.
I drive to the museum with my nephew Joe, my cousin's son Jamie and my mum. A lot of my footballing memories as a boy seem to include my mum complaining about having to watch it on television. Now she's a committed fan. Liverpool of course. I am still nominally a Liverpool fan as is my dad, while Joe remains as much a fanatic as I was when I was almost 14 years old. Before Michael Thomas and Brian Moore and 'up for grabs now'. I keep wondering what his Michael Thomas moment might be. I was spoiled as a kid watching Liverpool. It seemed like we won the league and/or the European Cup every year. We. See, Hornby is right, it's in there, all the time, waiting to get out. By contrast Joe has seen one Champions League win as a six-year-old in 2005, but by and large he has spent his time watching his heroes trail in the wake of Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and now Manchester City. He has been with me to Langtree Park a couple of times but he remains a devoted red. What is it going to take to get him to commit further to the Saints cause? Relegation? It seems a stretch to imagine that, even as you see Jonjo Shelvey fall over the ball or Stewart Downing limply turn down another blind alley. They're just not bad enough to test Joe's resolve.
It takes a while to park. I had looked on the museum's website but in a manner that is consistent with the half-arsed, lazy way that I do most things, decided not to print anything out or write anything down for reference. I'd just turn up and the parking would look after itself. It doesn't quite. We end up in a large multi-story behind the Printworks, which is not a Printworks at all but a thriving shopping and dining complex. There's a banner draped over the wall as we wind up the ramp to the parking spaces that advertises parking for the day for £3.90. All of which seems very reasonable and besides, we have been driving around Manchester for 20 minutes. Despite passing the museum when looking for a parking space, we still have to ask a lady on the street how to get there on foot. Navigational skills are in short supply here.
The museum has four floors but from the outside it doesn't seem like a particularly huge building. It's an L-shaped affair, and we pass the café on the way towards the entrance. There we are greeted by a young lady who informs us that today we will be treated to a number of performances from John Farnworth, the World Freestyle Football Champion. At this point I am not entirely sure what Freestyle Football is, but I have a pretty good idea that it is a glorified form of keepy-uppy. Speaking of which, when I was around Joe's age there was a slightly older boy who lived in our street called Spike Vaughton who could keep the ball up almost at will. Terms like Freestyle Football were just a marketing man's dream back then, but if such a thing had existed Spike Vaughton would have excelled. I now live in his grandparents' old house. There's lots of our family within a stones throw of each other. It's a bit like that in Thatto Heath. We can't all be Johnny Vegas.
The entrance to the museum is, in fine but clunkingly obvious footballing tradition, a turnstile. Unfortunately, just like in real stadia, wheelchair users are unable to pass through turnstiles so instead at the push of a button a gate opens. Very slowly. It moves slower than Bully's dartboard as the least hapless of each episode's three couples decide whether they are going to gamble or that in fact that they have 'had a great day' and will take home their £30. We spend some time at the Hall Of Fame video wall where, bizarrely, Joe shows both his age and mine. The wall flashes up a whole host of football legends past and present, their career highlights, some stats, that sort of thing. Up pops Bryan Robson, possibly the most over-rated footballer ever to stalk the Earth;
"I thought that was Kevin Keegan!" says Joe as the caption appears. Evidently, Robson is not that highly rated by the under 14's, whereas if you are as old as me it is absolute heresy to suggest he is anything short of a genius. I sit and watch some more and to be honest I could spend hours here. Everyone is chronicled from George Best to Peter Shilton, to Franz Beckenbauer to David Beckham. Further information passes through on a brightly lit ticker which I think is meant to look like a stadium scoreboard. Even the one at Langtree is grander than that, however. Soon the others are harassing me to go upstairs and though I could easily spend more time with the game's legends, I find myself in the lift heading for the first floor. The lift is not your bog-standard, straight up, straight down lift. This lift travels on an incline, and is made completely of glass so that you can see perfectly well that you are climbing at an angle as you travel between floors. I like it, but I'm not quite sure I see the need for it, or it's relevance to football. It's an imponderable I don't have time for as we move out onto the first floor. The doors open and as we vacate the lift a familiar face steps in. I look up to see the haggard, serious-looking features of PFA Chief Executive Gordon Taylor. I manage to avoid the complete and utter twattery that would be saying hello to him, but can't resist trying to explain to my unimpressed mum who he is.
Soon I am separated from my mum and the boys. I am one of those awkward bastards who feels the need to actually read the information at museums. I'm a bugger for it, really. As they excitedly hop around glancing at exhibits I am reading up thoroughly on the fate of wartime footballers. They have disappeared around a corner when a young lady approaches me and tells me that the film is about to start at the cinema, and would I like to go in? Why not? I take a break from the wartime stuff then and find myself in a small, dark auditorium with an infeasibly large screen. It's made to look even larger by how close it is to the audience. For the next 10 or 12 minutes I sit, if I'm honest, trying to figure out the point of the film. There's no narrative as such, no narrator certainly. What there is, is a series of fly-on-the-wall style clips of people playing and watching football. From Hackney Marshes to the Premier League and all levels in between, the film demonstrates the sights and sounds of football without saying very much about the game. People like football. Well, shit. I knew that.
I go back to the exhibits. There's Gordon Smith's shirt from the 1983 FA Cup Final between Brighton & Hove Albion and Manchester United. We're back to Brian Moore again. Only instead of telling us it's 'up for grabs now' just before Michael Thomas makes me a die-hard Saint, he's declaring that 'Smith must score!' just before Gordon smashes his shot straight at Gary Bailey in the United goal. It's the final minutes of a 2-2 draw at Wembley and Smith has just blown the chance to win the game at the last gasp. United win the replay 4-0 and 'Smith Must Score' becomes the title of a Brighton & Hove Albion fanzine. On such moments history changes forever. There's also Mark Lawrenson's track-suit top from the 1984 European Cup Final in Rome, which Liverpool won on penalties and for which I was still a serious fan with nothing bad to say about the club. Not even about these tracksuits which are now more famous for being the outfit of choice of Harry Enfield characters. Tash not included. Dullard, overly superior Match Of The Day punditry optional.
Eventually my mum catches up with me but she does not have Joe or Jamie with her. She has left them on the second floor, the interactive zone. They're taking penalties or some such. And queuing for the privilege. We've been here a couple of hours and it is lunch time. My mum suggests a quick break. As we have already agreed to go out for an evening meal when we finish I reluctantly agree. The honest truth is that I would rather read up on more memorabilia. There's Spitting Image puppets of Eric Cantona and Gary Lineker to browse. But she insists and goes off to find the boys. She can't. What is more she can't phone Joe because his phone is in her handbag. He had asked her to mind it because the battery went some time during the journey. She doesn't have Jamie's number. We resolve to go for lunch and then ring either Helen (Joe's mum, my sister) or Joanne (Jamie's mum, my cousin) to get Jamie's number to let them know where we are. This plan would have worked perfectly had Helen had the right number for Jamie and had Joanne been available. Instead we have to wait it out in the café until they get hungry and come and find us. Fortunately it doesn't take that long.
After lunch (the least impressive ham sandwich I have ever tasted, which is some achievement when you consider that I often have lunch in the Liverpool John Moores University canteen) I go for a pit stop. Or whatever the equivalent footballing term might be. Whatever, I mention this only because there are actually small goalnets in the mens urinals, with something green laid across in front of it to possibly resemble the patch of grass in a goalmouth. They designers probably think it's cute but I think it is fairly tasteless. It puts me in mind of some Scottish football club or other who have urinals emblazoned with the images of rival players. I saw it on tv but I can't rightly remember when or why? But as we both know, tv is never wrong.
After lunch I am waiting around for the others to finish their bathroom stops when I roll on over towards where John Farnworth is performing. My journalistic curiosity has got the better of me and I am soon watching him with interest from just a few feet away. A minute or so later I think I've seen enough and turn to leave, but as I turn around I see that the security people have placed a barrier all the way around the audience who are gathered to watch. We are trapped in for the duration. Patiently, I sit through his full 15-minute repertoire. While some of the skills are mind-boggling and consist of things that even Spike Vaughton couldn't manage, there's one smug look to the audience too many for me, one inappropriate, fuck-all-to-do-with-football dance move more than I can reasonably stand. I'm relieved when it's over and I rejoin my mum and the boys. As I turn to leave the area, now free from the barrier, I bump into Gordon Taylor again. He looks serious still, and impossibly self-important. I'm concerned that he might be stalking me.
Joe and I go back up to the first floor briefly as my determination to read everything and anything shows no sign of wavering. Yet soon we are up on the second, and interacting. It's not all about taking penalties you will be relieved to know if, like me, kicking footballs is something you have just never got the hang of. I listen on telephones to Larry Lloyd and Steve Coppell among others talk tactics and motivational speeches, play 'you are the ref' so brilliantly illustrated by Paul Trevellion, and get beat 2-1 by Joe in an impromptu game of Football Top Trumps. We're outraged that our decision to give a penalty during one 'you are the ref' clip turns out to be the wrong one (I remain adamant that the handball in the clip was deliberate) and not everything works but it is all good fun. There's something ironic about a touch screen video wall showcasing televisual milestones in football being faulty. Try as I might I cannot get the clip from 1983 to work and so I guess will never know what happened that year to change the way football was broadcast in this country.
Finally we advance to the third floor which is a temporary themed exhibition. For the moment it focuses on football fashion. If you are interested in what the wags are wearing, what Bestie had on in the 1960's, or even Liverpool's infamous cream suits of 1996 or Jose Mourinho's long coat, it's all here for you. My mum remarks that George Best might not have been a very big fellow but he would never have squeezed into the shirt which is claimed to be his property. She's probably right. Indeed, a lot of the shirts on display which are said to belong to famous players from famous games seem a little on the small side. Either they bred footballers a little smaller in those days, or there is some serious shrinkage going on as the years pass by in these display cabinets. I'm dissuaded from going up to the fourth floor because it's 'only kids stuff, all about learning, it's crap honest' and we resolve to end our visit. But not before we pay a full £12.00 at the car parking meter. What happened to £3.90? Does car parking at the National Football Museum go up in line with the rate of inflation normally reserved for football players' wages and transfer fees?
I get us lost on the way home because I know about as much about Manchester geography as I do about Polish literature. Nevertheless we somehow make it back in time to meet up with Joanne and Helen (aswell as my other nephew, Patrick, who had declined the opportunity to join us in favour of a day out ten-pin bowling with Joanne) for a bit of early evening pub food. It's all very agreeable.
As is the National Football Museum, for the most part.
Wednesday, 23 January 2013
Wheelchair Services
I went to wheelchair services this morning.
The chair I have is five years old. Although it is regularly maintained it has taken a bit of a hammering during that time and I need a change. The process for getting a new wheelchair should be straightforward. After all, it is a pretty vital piece of equipment. Yet you probably won't be surprised to learn that the whole shebang starts with the completion of the obligatory forms at the local health centre and leads on (around three months later) to the visit I paid today to the Health & Resource Centre. I didn't even know such a place existed until I received my letter inviting me to today's appointment, but there it is in all it's glory opposite the old site of Lowie's nightclub.
I was just about in time for my 9.30 appointment but I was destined to be late all the same. Despite what the letter described as 'ample' parking there were no disabled bays available when I got there. There is a certain irony about someone attending a Health & Resource Centre to be assessed for a new wheelchair and being unable to find a disabled parking space. I had to phone through to let them know that I had arrived and would be with them as soon as I could. Going back to the letter, it had pointed out that should I not attend my appointment they would assume that I no longer had any interest in acquiring a new wheelchair and 'close my file'. Please no, not that. Anything but that. So I wasn't taking any chances.
Following the directions I had been given for the wheelchair services department I was greeted en route by Jeff who, after establishing that I am Mr Orford, led me through to a small room. An open door at the back of the room is emblazoned with the words 'assessment centre'. And that's it. That's wheelchair services. A small room rather like you might find yourself in when visiting your local GP. No sign of any of the admin staff I had spoken to on the phone, just me and Jeff left to thrash out the finer points of the deal.
Not that there looks to be much that is all that fine about this prospective deal. My plan was to simply re-order a brand new version of the chair that I have now. I like the chair that I have now. I looks relatively modern for an NHS chair and is pretty durable. Simple enough. Well no. Jeff, who at this point it must be said is a genuinely personable fellow and seems to be sincerely on the side of the customer, informs me that Lomax, the company which manufactured my current chair, have been bought out and so the model I have is no longer in production. Furthermore, there is now only one model of chair available for free from the NHS and would I like to see one? There is one in the back room. I nod, and Jeff pops into the room behind the 'assessment centre' door and emerges with the chair.
There's no polite way of saying this. It's ugly. Seriously, it's cumbersome and square and awkward looking. It looks like something out of the 1960's. When Jeff tells me that this piece of scrap metal is worth £1,800 I feel slightly queasy. Leaving aside it's aesthetic flaws, it's a piece of metal and a couple of wheels. No more materials than are required for the average push-bike. How can it possibly be worth so much? I knew what was coming next. If I didn't want that one courtesy of the NHS for free (and I didn't) then the alternative was their voucher system whereby they give you a contribution of around £1,000 and you pay the rest yourself for something a little more modern. Since something a little more modern could cost upwards of £2,500 it's going to be expensive and may have to wait a while after all. Regardless, I asked Jeff to send me the information on the voucher system so I could see what exactly is available and what it will cost.
The problem here is that wheelchair users are a captive market. While you may occasionally hear on the radio or television about the government trying to do something about extortionate mobile phone prices or utility bills, it seems they are perfectly happy to let the cost of wheelchairs rise through the stratosphere. After all, only a small percentage of the population need them so why should they care? Credit Jeff again, because he fully understood why I could not just accept the ugly chair because it does the job of getting me from A to B. I spend around 10 hours a day in my wheelchair and if I am not comfortable in it then that is an issue. Ask anyone who knows me and they will tell you that vanity is not one of my flaws, but asking someone to sit in a wheelchair they find embarrassing for 10 hours a day is unacceptable. I'd rather wear a dress all day. Probably. Let's not forget that the wheelchair is pretty much the only thing that some people see in any case. It has to look reasonably attractive. If a wheelchair can ever be described as such.
I shook hands with Jeff on went on my way to work, pondering all of this a little further as I drove. By the time I arrived at about 11.00 all of the disabled parking spaces were taken. We've been here before once already today I thought as I made my way into the main car park. Nothing there either, nothing but the brilliant self-mockery that was to be found in spotting my shoe, the one I left behind in the snow on Friday afternoon, just lazily lying there in the car park. After much pointless deliberation, dithering and numerous attempts to contact Emma I instead parked in a nearby street, but only had enough money for a one hour ticket in the pay and display. I then had to ask my boss if I could just write off the rest of the morning so that I could sort out my parking situation and get some lunch. It was already around 11.20 at this point and I normally take my lunch at 12.00. Kindly she agreed and I eventually found Emma, who moved the car to another car park which saved us the princely sum of £2. It is a staggering £8.80 to park for four hours in the street I had chosen, and £6 for the car park we eventually used. Almost as scandalously expensive as the going rate for wheelchairs..
It may be a while before I take any more time off in the morning to visit wheelchair services.......
The chair I have is five years old. Although it is regularly maintained it has taken a bit of a hammering during that time and I need a change. The process for getting a new wheelchair should be straightforward. After all, it is a pretty vital piece of equipment. Yet you probably won't be surprised to learn that the whole shebang starts with the completion of the obligatory forms at the local health centre and leads on (around three months later) to the visit I paid today to the Health & Resource Centre. I didn't even know such a place existed until I received my letter inviting me to today's appointment, but there it is in all it's glory opposite the old site of Lowie's nightclub.
I was just about in time for my 9.30 appointment but I was destined to be late all the same. Despite what the letter described as 'ample' parking there were no disabled bays available when I got there. There is a certain irony about someone attending a Health & Resource Centre to be assessed for a new wheelchair and being unable to find a disabled parking space. I had to phone through to let them know that I had arrived and would be with them as soon as I could. Going back to the letter, it had pointed out that should I not attend my appointment they would assume that I no longer had any interest in acquiring a new wheelchair and 'close my file'. Please no, not that. Anything but that. So I wasn't taking any chances.
Following the directions I had been given for the wheelchair services department I was greeted en route by Jeff who, after establishing that I am Mr Orford, led me through to a small room. An open door at the back of the room is emblazoned with the words 'assessment centre'. And that's it. That's wheelchair services. A small room rather like you might find yourself in when visiting your local GP. No sign of any of the admin staff I had spoken to on the phone, just me and Jeff left to thrash out the finer points of the deal.
Not that there looks to be much that is all that fine about this prospective deal. My plan was to simply re-order a brand new version of the chair that I have now. I like the chair that I have now. I looks relatively modern for an NHS chair and is pretty durable. Simple enough. Well no. Jeff, who at this point it must be said is a genuinely personable fellow and seems to be sincerely on the side of the customer, informs me that Lomax, the company which manufactured my current chair, have been bought out and so the model I have is no longer in production. Furthermore, there is now only one model of chair available for free from the NHS and would I like to see one? There is one in the back room. I nod, and Jeff pops into the room behind the 'assessment centre' door and emerges with the chair.
There's no polite way of saying this. It's ugly. Seriously, it's cumbersome and square and awkward looking. It looks like something out of the 1960's. When Jeff tells me that this piece of scrap metal is worth £1,800 I feel slightly queasy. Leaving aside it's aesthetic flaws, it's a piece of metal and a couple of wheels. No more materials than are required for the average push-bike. How can it possibly be worth so much? I knew what was coming next. If I didn't want that one courtesy of the NHS for free (and I didn't) then the alternative was their voucher system whereby they give you a contribution of around £1,000 and you pay the rest yourself for something a little more modern. Since something a little more modern could cost upwards of £2,500 it's going to be expensive and may have to wait a while after all. Regardless, I asked Jeff to send me the information on the voucher system so I could see what exactly is available and what it will cost.
The problem here is that wheelchair users are a captive market. While you may occasionally hear on the radio or television about the government trying to do something about extortionate mobile phone prices or utility bills, it seems they are perfectly happy to let the cost of wheelchairs rise through the stratosphere. After all, only a small percentage of the population need them so why should they care? Credit Jeff again, because he fully understood why I could not just accept the ugly chair because it does the job of getting me from A to B. I spend around 10 hours a day in my wheelchair and if I am not comfortable in it then that is an issue. Ask anyone who knows me and they will tell you that vanity is not one of my flaws, but asking someone to sit in a wheelchair they find embarrassing for 10 hours a day is unacceptable. I'd rather wear a dress all day. Probably. Let's not forget that the wheelchair is pretty much the only thing that some people see in any case. It has to look reasonably attractive. If a wheelchair can ever be described as such.
I shook hands with Jeff on went on my way to work, pondering all of this a little further as I drove. By the time I arrived at about 11.00 all of the disabled parking spaces were taken. We've been here before once already today I thought as I made my way into the main car park. Nothing there either, nothing but the brilliant self-mockery that was to be found in spotting my shoe, the one I left behind in the snow on Friday afternoon, just lazily lying there in the car park. After much pointless deliberation, dithering and numerous attempts to contact Emma I instead parked in a nearby street, but only had enough money for a one hour ticket in the pay and display. I then had to ask my boss if I could just write off the rest of the morning so that I could sort out my parking situation and get some lunch. It was already around 11.20 at this point and I normally take my lunch at 12.00. Kindly she agreed and I eventually found Emma, who moved the car to another car park which saved us the princely sum of £2. It is a staggering £8.80 to park for four hours in the street I had chosen, and £6 for the car park we eventually used. Almost as scandalously expensive as the going rate for wheelchairs..
It may be a while before I take any more time off in the morning to visit wheelchair services.......
Tuesday, 22 January 2013
The Blow Out
Anyone who saw my last entry will know that I recently had a funeral to go to. The service for my old team-mate and friend Neil ('Bliss') was held close to his home in Buckinghamshire. Perhaps it would have been easy for some to consider the journey to Milton Keynes from the north west too far, and in many cases it might have been. But not in this case. Not for someone who had such a huge influence on me in some of the best years of my life.
So I went. As ever with me it is not as straightforward as 'I went to the funeral, I went for a drink afterwards, I came home'. Oh no. My problems began after the service. Before we get there though I must just share with you a conversation I had with an old-team-mate outside the chapel while we were waiting to go inside for the service;
"How did you know Neil, then? Was it through fencing?" asked an older gentleman whom I knew very well, but who clearly didn't remember me.
"Er..no." I replied.
"....I played basketball with him. And with you as it happens. At Bolton."
A puzzled look......another of hurried realisation and then.....
"You've grown up."
To be fair to my old Bolton team-mate Brian Dickinson, I have. Even if I don't always act like it. To be yet fairer to him, I played only a season or two with him and the last of those was something like 17 years ago. He might remember a much slimmer, fitter young fellow with more hair and a damn sight more energy and enthusiasm.
So the plan afterwards was to head to the David Lloyd centre for a drink and a chat. Perhaps a chance to reminisce and exchange stories of Neil and his contagious energy and ebullience. I made arrangements with another former team-mate Mark, who was riding in the car of yet another one, Sue. They would wait in their parking space while I went down to the bottom end of the crematorium were I had hurriedly parked my car earlier having got slightly lost on the way and arriving with about 20 minutes to spare. It turns out I don't have the technological know-how to operate Emma's sat-nav system and so I had reached my destination by asking a mechanic at a place nearby called 'Brake World'. He was very helpful.
So anyway I get into my car after the now obligatory fight with my not-so-lightweight wheelchair (it was so much easier when I was an athlete, when I knew Neil) and headed towards where Sue and Mark were parked. Except they weren't. All I could see was a queue of traffic, all drivers trying to make their way down the narrow lane which led to the exit. By now it was snowing quite heavily and it was 5.45 pm. I had only booked the one day off from work and I had a three-hour drive in front of me. I joined the queue and hoped to get a glimpse somewhere of Mark and Sue, or at least latch on to someone else who might be headed over to the David Lloyd centre. Surely the majority of people stuck in the queue would be. This is where my theory broke down and I lucked out. By the time I had the main road in my sights there were two cars in front of me. The first pulled out on to the busy road and turned left. The second pulled out on to it and turned right. So which one of them was going to the David Lloyd centre and which one was going home? Were they both going to the David Lloyd centre but just via different routes? Were they both going home? These were unanswerables. I decided there and then that since I had lost Mark and Sue and since it wasn't safe at that moment to make a phone call to enquire as to their whereabouts, I was going home.
I stopped at Northampton Services to make the phone call about 20 minutes later. Mark apologised and so since has Sue, but with the snow getting worse and time moving on I was certain it was best to head back on home. All well and good then for the next couple of hours until, driving at a granddad-like 50mph (something I have done frequently since my speeding fine) I felt the car jolt and heard quite a loud bumping noise. Not like a pop or a bang, just a thud. The steering was fine at first but as I drew nearer to home it got more difficult until by the time I exited the M6 to join the M62 for the last leg of my journey, the car was pretty much uncontrollable. Puncture. I had to pull over.
Being 20 minutes from home I decided that rather than ring the RAC (of which I am a member through Motability and therefore do not have to part with any cash for the privilege of being rescued) I would ring my dad to come and help. I knew he would be able to change a wheel and I also reckoned that he would be able to reach me a lot quicker than the RAC would. This was quite a selfish decision on reflection but in my defence I was parked up on the hard shoulder of the slip road, alone, in the pitch blackness and memories of running out of petrol on the freeway between Los Angeles and San Diego were spewing forth to the front of my mind. I rang Emma, who because she is the sort of person who listens to people who know better and I'm not, knew that the man from Ford's had warned us that there might not be a spare wheel in the car. Some models only come with a puncture repair kit. Something about saving money, she told me as I imagined my dad turning up and enquiring as to why I had phoned him rather than the RAC if I didn't even have a spare wheel to replace the punctured one.
Fortunately I did and the switch was fairly straightforward, except for the comedy moment when my dad lost the sheet which I use as a protector for the car seats. He'd been using it to kneel on because the surface of the road was dirty and it blew away in the wind. I was writing it off when he emerged from behind his car with the sheet in his hand, and plonked it back in the boot from whence it came. You have to feel sorry for him really. He's too old for this shit and his work wasn't done even then. When we got back to my house (his is only a few doors down) he had to physically push me up my drive because it was covered in two inches of snow. These are the times when disability becomes an issue again. I shouldn't have to be ringing my dad or anyone else because I need to change my wheel and I shouldn't need to be manually assisted up my drive because it is snowing.
Despite the drama and more snow I made it to work on Friday. We were given the option of using some flexi and leaving a little early because of the weather conditions. I took the opportunity. Memories of the last really significant snowfall of a few years ago convinced me to get out while the going was still good. Back then, I had left it too late and it took me almost five hours to travel the 12 or so miles between the office and my house. Yet the snow had one more surprise in store for me nonetheless. In my haste to get out of it and into the car I failed to notice that one of my shoes had fallen off. It wasn't until I pulled up outside the house and started to transfer back into my wheelchair that it dawned on me that I was, to paraphrase Peter Cook, deficient in the shoe department to the tune of one.
So that was Thursday and Friday. I did not leave the house again until Monday. It just wasn't going to be safe.
So I went. As ever with me it is not as straightforward as 'I went to the funeral, I went for a drink afterwards, I came home'. Oh no. My problems began after the service. Before we get there though I must just share with you a conversation I had with an old-team-mate outside the chapel while we were waiting to go inside for the service;
"How did you know Neil, then? Was it through fencing?" asked an older gentleman whom I knew very well, but who clearly didn't remember me.
"Er..no." I replied.
"....I played basketball with him. And with you as it happens. At Bolton."
A puzzled look......another of hurried realisation and then.....
"You've grown up."
To be fair to my old Bolton team-mate Brian Dickinson, I have. Even if I don't always act like it. To be yet fairer to him, I played only a season or two with him and the last of those was something like 17 years ago. He might remember a much slimmer, fitter young fellow with more hair and a damn sight more energy and enthusiasm.
So the plan afterwards was to head to the David Lloyd centre for a drink and a chat. Perhaps a chance to reminisce and exchange stories of Neil and his contagious energy and ebullience. I made arrangements with another former team-mate Mark, who was riding in the car of yet another one, Sue. They would wait in their parking space while I went down to the bottom end of the crematorium were I had hurriedly parked my car earlier having got slightly lost on the way and arriving with about 20 minutes to spare. It turns out I don't have the technological know-how to operate Emma's sat-nav system and so I had reached my destination by asking a mechanic at a place nearby called 'Brake World'. He was very helpful.
So anyway I get into my car after the now obligatory fight with my not-so-lightweight wheelchair (it was so much easier when I was an athlete, when I knew Neil) and headed towards where Sue and Mark were parked. Except they weren't. All I could see was a queue of traffic, all drivers trying to make their way down the narrow lane which led to the exit. By now it was snowing quite heavily and it was 5.45 pm. I had only booked the one day off from work and I had a three-hour drive in front of me. I joined the queue and hoped to get a glimpse somewhere of Mark and Sue, or at least latch on to someone else who might be headed over to the David Lloyd centre. Surely the majority of people stuck in the queue would be. This is where my theory broke down and I lucked out. By the time I had the main road in my sights there were two cars in front of me. The first pulled out on to the busy road and turned left. The second pulled out on to it and turned right. So which one of them was going to the David Lloyd centre and which one was going home? Were they both going to the David Lloyd centre but just via different routes? Were they both going home? These were unanswerables. I decided there and then that since I had lost Mark and Sue and since it wasn't safe at that moment to make a phone call to enquire as to their whereabouts, I was going home.
I stopped at Northampton Services to make the phone call about 20 minutes later. Mark apologised and so since has Sue, but with the snow getting worse and time moving on I was certain it was best to head back on home. All well and good then for the next couple of hours until, driving at a granddad-like 50mph (something I have done frequently since my speeding fine) I felt the car jolt and heard quite a loud bumping noise. Not like a pop or a bang, just a thud. The steering was fine at first but as I drew nearer to home it got more difficult until by the time I exited the M6 to join the M62 for the last leg of my journey, the car was pretty much uncontrollable. Puncture. I had to pull over.
Being 20 minutes from home I decided that rather than ring the RAC (of which I am a member through Motability and therefore do not have to part with any cash for the privilege of being rescued) I would ring my dad to come and help. I knew he would be able to change a wheel and I also reckoned that he would be able to reach me a lot quicker than the RAC would. This was quite a selfish decision on reflection but in my defence I was parked up on the hard shoulder of the slip road, alone, in the pitch blackness and memories of running out of petrol on the freeway between Los Angeles and San Diego were spewing forth to the front of my mind. I rang Emma, who because she is the sort of person who listens to people who know better and I'm not, knew that the man from Ford's had warned us that there might not be a spare wheel in the car. Some models only come with a puncture repair kit. Something about saving money, she told me as I imagined my dad turning up and enquiring as to why I had phoned him rather than the RAC if I didn't even have a spare wheel to replace the punctured one.
Fortunately I did and the switch was fairly straightforward, except for the comedy moment when my dad lost the sheet which I use as a protector for the car seats. He'd been using it to kneel on because the surface of the road was dirty and it blew away in the wind. I was writing it off when he emerged from behind his car with the sheet in his hand, and plonked it back in the boot from whence it came. You have to feel sorry for him really. He's too old for this shit and his work wasn't done even then. When we got back to my house (his is only a few doors down) he had to physically push me up my drive because it was covered in two inches of snow. These are the times when disability becomes an issue again. I shouldn't have to be ringing my dad or anyone else because I need to change my wheel and I shouldn't need to be manually assisted up my drive because it is snowing.
Despite the drama and more snow I made it to work on Friday. We were given the option of using some flexi and leaving a little early because of the weather conditions. I took the opportunity. Memories of the last really significant snowfall of a few years ago convinced me to get out while the going was still good. Back then, I had left it too late and it took me almost five hours to travel the 12 or so miles between the office and my house. Yet the snow had one more surprise in store for me nonetheless. In my haste to get out of it and into the car I failed to notice that one of my shoes had fallen off. It wasn't until I pulled up outside the house and started to transfer back into my wheelchair that it dawned on me that I was, to paraphrase Peter Cook, deficient in the shoe department to the tune of one.
So that was Thursday and Friday. I did not leave the house again until Monday. It just wasn't going to be safe.
Thursday, 3 January 2013
Bliss
I hate to start 2013 on a sad note, but when I learned this morning of the passing of one of my oldest friends in basketball, committing something about Neil Ross to these pages just seemed like the natural thing to do.
Nicknamed 'Blisters', Neil Ross was a team-mate of mine at Meteors and at Bolton Bulls for many years. He was also a great friend and influence (good and bad some might argue), and despite never quite making it to the very peak of the sport, a champion wheelchair basketball player.
My 20 years in the game might not have been a success in the eyes of some. After all much of that time was spent cruising lazily around the second tier of the National League, breaking sweat only when in close proximity to the basketball, like a boxer dog that has just heard the bounce of his favourite tennis ball and jumped up from his forty winks to chase it. However, those of you still with me after that strained analogy might want to consider that despite my limitations I played with and against the very best players this country had to offer at the time. Some of them are still among the best and narrowly missed out on a bronze medal at the London 2012 Paralympic Games recently. The point is that I don't think I have ever seen a talent quite like Neil. That he was not a regular fixture in the Great Britain squad throughout his time in the game is symptomatic of the way that teams were chosen in those days. Without getting too far into it and in the process confusing those of you not familiar with the vagaries of the game's classification system, Neil was a player of relatively lesser disability who sat low in his chair and played mostly around the perimeter. His game was taking players on one-on-one, hitting the outside shot, finding the pass that nobody else could see. All of this he did effortlessly and in a way that completely inspired me. The game was fun with Neil. He was never going to be the tall battering ram that the coaches wanted players of his classification to be.
Not that he didn't care about the result. He was very passionate about winning and, as coach of the North West junior team in particular, got very angry indeed at times. If you couldn't play like him, maybe he could scare the shit out of you enough for you to get somewhere close. I have only seen one other coach get near to some of Neil's legendary outbursts, a man called Fred at Meteors. I only had the pleasure of one training session and one game with Fred, but I clearly remember him going apoplectic at every single, small element of the game that didn't go exactly as he planned it. If Fred is still with us I wouldn't be surprised if he has some blood pressure problems.
That's who Fred was, but when Neil went off his proverbial trolley in a time-out you got the sense that it wasn't quite him. Off the court he was everyone's mate, one of the funniest people I have known, and hugely popular. Had it not been for his occasional tantrums he would have been perfect for the job of coaching the north west junior team that he had previously been fundamental to the success of as a player. All the other junior players were slightly in awe of him and would have driven through a block of shite if that was what he had told us it would take to win. As it was he did a fairly decent job in the role in any case, with national titles at Stoke Mandeville becoming the norm. His sense of fun could get us in trouble sometimes, but we childishly drank it in. Not everyone in attendance at those tournaments was totally in love with our pre-game warm-up music choice, Wigfield's Saturday Night. If we were especially confident we might even throw the dance routine in. Wins were traditionally celebrated with a Jurgen Klinsmann-style dive from our wheelchairs (the German striker's self-mocking goal celebration was all the rage in those days), but losses were felt keenly. Losing is supposed to hurt, but when we did we were left in no doubt as to how important it had been to Neil. Sometimes it was just a little too important to him.
And that is pretty much how my playing days with Neil ended. We were playing for Bolton at the National League play-offs (third division) against Manchester. Down by a point Neil raced free on a fast-break and as time ran out, was pushed off balance by a defender causing him to miss the shot. We had lost and all kinds of merry hell broke loose. I just remember going back to the dormitory, away from all the madness that ensued (it got a little physical as I recall) and having this funny feeling that this would be our last game for Bolton. And so it was, as Neil headed for Sheffield and one or two of the rest of us moved on to Oldham. Looking back that might have been the last time I played the game completely freely, where doing the least obvious, most outrageous thing was encouraged. Some would say I became a better player when under the guidance of first division coaches at Oldham and later at Sheffield, but I enjoyed it less. I was never quite comfortable with the regimented nature of it all, the idea that I was there to help someone taller and less disabled look good for the good of the team, well it just didn't sit all that well with a little show-off like me. By the time of the 1997 World Junior Championships and the end of my international aspirations (or Hajgate as I like to call it), I was well and truly a recreational player. I was playing with the same free spirit as I did with Neil, only now I knew I wasn't going anywhere lofty at the end of it all.
These memories are fresh, but one most vivid recollection I have of Neil is of a game in Scotland. The West Of Scotland team were notoriously difficult to beat on their own patch, but one of our attempts to do so at Bolton became ever more difficult when we lost Neil to one of the most horrific injuries I have ever seen on a basketball court. Going for a 50-50 ball with one of their lads the two of them collided sickeningly. Neil put his hands over his eyes immediately and when he eventually was able to remove them you could see the blood gushing from what looked like his eyeball. That he was not blinded is a minor miracle but you know what? If he had been he would still have been able to play basketball to a seriously high level. He just had it, that touch, technique, that ability to float past people like they weren't really there. That touch of genius. I can't remember whether we won that game that day but I seriously doubt it.
From the day I first met Neil as a 16-year old (he was three years older than me, at 13, and playing for a team called Red Rose who played their home games in the unnerving surroundings of Kirkham Prison!) to the last time I saw him, there remained a strong rapport. When he moved away from basketball and into coaching wheelchair rugby I asked him for a favour. I had suggested to the editor of Rugby League World magazine that I write a piece on wheelchair rugby for them. When they agreed I made a quick call to Neil, who remember at this point I had not really seen for a number of years, and he instantly agreed. We did the interview over the phone (when we had stopped laughing about old times and reciting old episodes of Vic Reeves Big Night Out) and I had a double page spread in a national, glossy sports magazine. It remains among the best achievements of a journalism career matched only in under-achievement by my exploits as a wheelchair basketball player. But the point is that Neil was ready to help an old friend out at a moment's notice. By the way, aswell as wheelchair basketball and wheelchair rugby, Neil was also at various times heavily involved with wheelchair fencing and wheelchair tennis. I never saw him in action in any of these sports, but if he was half as good at any of these as he was on a basketball court then he would have been formidable.
Latterly my communication with Neil was limited to the odd slice of Facebook banter. He had moved down south and got married, and so much of our correspondence consisted of me goading him about his defection to the dark side that is rugby union. Once, When We Were Kings (junior kings at any rate), he had been an avid Wigan rugby league fan, with my devotion to St.Helens causing many an interesting debate. Sadly for me at that time, Wigan were winning just about everything while Saints, well Saints had Paul Forber and Dave Tanner.
I knew nothing of the return of his illness until today. That had apparently been how he wanted it. No fuss, no drama. It said much about the man, as do my many fond memories of him.
Nicknamed 'Blisters', Neil Ross was a team-mate of mine at Meteors and at Bolton Bulls for many years. He was also a great friend and influence (good and bad some might argue), and despite never quite making it to the very peak of the sport, a champion wheelchair basketball player.
My 20 years in the game might not have been a success in the eyes of some. After all much of that time was spent cruising lazily around the second tier of the National League, breaking sweat only when in close proximity to the basketball, like a boxer dog that has just heard the bounce of his favourite tennis ball and jumped up from his forty winks to chase it. However, those of you still with me after that strained analogy might want to consider that despite my limitations I played with and against the very best players this country had to offer at the time. Some of them are still among the best and narrowly missed out on a bronze medal at the London 2012 Paralympic Games recently. The point is that I don't think I have ever seen a talent quite like Neil. That he was not a regular fixture in the Great Britain squad throughout his time in the game is symptomatic of the way that teams were chosen in those days. Without getting too far into it and in the process confusing those of you not familiar with the vagaries of the game's classification system, Neil was a player of relatively lesser disability who sat low in his chair and played mostly around the perimeter. His game was taking players on one-on-one, hitting the outside shot, finding the pass that nobody else could see. All of this he did effortlessly and in a way that completely inspired me. The game was fun with Neil. He was never going to be the tall battering ram that the coaches wanted players of his classification to be.
Not that he didn't care about the result. He was very passionate about winning and, as coach of the North West junior team in particular, got very angry indeed at times. If you couldn't play like him, maybe he could scare the shit out of you enough for you to get somewhere close. I have only seen one other coach get near to some of Neil's legendary outbursts, a man called Fred at Meteors. I only had the pleasure of one training session and one game with Fred, but I clearly remember him going apoplectic at every single, small element of the game that didn't go exactly as he planned it. If Fred is still with us I wouldn't be surprised if he has some blood pressure problems.
That's who Fred was, but when Neil went off his proverbial trolley in a time-out you got the sense that it wasn't quite him. Off the court he was everyone's mate, one of the funniest people I have known, and hugely popular. Had it not been for his occasional tantrums he would have been perfect for the job of coaching the north west junior team that he had previously been fundamental to the success of as a player. All the other junior players were slightly in awe of him and would have driven through a block of shite if that was what he had told us it would take to win. As it was he did a fairly decent job in the role in any case, with national titles at Stoke Mandeville becoming the norm. His sense of fun could get us in trouble sometimes, but we childishly drank it in. Not everyone in attendance at those tournaments was totally in love with our pre-game warm-up music choice, Wigfield's Saturday Night. If we were especially confident we might even throw the dance routine in. Wins were traditionally celebrated with a Jurgen Klinsmann-style dive from our wheelchairs (the German striker's self-mocking goal celebration was all the rage in those days), but losses were felt keenly. Losing is supposed to hurt, but when we did we were left in no doubt as to how important it had been to Neil. Sometimes it was just a little too important to him.
And that is pretty much how my playing days with Neil ended. We were playing for Bolton at the National League play-offs (third division) against Manchester. Down by a point Neil raced free on a fast-break and as time ran out, was pushed off balance by a defender causing him to miss the shot. We had lost and all kinds of merry hell broke loose. I just remember going back to the dormitory, away from all the madness that ensued (it got a little physical as I recall) and having this funny feeling that this would be our last game for Bolton. And so it was, as Neil headed for Sheffield and one or two of the rest of us moved on to Oldham. Looking back that might have been the last time I played the game completely freely, where doing the least obvious, most outrageous thing was encouraged. Some would say I became a better player when under the guidance of first division coaches at Oldham and later at Sheffield, but I enjoyed it less. I was never quite comfortable with the regimented nature of it all, the idea that I was there to help someone taller and less disabled look good for the good of the team, well it just didn't sit all that well with a little show-off like me. By the time of the 1997 World Junior Championships and the end of my international aspirations (or Hajgate as I like to call it), I was well and truly a recreational player. I was playing with the same free spirit as I did with Neil, only now I knew I wasn't going anywhere lofty at the end of it all.
These memories are fresh, but one most vivid recollection I have of Neil is of a game in Scotland. The West Of Scotland team were notoriously difficult to beat on their own patch, but one of our attempts to do so at Bolton became ever more difficult when we lost Neil to one of the most horrific injuries I have ever seen on a basketball court. Going for a 50-50 ball with one of their lads the two of them collided sickeningly. Neil put his hands over his eyes immediately and when he eventually was able to remove them you could see the blood gushing from what looked like his eyeball. That he was not blinded is a minor miracle but you know what? If he had been he would still have been able to play basketball to a seriously high level. He just had it, that touch, technique, that ability to float past people like they weren't really there. That touch of genius. I can't remember whether we won that game that day but I seriously doubt it.
From the day I first met Neil as a 16-year old (he was three years older than me, at 13, and playing for a team called Red Rose who played their home games in the unnerving surroundings of Kirkham Prison!) to the last time I saw him, there remained a strong rapport. When he moved away from basketball and into coaching wheelchair rugby I asked him for a favour. I had suggested to the editor of Rugby League World magazine that I write a piece on wheelchair rugby for them. When they agreed I made a quick call to Neil, who remember at this point I had not really seen for a number of years, and he instantly agreed. We did the interview over the phone (when we had stopped laughing about old times and reciting old episodes of Vic Reeves Big Night Out) and I had a double page spread in a national, glossy sports magazine. It remains among the best achievements of a journalism career matched only in under-achievement by my exploits as a wheelchair basketball player. But the point is that Neil was ready to help an old friend out at a moment's notice. By the way, aswell as wheelchair basketball and wheelchair rugby, Neil was also at various times heavily involved with wheelchair fencing and wheelchair tennis. I never saw him in action in any of these sports, but if he was half as good at any of these as he was on a basketball court then he would have been formidable.
Latterly my communication with Neil was limited to the odd slice of Facebook banter. He had moved down south and got married, and so much of our correspondence consisted of me goading him about his defection to the dark side that is rugby union. Once, When We Were Kings (junior kings at any rate), he had been an avid Wigan rugby league fan, with my devotion to St.Helens causing many an interesting debate. Sadly for me at that time, Wigan were winning just about everything while Saints, well Saints had Paul Forber and Dave Tanner.
I knew nothing of the return of his illness until today. That had apparently been how he wanted it. No fuss, no drama. It said much about the man, as do my many fond memories of him.
Friday, 21 December 2012
The End Of The (PC) World
I have a new laptop computer. This is a good thing, and it is not normal practice for Good Things to be reported on these pages. However, it came at a price, and I don't just mean the £349.99 it cost to get PC World to part with it.
It all started when our desktop PC finally gave up on us. I don't know if it had been listening to the Mayans about the end of the world or something, but a few days ago it decided that it wasn't worth carrying on. Not fully anyway. You can use the intenet on it. You can play music on it. But you can't do both at the same time. Maybe it's just a male PC and can't multi-task, but whatever the reasons for it's one dimensional nature it had to be replaced.
So yesterday after work, a long and quite wretched day in work I might add, which most of them are, we decided to pop into PC World, pick up a laptop that runs Windows 8 and go home happy. Simple. Not simple. We had the misfortune to be set upon by 'Dave'. I've changed Dave's name to protect the guilty. Someone might know him, you never know. So anyway Dave didn't want to sell us a laptop, not within this calendar year at any rate. He wanted instead to show us every single laptop in the building, and in the process barf on about processors, gig, graphics cards, security software and back-up CD's.
What is it about people who work with computers that they want to blind you with science rather than sell you something simply and quickly? Why do they want to feel so superior to you? It's a sickening, nerdy ego trip and is probably there only to make up for the fact that they either can't spell or they smell of cider. Or both. I made the shocking, schoolboy error of asking Dave whether this particular machine would run the latest version of Football Manager. I'm not even that keen on Football Frigging Manager. I just thought I'd ask to see if I could maybe have the option when Emma's watching Grimm or Grey's Anatomy. But Dave didn't know. He knew everything else about computers, but not that. He had to take it to a colleague to run 'some research' to find out. Quite what this entails I don't know, and don't really want to know. What I do know is that he came back half an hour later (no, really, half an hour, bearing in mind that I had already been to Emma's friend's house in Aigburth to pick up Goodness Knows What and that I still had to get over to Boots to pick up my ever-increasing prescription) and informed me that he was '85% sure that this machine would run Football Manager. Ten minutes after that he came back again and informed me that he was '100% sure that it would NOT run Football Manager'. Something about a discombooberator and the lining of the planets and the various moons of Saturn.
Now I don't know about you but I'm pretty incredulous about this. How is it possible in the first place for a man whose business is computers to not be able to tell from reading the back of a box whether or not a game will run on a given machine? How are the rest of us supposed to purchase any games then?
'I know, it's madness.' offered Dave as he then tried to sell us something called The Cloud which may or may not have made it rain. At this point I was hoping that the Mayans were right and that they would just bring their absurd prediction forward a few hours. The will to live had left me completely, to the point where I couldn't even look Dave in the eye when I passed him my debit card to buy the laptop. This is the point. I was always going to buy the frigging laptop. And Microsoft Office which now comes separately for an extra £70 which Dave assures me is Bill Gates' fault. Probably is, but I bet Bill Gates could tell me whether or not a computer can perform a specific function without having to write home to his grandmother about it.
Turns out I could have bought a laptop which would run Football Manager comfortably aswell as all the other things I needed it to do. For the princely sum of £799.99. Or one for £899.99. I didn't want it that much. I'll stick to my kindle the next time a certain fairy-tale-based crime series or hospital drama appear on my television screen.
I'll leave you with this. Emma has a friend at work who has a 10-year old son called Ewan. Ewan was asked by someone whether he knew what the initials PC stood for. He replied, with absolute certainty as if it were the most obvious thing in the world......
'Plastsic Cock'.
Did you get that, 'Dave?'
It all started when our desktop PC finally gave up on us. I don't know if it had been listening to the Mayans about the end of the world or something, but a few days ago it decided that it wasn't worth carrying on. Not fully anyway. You can use the intenet on it. You can play music on it. But you can't do both at the same time. Maybe it's just a male PC and can't multi-task, but whatever the reasons for it's one dimensional nature it had to be replaced.
So yesterday after work, a long and quite wretched day in work I might add, which most of them are, we decided to pop into PC World, pick up a laptop that runs Windows 8 and go home happy. Simple. Not simple. We had the misfortune to be set upon by 'Dave'. I've changed Dave's name to protect the guilty. Someone might know him, you never know. So anyway Dave didn't want to sell us a laptop, not within this calendar year at any rate. He wanted instead to show us every single laptop in the building, and in the process barf on about processors, gig, graphics cards, security software and back-up CD's.
What is it about people who work with computers that they want to blind you with science rather than sell you something simply and quickly? Why do they want to feel so superior to you? It's a sickening, nerdy ego trip and is probably there only to make up for the fact that they either can't spell or they smell of cider. Or both. I made the shocking, schoolboy error of asking Dave whether this particular machine would run the latest version of Football Manager. I'm not even that keen on Football Frigging Manager. I just thought I'd ask to see if I could maybe have the option when Emma's watching Grimm or Grey's Anatomy. But Dave didn't know. He knew everything else about computers, but not that. He had to take it to a colleague to run 'some research' to find out. Quite what this entails I don't know, and don't really want to know. What I do know is that he came back half an hour later (no, really, half an hour, bearing in mind that I had already been to Emma's friend's house in Aigburth to pick up Goodness Knows What and that I still had to get over to Boots to pick up my ever-increasing prescription) and informed me that he was '85% sure that this machine would run Football Manager. Ten minutes after that he came back again and informed me that he was '100% sure that it would NOT run Football Manager'. Something about a discombooberator and the lining of the planets and the various moons of Saturn.
Now I don't know about you but I'm pretty incredulous about this. How is it possible in the first place for a man whose business is computers to not be able to tell from reading the back of a box whether or not a game will run on a given machine? How are the rest of us supposed to purchase any games then?
'I know, it's madness.' offered Dave as he then tried to sell us something called The Cloud which may or may not have made it rain. At this point I was hoping that the Mayans were right and that they would just bring their absurd prediction forward a few hours. The will to live had left me completely, to the point where I couldn't even look Dave in the eye when I passed him my debit card to buy the laptop. This is the point. I was always going to buy the frigging laptop. And Microsoft Office which now comes separately for an extra £70 which Dave assures me is Bill Gates' fault. Probably is, but I bet Bill Gates could tell me whether or not a computer can perform a specific function without having to write home to his grandmother about it.
Turns out I could have bought a laptop which would run Football Manager comfortably aswell as all the other things I needed it to do. For the princely sum of £799.99. Or one for £899.99. I didn't want it that much. I'll stick to my kindle the next time a certain fairy-tale-based crime series or hospital drama appear on my television screen.
I'll leave you with this. Emma has a friend at work who has a 10-year old son called Ewan. Ewan was asked by someone whether he knew what the initials PC stood for. He replied, with absolute certainty as if it were the most obvious thing in the world......
'Plastsic Cock'.
Did you get that, 'Dave?'
Wednesday, 28 November 2012
Let Me Entertain You
Seriously, I am such a tool.
Regular readers (both of you) will know that I don't write about work but I do write about alcohol-related fuck-ups. When the two collide then documentation is unavoidable.
We went out last night. On a Tuesday. We went to La Tasca in Liverpool and, it being a Tuesday, the plan was to have a sociable few and head home at a reasonable hour to avoid the crushingly turgid Wednesday that I am currently experiencing instead. Had I not ruined my spell of sobriety at the weekend (one pint on the way home from work on Friday and several more watching Ricky Hatton hit the deck on Saturday) I probably would have stayed completely sober and drove home. But I didn't, so I thought 'what the hell' and got on the San Miguel.
Any time I say 'what the hell' disaster is but a short step behind me. And so it turned out that I annoyed everyone by getting progressively louder as the evening wore on. By the time we hit the darkest Wetherspoons you have ever seen on the corner of Queen Square I was rambling on and on about something and nothing. Why didn't I just shut the fuck up? I couldn't, it was well beyond my control as soon as San Miguel got involved. It all culminated in me falling asleep in the back of my colleague's sister's car. She has only met me twice, and on both occasions it involved her driving me to St.Helens, very probably for my own safety. If first impressions last, then I am a drunkard and a blathering imbecile. And I sing too much.
Which brings me to the point, the nadir, of this entry. While I was in the toilet a man approached my colleagues and asked one (the boss, actually, whose birthday it was) whether I was alright. Nobody really knew what he was talking about. Of course he's alright. He's just Ste. Loud, annoying, pointless, but perfectly safe. The man seemed a bit surprised by this and said that he just thought he would check because he had just been in the toilet alongside me, and I had been singing Robbie Williams songs. FFS as the cool kids say. I watch 10 minutes of Take The Crown Live before I arrive at work on an otherwise average Tuesday, and I end it in disgrace in a public lavatory.
Let Me Entertain You. No Stephen, you're a c**t.
Regular readers (both of you) will know that I don't write about work but I do write about alcohol-related fuck-ups. When the two collide then documentation is unavoidable.
We went out last night. On a Tuesday. We went to La Tasca in Liverpool and, it being a Tuesday, the plan was to have a sociable few and head home at a reasonable hour to avoid the crushingly turgid Wednesday that I am currently experiencing instead. Had I not ruined my spell of sobriety at the weekend (one pint on the way home from work on Friday and several more watching Ricky Hatton hit the deck on Saturday) I probably would have stayed completely sober and drove home. But I didn't, so I thought 'what the hell' and got on the San Miguel.
Any time I say 'what the hell' disaster is but a short step behind me. And so it turned out that I annoyed everyone by getting progressively louder as the evening wore on. By the time we hit the darkest Wetherspoons you have ever seen on the corner of Queen Square I was rambling on and on about something and nothing. Why didn't I just shut the fuck up? I couldn't, it was well beyond my control as soon as San Miguel got involved. It all culminated in me falling asleep in the back of my colleague's sister's car. She has only met me twice, and on both occasions it involved her driving me to St.Helens, very probably for my own safety. If first impressions last, then I am a drunkard and a blathering imbecile. And I sing too much.
Which brings me to the point, the nadir, of this entry. While I was in the toilet a man approached my colleagues and asked one (the boss, actually, whose birthday it was) whether I was alright. Nobody really knew what he was talking about. Of course he's alright. He's just Ste. Loud, annoying, pointless, but perfectly safe. The man seemed a bit surprised by this and said that he just thought he would check because he had just been in the toilet alongside me, and I had been singing Robbie Williams songs. FFS as the cool kids say. I watch 10 minutes of Take The Crown Live before I arrive at work on an otherwise average Tuesday, and I end it in disgrace in a public lavatory.
Let Me Entertain You. No Stephen, you're a c**t.
Wednesday, 14 November 2012
An (abridged) Honest Answer
What follows, like all anecdotes featured in this column, is 100% true. I may yet choose to embellish it for the book that I am still laughably trying to write, but this is what actually happened, not what could happen given a certain set of circumstances.
Incidentally I have not managed to add anything to the word count of the aforementioned book tonight. I have been to see the new Bond film which is utterly splendid. A proper Bond film. There's no mileage in me promising a review however. I still haven't done that review of The Campaign which I saw over a month ago. At the end of the day you're not reading, either because you want to see the films and therefore don't want them spoiled for you, or because you have no interest in the films at all. Or because I'm shit.
So let me take you back about eight hours. It's Wednesday lunch time. I have been to Burger King in the city centre and am on my way back to work. I'm pushing up the hill near to Moorfields station, wishing I hadn't eaten quite so much and/or that I wasn't quite so old and heavy. A man with a walking stick is limping slowly towards me. He smiles at me knowingly, slows his limp down even further and says;
"Excuse me mate, do you mind if I ask you a question?"
Oh fuck. This is going to be about wheelchairs. Strangers do not stop me in the street to ask me where I bought my jeans. And if he just wants directions then in the first place he is shit out of luck because I'm out of my comfort zone, and in the second place he probably would not have asked whether I minded. For the briefest of nanoseconds I consider pushing on and pretending that I haven't heard him. I'm disabled. If I have a wheelchair then who is to say that I'm not deaf aswell? And blind while we're at it. Or just simple minded? I could easily carry off the notion that I haven't seen or heard him at all. The moment is devoured by a rare moment of guilt and responsibility;
"Of course mate, go ahead." I hear myself say.
"The thing is I am going to be in one of them soon and I just wondered how you get on?"
He points to my chair with his walking stick but the penny has already dropped. He's referring to the wheelchair. One of them. He can't even bear to say the word;
"Yeah, I've got MS, and I'm going to end up in one of them so I just wondered what it is like for access and that round here?"
At this point I lie, or at best offer a highly censored, truncated version of the truth. I'm late back as it is. What I would do if I was being brutally honest and if I had the time is take him to the nearest pub and warn him exactly what awaits him over a pint. Explain to him in great detail how it will slowly but surely turn him into an emotional fuckwit. But I stick to answering what I have been asked in the time I have. I have to. I'm down on my flexi;
"Well I'm used to it mate, I've had it all my life so it doesn't bother me." I lie.
"Really mate?" he asks with a smile, bouyed by my deceitful, smelly, matter-of-factness. He is soon to be brought down from his cloud of optimism;
"The wheelchair will be the least of your worries, mate. It's other people's attitudes to it that are the problem." I announce, more coldly than I had intended.
"I know, bastards aren't they?" he answers, without elaborating on who 'they' might be.
"Good luck mate." I say finally.
He'll need it. Especially when that first person approaches him on the street and says;
"Excuse me mate, do you mind if I ask you a question?"
Incidentally I have not managed to add anything to the word count of the aforementioned book tonight. I have been to see the new Bond film which is utterly splendid. A proper Bond film. There's no mileage in me promising a review however. I still haven't done that review of The Campaign which I saw over a month ago. At the end of the day you're not reading, either because you want to see the films and therefore don't want them spoiled for you, or because you have no interest in the films at all. Or because I'm shit.
So let me take you back about eight hours. It's Wednesday lunch time. I have been to Burger King in the city centre and am on my way back to work. I'm pushing up the hill near to Moorfields station, wishing I hadn't eaten quite so much and/or that I wasn't quite so old and heavy. A man with a walking stick is limping slowly towards me. He smiles at me knowingly, slows his limp down even further and says;
"Excuse me mate, do you mind if I ask you a question?"
Oh fuck. This is going to be about wheelchairs. Strangers do not stop me in the street to ask me where I bought my jeans. And if he just wants directions then in the first place he is shit out of luck because I'm out of my comfort zone, and in the second place he probably would not have asked whether I minded. For the briefest of nanoseconds I consider pushing on and pretending that I haven't heard him. I'm disabled. If I have a wheelchair then who is to say that I'm not deaf aswell? And blind while we're at it. Or just simple minded? I could easily carry off the notion that I haven't seen or heard him at all. The moment is devoured by a rare moment of guilt and responsibility;
"Of course mate, go ahead." I hear myself say.
"The thing is I am going to be in one of them soon and I just wondered how you get on?"
He points to my chair with his walking stick but the penny has already dropped. He's referring to the wheelchair. One of them. He can't even bear to say the word;
"Yeah, I've got MS, and I'm going to end up in one of them so I just wondered what it is like for access and that round here?"
At this point I lie, or at best offer a highly censored, truncated version of the truth. I'm late back as it is. What I would do if I was being brutally honest and if I had the time is take him to the nearest pub and warn him exactly what awaits him over a pint. Explain to him in great detail how it will slowly but surely turn him into an emotional fuckwit. But I stick to answering what I have been asked in the time I have. I have to. I'm down on my flexi;
"Well I'm used to it mate, I've had it all my life so it doesn't bother me." I lie.
"Really mate?" he asks with a smile, bouyed by my deceitful, smelly, matter-of-factness. He is soon to be brought down from his cloud of optimism;
"The wheelchair will be the least of your worries, mate. It's other people's attitudes to it that are the problem." I announce, more coldly than I had intended.
"I know, bastards aren't they?" he answers, without elaborating on who 'they' might be.
"Good luck mate." I say finally.
He'll need it. Especially when that first person approaches him on the street and says;
"Excuse me mate, do you mind if I ask you a question?"
Friday, 2 November 2012
Just the (Speeding) Ticket
Friday night, October 26 2012. I'm at home on my own. Emma has gone out for a meal with some friends from work. It's the end of the first week of my self-imposed six-week alcohol ban so it is pretty uneventful. I'm watching a documentary about Ronald Reagan (what a bastard he was, by the way) and another about Pablo Escobar (what a total, total bastard he was, by the way).
It's around 8.30. I get a text. It's Emma. Comically, I have left my phone in the car as I write this so I cannot tell you what it said verbatim. I'd been waiting in the car while she did the shopping at Tesco and kept my phone to hand so that I could bollocks about on Facebook to keep me occupied. The car stereo is all very well but if you play it for long enough the car starts beeping at you threateningly, as if the world will come to a screetching halt if you don't just bloody well give the battery a rest.
What I can tell you about the text is that the gist of it was that she would like me to pick her up from Liverpool because she 'might be blotto'. Now you might think this quite ordinary and no good reason to panic, but the last time Emma was 'blotto', without going into detail, was somewhat problematic. Rightly or wrongly I am panicking at this point. I get in the car, lug my chair across my knee, pull up at the local petrol station and wave my badge in the air and point a lot until the nice lady comes out to help me fill the car up, and I'm on my way.
There's a little tension between us because Emma is semi-blotto and I am fearing the worst. Not only that, but she has asked me to meet her at the Adelphi and I've been there for 10 minutes or more before she finally showed. My panic had increased to some other state of uber-panic or something. As it turns out she is not so bad. She's drunk but not in an offensive way and not so much that she will be unable to function properly in the morning. All's well that ends well then?
Well no. Fast forward a week and I arrive home after the aforementioned Tesco vigil to find a letter has arrived from Merseyside Police. Keep in mind at this point that I have been back on the road for 37 days. Thirty. Seven. Days. Not long enough to get myself into any trouble you wouldn't think. And surely I would be especially cautious on all things driving-related after my 11-year driving 'sabbatical' ended so recently? No. I panicked remember. Those wretched Cumberbitches at Merseyside Police inform me that I was driving at 66 mph on the M62 at 9.06pm last Friday. Now that doesn't sound like much of a problem except for the fact that apparently the stretch of the motorway I was flashed on was a 50mph zone. Who knew? The bitter irony in all of this is that I drive that stretch of motorway every day on my way to work. Normally, there is about as much chance of driving at 66mph on that piece of road as there is of Mark Clattenburg going out to dinner with the Mikels. Gridlock is very much the watchword Monday to Friday mornings. Great book Gridlock by the way. By Ben Elton, has a lead character called Geoffrey Spasmo. What could be more splendid?
I tell you what isn't splendid. The fact that now, in order to avoid a fine and to limit the damage to only three penalty points on my still dust-covered license, I am going to have to attend a road safety course. Now I could write an entire blog about how much I hate courses about anything. Normally they are about as useful as self help books and as real and authentic as Bruno Tonioli's face. No doubt my explanation that I was having to stay above 50 to avoid blowing up Sandra Bullock will not wash and I will instead be preached at about my future conduct on the road. After just 37 days. Thirty. Seven Days.
Of course I am not the first person to have been caught by a speed camera. Even my dad, who ordinarily drives at the kind of speeds normally reserved for Noddy and Big Ears was once subjected to a road safety course. Back when I was a student in Barnsley they didn't have such things and my only other driving indisgression was settled by the payment of a fine. I'd be tempted to pay the £60 fine they offer as an alternative on this occasion if it didn't come with a six-point license penalty. Three I can live with, six seems a little too much to bear. Particularly after the day I have had. No check that, the WEEK I have had.
But that's work and we're not allowed or even advised to address that here, lest I be sent on a course to teach me about Social Networking And Blogging Awareness.
So instead I will just finish by saying.....fucking, twatting bollocks!
Night.
It's around 8.30. I get a text. It's Emma. Comically, I have left my phone in the car as I write this so I cannot tell you what it said verbatim. I'd been waiting in the car while she did the shopping at Tesco and kept my phone to hand so that I could bollocks about on Facebook to keep me occupied. The car stereo is all very well but if you play it for long enough the car starts beeping at you threateningly, as if the world will come to a screetching halt if you don't just bloody well give the battery a rest.
What I can tell you about the text is that the gist of it was that she would like me to pick her up from Liverpool because she 'might be blotto'. Now you might think this quite ordinary and no good reason to panic, but the last time Emma was 'blotto', without going into detail, was somewhat problematic. Rightly or wrongly I am panicking at this point. I get in the car, lug my chair across my knee, pull up at the local petrol station and wave my badge in the air and point a lot until the nice lady comes out to help me fill the car up, and I'm on my way.
There's a little tension between us because Emma is semi-blotto and I am fearing the worst. Not only that, but she has asked me to meet her at the Adelphi and I've been there for 10 minutes or more before she finally showed. My panic had increased to some other state of uber-panic or something. As it turns out she is not so bad. She's drunk but not in an offensive way and not so much that she will be unable to function properly in the morning. All's well that ends well then?
Well no. Fast forward a week and I arrive home after the aforementioned Tesco vigil to find a letter has arrived from Merseyside Police. Keep in mind at this point that I have been back on the road for 37 days. Thirty. Seven. Days. Not long enough to get myself into any trouble you wouldn't think. And surely I would be especially cautious on all things driving-related after my 11-year driving 'sabbatical' ended so recently? No. I panicked remember. Those wretched Cumberbitches at Merseyside Police inform me that I was driving at 66 mph on the M62 at 9.06pm last Friday. Now that doesn't sound like much of a problem except for the fact that apparently the stretch of the motorway I was flashed on was a 50mph zone. Who knew? The bitter irony in all of this is that I drive that stretch of motorway every day on my way to work. Normally, there is about as much chance of driving at 66mph on that piece of road as there is of Mark Clattenburg going out to dinner with the Mikels. Gridlock is very much the watchword Monday to Friday mornings. Great book Gridlock by the way. By Ben Elton, has a lead character called Geoffrey Spasmo. What could be more splendid?
I tell you what isn't splendid. The fact that now, in order to avoid a fine and to limit the damage to only three penalty points on my still dust-covered license, I am going to have to attend a road safety course. Now I could write an entire blog about how much I hate courses about anything. Normally they are about as useful as self help books and as real and authentic as Bruno Tonioli's face. No doubt my explanation that I was having to stay above 50 to avoid blowing up Sandra Bullock will not wash and I will instead be preached at about my future conduct on the road. After just 37 days. Thirty. Seven Days.
Of course I am not the first person to have been caught by a speed camera. Even my dad, who ordinarily drives at the kind of speeds normally reserved for Noddy and Big Ears was once subjected to a road safety course. Back when I was a student in Barnsley they didn't have such things and my only other driving indisgression was settled by the payment of a fine. I'd be tempted to pay the £60 fine they offer as an alternative on this occasion if it didn't come with a six-point license penalty. Three I can live with, six seems a little too much to bear. Particularly after the day I have had. No check that, the WEEK I have had.
But that's work and we're not allowed or even advised to address that here, lest I be sent on a course to teach me about Social Networking And Blogging Awareness.
So instead I will just finish by saying.....fucking, twatting bollocks!
Night.
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