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.
Thursday, 28 February 2013
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.
Wednesday, 31 October 2012
Halloween
You may not like this. Not unless you are a fan of my less than subtle Meldrewisms. There again, if you were not a fan of my less than subtle Meldrewisms you probably wouldn't be here.
We were going to the cinema tonight. The plan was to do something that would involve not being in the house on Halloween night. I hate Halloween night, you will not be surprised to learn. Put it on the list with Valentine's Day, Christmas, Easter and all of the other card manufacturers' wet dreams which mean absolutely nothing to me. Forced fun is abhorrent. If I want to get crazily arse-faced and disgrace myself then I do not need to be put up to it by the owner of Clintons. I'll do it cos it is Wednesday, thanks, and doing it on 'special occasions' is the preserve of people who feel guilty about it and therefore need to justify it.
But anyway we didn't make it to the cinema, despite leaving work a full 70 minutes before the scheduled start time of the film. The drive home was apt for the date on the calendar, the sort of journey normally reserved for soon to be forgotten extras in an outrageous horror flick. Except there is nothing too atmospheric or tense about Edge Lane Drive even in the pitch dark and the driving rain. It doesn't help that Emma's MP3 player has a spooky insistence on playing the same three or four songs in a woefully undersized loop. She says it's the car and not the MP3 player but while we are at it how did we get to the point where Emma's MP3 player is the musical choice in my car? It's another spooky, unsolvable mystery. I suspect she has kidnapped Joss Stone.
Tired and frustrated by the time we arrive home I have never moved so quickly to get back into the house. The rain isn't helping but the real reason I am so keen to get off the street is decidedly more sinister. Trick or treaters. Little bastards with their crap fancy dress and their unshaking, unstinting belief that you should give them something for nothing because it is October 31. Yes I know they are only children, but is it really necessary to validate begging in our culture? One friend reported on his Facebook tonight that some demon child stood at his door shouting through the letterbox that he knew he was at home because he could see the light on and hear the television. As if being at home somehow obligates a person to answer the door in the first place, and in the second place part with their change. I don't answer my door at the best of times, but certainly not if there is a chance it might be some shabbily dressed little wretch with a sense of entitlement harrassing me in the name of tradition. Emma has the same view, as witnessed earlier when some kids knocked on our door when she was in the kitchen.
"Ey!" one of them shouted, seeing her through the kitchen window.
"Ey! Open your door!"
"No." she said brilliantly. This is one of the reasons why I love Emma.
"She said no!" reported the startled child, affronted at her sheer temerity. How dare she refuse to let gobby delinquents see inside our home.
I try to think back and remember if I was ever a trick or treater. To my horror I was, of a fashion. My friends and I had no tricks. We were not hardcore. We wouldn't throw a firework or a box of faeces through your letterbox if you refused to open the door and give us your money, but the fact that we even went as far as to stick a candle in a pumpkin (probably a turnip actually, if memory serves) and ask the question is something which troubles me deeply. What were our parents thinking allowing us to carry on in this fashion? Did they? Or did we just think ourselves rebellious? It's hard to remember.
The parents among my readership will most likely be thinking that my disdain for Halloween and other trumped up festivals of it's kind owes much to the fact that Emma and I don't have any children. You'd probably imagine that if I had children I would not be writing this column now, but would in fact have both hands tied behind my back trying to fish apples out of a dirty bowl with my mouth. You'd be wrong. Today is Wednesday and Emma and I do that on Thursdays. The point here is that I appreciate that there is pressure on parents to play along with the whole Halloween thing, and shouldn't I just lighten up and not take it so seriously anyway? Well no. The fact that other people's children boil my blood in this and a multitude of other spectacular and inventive ways is exactly the reason why I don't have any of my own. Really, don't feel bad for me. I'm not missing out.
I just wish I had made it to the cinema on time.
We were going to the cinema tonight. The plan was to do something that would involve not being in the house on Halloween night. I hate Halloween night, you will not be surprised to learn. Put it on the list with Valentine's Day, Christmas, Easter and all of the other card manufacturers' wet dreams which mean absolutely nothing to me. Forced fun is abhorrent. If I want to get crazily arse-faced and disgrace myself then I do not need to be put up to it by the owner of Clintons. I'll do it cos it is Wednesday, thanks, and doing it on 'special occasions' is the preserve of people who feel guilty about it and therefore need to justify it.
But anyway we didn't make it to the cinema, despite leaving work a full 70 minutes before the scheduled start time of the film. The drive home was apt for the date on the calendar, the sort of journey normally reserved for soon to be forgotten extras in an outrageous horror flick. Except there is nothing too atmospheric or tense about Edge Lane Drive even in the pitch dark and the driving rain. It doesn't help that Emma's MP3 player has a spooky insistence on playing the same three or four songs in a woefully undersized loop. She says it's the car and not the MP3 player but while we are at it how did we get to the point where Emma's MP3 player is the musical choice in my car? It's another spooky, unsolvable mystery. I suspect she has kidnapped Joss Stone.
Tired and frustrated by the time we arrive home I have never moved so quickly to get back into the house. The rain isn't helping but the real reason I am so keen to get off the street is decidedly more sinister. Trick or treaters. Little bastards with their crap fancy dress and their unshaking, unstinting belief that you should give them something for nothing because it is October 31. Yes I know they are only children, but is it really necessary to validate begging in our culture? One friend reported on his Facebook tonight that some demon child stood at his door shouting through the letterbox that he knew he was at home because he could see the light on and hear the television. As if being at home somehow obligates a person to answer the door in the first place, and in the second place part with their change. I don't answer my door at the best of times, but certainly not if there is a chance it might be some shabbily dressed little wretch with a sense of entitlement harrassing me in the name of tradition. Emma has the same view, as witnessed earlier when some kids knocked on our door when she was in the kitchen.
"Ey!" one of them shouted, seeing her through the kitchen window.
"Ey! Open your door!"
"No." she said brilliantly. This is one of the reasons why I love Emma.
"She said no!" reported the startled child, affronted at her sheer temerity. How dare she refuse to let gobby delinquents see inside our home.
I try to think back and remember if I was ever a trick or treater. To my horror I was, of a fashion. My friends and I had no tricks. We were not hardcore. We wouldn't throw a firework or a box of faeces through your letterbox if you refused to open the door and give us your money, but the fact that we even went as far as to stick a candle in a pumpkin (probably a turnip actually, if memory serves) and ask the question is something which troubles me deeply. What were our parents thinking allowing us to carry on in this fashion? Did they? Or did we just think ourselves rebellious? It's hard to remember.
The parents among my readership will most likely be thinking that my disdain for Halloween and other trumped up festivals of it's kind owes much to the fact that Emma and I don't have any children. You'd probably imagine that if I had children I would not be writing this column now, but would in fact have both hands tied behind my back trying to fish apples out of a dirty bowl with my mouth. You'd be wrong. Today is Wednesday and Emma and I do that on Thursdays. The point here is that I appreciate that there is pressure on parents to play along with the whole Halloween thing, and shouldn't I just lighten up and not take it so seriously anyway? Well no. The fact that other people's children boil my blood in this and a multitude of other spectacular and inventive ways is exactly the reason why I don't have any of my own. Really, don't feel bad for me. I'm not missing out.
I just wish I had made it to the cinema on time.
Monday, 29 October 2012
Strictly Sober
Once again I haven't thought this through. It's Monday night. There is nothing on the telly. Without the feintest clue what I am going to ramble on about I have nevertheless deemed it necessary to once again stain the pages of MOAFH with the first things that come to mind.
Acronyms are shit, by the way, especially when, as in the case of MOAFH, they aren't actually words. For those of you struggling to keep up it stands for Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard, the piece you are wasting your valuable life force reading right now. I mean really. MOAFH? Where did that come from? Why did I do that? I'm just glad I don't work in St Helens Information Technology.
So what can I tell you? I have been sober for nine days. I can hear the woos. It is easy to stay sober, relatively speaking. What is difficult is staying in, and therefore having to endure Saturday night television. In our house this means Strictly Come Dancing as opposed to X-Factor. Both would be too much to bear for either of us. We'd be finding brain cells down the back of the sofa as they literally shrivel up into a sticky liquid and pour out of our ears. MOAFH is all about the imagery. So anyway Strictly. Fourteen (now eleven) celebrities of varying relevance trying to learn how to dance with the help of bronzed, shudderingly perfect professionals. Each week one is voted off but unfathomably Bruce Forsyth makes it through to the very end.
Staggeringly it is the 10th series this year, despite the fact that the formula barely changes from year to year. You get a couple of doddering oldies who usually get the boot early, several flat-footed and awkward buffoons whose role is to provide comedy and who are routinely saved from the exit on that basis, and it's all blended together with a few beautiful people who generally have some experience of dancing of sorts or at least stage performance. All of which gives them an unfair advantage but it is not about the competition. It's about laughing at the z-listers and them not caring because they are getting paid sacks of cash and they won't be getting up on Monday morning to talk to students about their bursary and it's possible whereabouts.
As mercilessly trashy as all this sounds it is frankly unmissable. There's something addictive about it. I don't know whether I just enjoying looking at Ola Jordan and fantasising about how many times I would need to punch her gobshite husband James Jordan in the face before his nose actually fell off. You thought I was going to write something else after the word 'fantasising' there didn't you? MOAFH is a clean-cut, family column. You twat. So anyway, James Jordan. The judges are supposed to be the villains on this show but we all know that the real baddie is James, with his crap John Terry haircut and his smug self-assuredness and his ability to do the splits. A friend of mine broke his leg doing the splits once. He couldn't feel it because he has Spina Bifida, but it is not to be advised. So think on, Jordan.
Less trashy but no less embarrassing is Boardwalk Empire, which follows the ballroom bonanza on what my dad used to call 'the other side'. It was ok to refer to tv channels as 'sides' back then because there were only four of them, like a square. Now, there is so much manure on my television, that many 'sides', that the geometrical permutations are frankly incalculable and distinctly whiffy. Boardwalk is great, in a slow-burning, build tension and keep everyone guessing sort of way, but is not something I recommend you watch with your mother. Hardly an episode goes by without some poor actress being required to simulate some scarecely believable sexual practice. This week's delight involved a man being choked with his belt whilst engaged in the act. One can only speculate as to how many Prohibition-era gangsters were actually involved in this type of thing. More likely there were none, and it is merely a device to wake you up during the bits when the plot slows down to somewhere near a total standstill.
Sod it! Next week I'm going to down 17 Jagerbombs while watching Merlin.
Acronyms are shit, by the way, especially when, as in the case of MOAFH, they aren't actually words. For those of you struggling to keep up it stands for Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard, the piece you are wasting your valuable life force reading right now. I mean really. MOAFH? Where did that come from? Why did I do that? I'm just glad I don't work in St Helens Information Technology.
So what can I tell you? I have been sober for nine days. I can hear the woos. It is easy to stay sober, relatively speaking. What is difficult is staying in, and therefore having to endure Saturday night television. In our house this means Strictly Come Dancing as opposed to X-Factor. Both would be too much to bear for either of us. We'd be finding brain cells down the back of the sofa as they literally shrivel up into a sticky liquid and pour out of our ears. MOAFH is all about the imagery. So anyway Strictly. Fourteen (now eleven) celebrities of varying relevance trying to learn how to dance with the help of bronzed, shudderingly perfect professionals. Each week one is voted off but unfathomably Bruce Forsyth makes it through to the very end.
Staggeringly it is the 10th series this year, despite the fact that the formula barely changes from year to year. You get a couple of doddering oldies who usually get the boot early, several flat-footed and awkward buffoons whose role is to provide comedy and who are routinely saved from the exit on that basis, and it's all blended together with a few beautiful people who generally have some experience of dancing of sorts or at least stage performance. All of which gives them an unfair advantage but it is not about the competition. It's about laughing at the z-listers and them not caring because they are getting paid sacks of cash and they won't be getting up on Monday morning to talk to students about their bursary and it's possible whereabouts.
As mercilessly trashy as all this sounds it is frankly unmissable. There's something addictive about it. I don't know whether I just enjoying looking at Ola Jordan and fantasising about how many times I would need to punch her gobshite husband James Jordan in the face before his nose actually fell off. You thought I was going to write something else after the word 'fantasising' there didn't you? MOAFH is a clean-cut, family column. You twat. So anyway, James Jordan. The judges are supposed to be the villains on this show but we all know that the real baddie is James, with his crap John Terry haircut and his smug self-assuredness and his ability to do the splits. A friend of mine broke his leg doing the splits once. He couldn't feel it because he has Spina Bifida, but it is not to be advised. So think on, Jordan.
Less trashy but no less embarrassing is Boardwalk Empire, which follows the ballroom bonanza on what my dad used to call 'the other side'. It was ok to refer to tv channels as 'sides' back then because there were only four of them, like a square. Now, there is so much manure on my television, that many 'sides', that the geometrical permutations are frankly incalculable and distinctly whiffy. Boardwalk is great, in a slow-burning, build tension and keep everyone guessing sort of way, but is not something I recommend you watch with your mother. Hardly an episode goes by without some poor actress being required to simulate some scarecely believable sexual practice. This week's delight involved a man being choked with his belt whilst engaged in the act. One can only speculate as to how many Prohibition-era gangsters were actually involved in this type of thing. More likely there were none, and it is merely a device to wake you up during the bits when the plot slows down to somewhere near a total standstill.
Sod it! Next week I'm going to down 17 Jagerbombs while watching Merlin.
Saturday, 13 October 2012
37
It's late on a Saturday night. The Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard stats page informs me that I haven't written anything since August 31. As uninspired and useless as I feel tonight, I'm doing it. This is me forcing myself. It may show.
So what's new since the end of August? Well, I had another birthday last week. Last Monday I turned 37 years old. The day itself was notable only for the kind messages of over 60 of you on Facebook, for which I thank you profoundly, some garlic bread, peri-peri chicken and creamy mash at Nandos and a ridiculous Will Ferrell film called The Campaign.
At some point you will be able to read my thoughts on that in a little more detail on my film blog, but for tonight I'm going to ramble on about age again. I have just finished reading back through the blog I wrote on the day I turned 36. It's grim reading to be totally honest. In that respect not a whole lot has changed. I woke up this morning feeling like the world's worst person. A night out with my work colleagues was all it took for me to over-indulge, and leave myself with that old feeling of rabid paranoia and a general lack of self worth. I was selfish and stupid enough to point this out to the 300 or so Facebook friends that I have. I don't know why, I just felt compelled to tell everyone how I felt. All of which probably worried some people unnecessarily for which I profusely apologise. It was nice to know that you cared.
The trouble is that this is becoming a theme in my life. Shortly after my 36th birthday an almost comical set of circumstances sent me spiralling towards the basement mental health-wise. One month after that I showed my stunning flare for the childish hissy fit by shutting this blog down. I just couldn't physically write. It was all too negative. By February I was borderline depressive and so started to seek some help. I'm still getting that help and the good news is that it works. Until you get crazily blasted and your alcohol-flooded mind starts telling you that you are actually a useless tit. At that point you are heading back to square one and it might be time to knock the alcohol on the head again. From October to December last year I quit drinking alcohol altogether and it wasn't that difficult. I will do it again this year I'm sure. I just have one more birthday night out to overcome.
If I don't drink I will have more opportunity to drive. I have just got back on the road after an 11-year absence. A protracted and pointless spat with Motability which began in the summer of 2001 finally ended early this summer when they agreed to waive the debt on my last vehicle and allow me to lease a new one. That first day behind the wheel was nerve-wracking for a while. Who knew that driving through a McDonald's from St.Helens Ford and back home again would be so stressful? I was quite convinced I was going to cause a 42 car pile-up. Yet by the time I drove down to Sheffield for the wedding of Emma's cousin on the last weekend in September I was finding it all a lot more easy. Now it is second nature again, although hilariously I was unable to advise Emma yesterday on how to get the gear stick to move and had to push back to the car park from the pub near work to do it myself. Even then I couldn't work out why it wouldn't move until I actually got in the car and tried to reverse it. You have to hold the brake down to enable you to put it in gear. Turns out I only know this when I do it and can't describe it, like some kind of complex move on a video game.
The second and only other goal I have in mind in my 38th year is to write a novel. If this sounds like an oft told tale to those of you who who have known me long enough well yes, you're right. It is. But this time, unlike my other two fairly successful but utterly unpublished attempts, I am going to do it in a single month. November, aswell as being known for inspiring people to grow ludicrous moustaches in the name of charity, is also Nanowrimo. Nano-what now? National Novel Writing Month. I've read all the bumph and apparently it is not only plausible to do so but actually quite simple. Really. Right. I've already started my planning and researched some techniques.
I just need to find the time in between entries in Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard.
So what's new since the end of August? Well, I had another birthday last week. Last Monday I turned 37 years old. The day itself was notable only for the kind messages of over 60 of you on Facebook, for which I thank you profoundly, some garlic bread, peri-peri chicken and creamy mash at Nandos and a ridiculous Will Ferrell film called The Campaign.
At some point you will be able to read my thoughts on that in a little more detail on my film blog, but for tonight I'm going to ramble on about age again. I have just finished reading back through the blog I wrote on the day I turned 36. It's grim reading to be totally honest. In that respect not a whole lot has changed. I woke up this morning feeling like the world's worst person. A night out with my work colleagues was all it took for me to over-indulge, and leave myself with that old feeling of rabid paranoia and a general lack of self worth. I was selfish and stupid enough to point this out to the 300 or so Facebook friends that I have. I don't know why, I just felt compelled to tell everyone how I felt. All of which probably worried some people unnecessarily for which I profusely apologise. It was nice to know that you cared.
The trouble is that this is becoming a theme in my life. Shortly after my 36th birthday an almost comical set of circumstances sent me spiralling towards the basement mental health-wise. One month after that I showed my stunning flare for the childish hissy fit by shutting this blog down. I just couldn't physically write. It was all too negative. By February I was borderline depressive and so started to seek some help. I'm still getting that help and the good news is that it works. Until you get crazily blasted and your alcohol-flooded mind starts telling you that you are actually a useless tit. At that point you are heading back to square one and it might be time to knock the alcohol on the head again. From October to December last year I quit drinking alcohol altogether and it wasn't that difficult. I will do it again this year I'm sure. I just have one more birthday night out to overcome.
If I don't drink I will have more opportunity to drive. I have just got back on the road after an 11-year absence. A protracted and pointless spat with Motability which began in the summer of 2001 finally ended early this summer when they agreed to waive the debt on my last vehicle and allow me to lease a new one. That first day behind the wheel was nerve-wracking for a while. Who knew that driving through a McDonald's from St.Helens Ford and back home again would be so stressful? I was quite convinced I was going to cause a 42 car pile-up. Yet by the time I drove down to Sheffield for the wedding of Emma's cousin on the last weekend in September I was finding it all a lot more easy. Now it is second nature again, although hilariously I was unable to advise Emma yesterday on how to get the gear stick to move and had to push back to the car park from the pub near work to do it myself. Even then I couldn't work out why it wouldn't move until I actually got in the car and tried to reverse it. You have to hold the brake down to enable you to put it in gear. Turns out I only know this when I do it and can't describe it, like some kind of complex move on a video game.
The second and only other goal I have in mind in my 38th year is to write a novel. If this sounds like an oft told tale to those of you who who have known me long enough well yes, you're right. It is. But this time, unlike my other two fairly successful but utterly unpublished attempts, I am going to do it in a single month. November, aswell as being known for inspiring people to grow ludicrous moustaches in the name of charity, is also Nanowrimo. Nano-what now? National Novel Writing Month. I've read all the bumph and apparently it is not only plausible to do so but actually quite simple. Really. Right. I've already started my planning and researched some techniques.
I just need to find the time in between entries in Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard.
Friday, 31 August 2012
Paralympics 2012: An Evening With Channel 4
The first day of Paralympic competition being a Thursday, I was at work. This, despite what the more cynical among you might suggest, meant that I was unable to follow events live on Channel 4. Instead, I put my faith in Sky+ and recorded the whole blooming lot, intending to fish through the dregs to get to the good bits with the aid of the fast-forward button.
It all sounds so simple. It was, though I never expected to be able to get through over five hours of programming and still be in bed before midnight, bearing in mind that I also used the hours between 7.00 and 9.00 to watch Great Britain Men's first match in the wheelchair basketball tournament against Germany. Which was a thriller, but more about that later.
Trying to take things chronologically I put the morning session on first. I had been hearing some whispers of discontent from some people, who complained that there was too much chat from the presenters and not enough action. Their complaints were justified it has to be said. In just around three hours of air-time Channel 4 managed to broadcast eight swimming heats and a cycling heat on their main stream. The rest of the time was taken up by the man fast becoming the scourge of the Paralympic Games, Jonathan Edwards, chatting to his fellow presenters. Add in the endless commercial breaks and the exhaustive flogging of Giles Long's LEXI system explaining the various classification systems in Paralympic sport, and there wasn't actually that much air time left. Some of the swimming heats looked suspiciously less than live also, with the very first heat of the very first event being screened, but then the remaining heats dispensed with in favour of more chat from Edwards and Long. We did manage to see Jonathan Fox break the world record in his heat of the men's S7 100m backstroke. I'm almost sure I hear the commentator say that this is the second world record broken in the pool that morning, the other being broken by Ellie Simmonds, but if that did happen it is a piece of footage conspicious by it's absence. I think I might have imagined it, to be fair.
What I did not imagine was the lack of actual commentary in a heat of the men's men's S8 100m Butterfly featuring Great Britain's Sean Fraser. As he raced his way to the final, we get more of Edwards and Long, with the former in particular sounding like a man who has never left the desert trying to describe a snowstorm. I didn't get to see Fraser's final at all, in which he finished sixth, because the recording stopped seconds before he entered the pool as Channel 4 chose that moment to switch from one broadcasting slot to another. Before that, I did at least manage to see Hannah Russell pick up a silver medal in the women's S12 400m Freestyle and also Nyree Kindred earning the same accolade in the women's S6 100m backstroke.
Away from the pool and in fact away from that first morning session things were much improved, but not before a little more disappointment came my way. I was a little frustrated at not being able to see Scott Robertson or Sara Head's table tennis matches against the brilliantly named Ningning Cao of China and Hyun Ja Choi respectively. I have a greater interest in these two, having been on a sporting trip to Australia with Scott many years ago, and played basketball against Sara on several occasions. I couldn't get their matches online, and I couldn't find them on any of Channel 4's broadcasts. Scott lost 3-1 unfortunately, but this is something I found out via his Facebook page rather than any official media outlet. Thankfully, the table tennis competition is operating a league format for the early rounds so Scott will live to fight another day. Better news for Sara, who won her match 3-2.
Yet the lack of table tennis coverage was the last negative I'm going to bore you with today. Maybe. On condition that someone can explain to me how the GB women's basketball team's 62-35 defeat to Holland could be so heavily butchered? We see the last few minutes of the third quarter in which they slip behind by around 10-12 points, only to then be told in an instant that they were actually well beaten and we're all off to the Equestrian now if that's ok. Well no, it isn't. Not really.
Coverage of Great Britain's first gold medal, won by cyclist Sarah Storey in the women's C5 individual pursuit, is excellent, as is that for Mark Colbourne's silver medal in the men's C1-3 1km individual time trial. Interestingly, times in that event are factored down, so that the more severe the disability of the athlete, the more time is lopped off their time at the end to give them their overall placing. It can be complicated to follow, especially when you have Phil Liggett trying to explain it to you, but it was every bit as exciting to watch as the exploits of Hoy, Pendleton, Kenny and Trott in the Olympics.
So too was the men's basketball I mentioned earlier. Great Britain make a slow start against Germany, with Jan Haller shooting the proverbial lights out in the first half. At one point GB trail by 16 points in the second quarter, but fight back brilliantly to force the game into overtime at 66-66. However, they run out of steam in the extra five minutes and go down 77-72. Our former team-mate Dan Highcock is unused until the game is up well inside the last minute, which maybe due to the fact that he has had an injury recently, but is nevertheless a disappointment for people who like pointing at the telly and saying 'I know him'. Like the table tennis, the basketball competition has a league phase early on and so there is plenty of time for both the men's and the women's teams to make up for their opening day slip-ups.
I'm hoping Channel 4 do the same, but I must just leave you with one word of credit for them. The extra channels they have created to cover the main sports such as swimming, basketball and athletics are superb. None of this red button stuff you got from the BBC, but actual recorder-friendly channels which make it easier to avoid missing the best of the action. If only I had known about them a little earlier, I could have saved myself the bother of having to put up with Edwards and the main stream. I'd receommend this as the preferred method for following the Paralympic Games from now on.
Friday's action is already in the planner.
It all sounds so simple. It was, though I never expected to be able to get through over five hours of programming and still be in bed before midnight, bearing in mind that I also used the hours between 7.00 and 9.00 to watch Great Britain Men's first match in the wheelchair basketball tournament against Germany. Which was a thriller, but more about that later.
Trying to take things chronologically I put the morning session on first. I had been hearing some whispers of discontent from some people, who complained that there was too much chat from the presenters and not enough action. Their complaints were justified it has to be said. In just around three hours of air-time Channel 4 managed to broadcast eight swimming heats and a cycling heat on their main stream. The rest of the time was taken up by the man fast becoming the scourge of the Paralympic Games, Jonathan Edwards, chatting to his fellow presenters. Add in the endless commercial breaks and the exhaustive flogging of Giles Long's LEXI system explaining the various classification systems in Paralympic sport, and there wasn't actually that much air time left. Some of the swimming heats looked suspiciously less than live also, with the very first heat of the very first event being screened, but then the remaining heats dispensed with in favour of more chat from Edwards and Long. We did manage to see Jonathan Fox break the world record in his heat of the men's S7 100m backstroke. I'm almost sure I hear the commentator say that this is the second world record broken in the pool that morning, the other being broken by Ellie Simmonds, but if that did happen it is a piece of footage conspicious by it's absence. I think I might have imagined it, to be fair.
What I did not imagine was the lack of actual commentary in a heat of the men's men's S8 100m Butterfly featuring Great Britain's Sean Fraser. As he raced his way to the final, we get more of Edwards and Long, with the former in particular sounding like a man who has never left the desert trying to describe a snowstorm. I didn't get to see Fraser's final at all, in which he finished sixth, because the recording stopped seconds before he entered the pool as Channel 4 chose that moment to switch from one broadcasting slot to another. Before that, I did at least manage to see Hannah Russell pick up a silver medal in the women's S12 400m Freestyle and also Nyree Kindred earning the same accolade in the women's S6 100m backstroke.
Away from the pool and in fact away from that first morning session things were much improved, but not before a little more disappointment came my way. I was a little frustrated at not being able to see Scott Robertson or Sara Head's table tennis matches against the brilliantly named Ningning Cao of China and Hyun Ja Choi respectively. I have a greater interest in these two, having been on a sporting trip to Australia with Scott many years ago, and played basketball against Sara on several occasions. I couldn't get their matches online, and I couldn't find them on any of Channel 4's broadcasts. Scott lost 3-1 unfortunately, but this is something I found out via his Facebook page rather than any official media outlet. Thankfully, the table tennis competition is operating a league format for the early rounds so Scott will live to fight another day. Better news for Sara, who won her match 3-2.
Yet the lack of table tennis coverage was the last negative I'm going to bore you with today. Maybe. On condition that someone can explain to me how the GB women's basketball team's 62-35 defeat to Holland could be so heavily butchered? We see the last few minutes of the third quarter in which they slip behind by around 10-12 points, only to then be told in an instant that they were actually well beaten and we're all off to the Equestrian now if that's ok. Well no, it isn't. Not really.
Coverage of Great Britain's first gold medal, won by cyclist Sarah Storey in the women's C5 individual pursuit, is excellent, as is that for Mark Colbourne's silver medal in the men's C1-3 1km individual time trial. Interestingly, times in that event are factored down, so that the more severe the disability of the athlete, the more time is lopped off their time at the end to give them their overall placing. It can be complicated to follow, especially when you have Phil Liggett trying to explain it to you, but it was every bit as exciting to watch as the exploits of Hoy, Pendleton, Kenny and Trott in the Olympics.
So too was the men's basketball I mentioned earlier. Great Britain make a slow start against Germany, with Jan Haller shooting the proverbial lights out in the first half. At one point GB trail by 16 points in the second quarter, but fight back brilliantly to force the game into overtime at 66-66. However, they run out of steam in the extra five minutes and go down 77-72. Our former team-mate Dan Highcock is unused until the game is up well inside the last minute, which maybe due to the fact that he has had an injury recently, but is nevertheless a disappointment for people who like pointing at the telly and saying 'I know him'. Like the table tennis, the basketball competition has a league phase early on and so there is plenty of time for both the men's and the women's teams to make up for their opening day slip-ups.
I'm hoping Channel 4 do the same, but I must just leave you with one word of credit for them. The extra channels they have created to cover the main sports such as swimming, basketball and athletics are superb. None of this red button stuff you got from the BBC, but actual recorder-friendly channels which make it easier to avoid missing the best of the action. If only I had known about them a little earlier, I could have saved myself the bother of having to put up with Edwards and the main stream. I'd receommend this as the preferred method for following the Paralympic Games from now on.
Friday's action is already in the planner.
Thursday, 30 August 2012
Paralympics 2012 - Opening Night
After the massive success of the London 2012 Olympic Games, the Olympic Stadium saw the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Paralympic Games last night (August 29).
I could just start and end this piece by telling you that it was utterly phenomenal. It really was inspiring, moving, spectacular, all of the things that you would hope for but dare not expect from an opening ceremony charged with the daunting responsibility of following on from Danny Boyle's superb extravaganza a month ago. It was well after midnight by the time it finished and I got to bed, but when it finally came to an end it left you in no doubt that the Paralympic Games were here, and that they were huge.
I have to say that at the start of Channel 4's live broadcast of the ceremony I wasn't expecting to feel quite so enthused and excited about the event by the end. I just didn't trust Channel 4 to be able to convey the magnitude of the thing to our living rooms. The previous evening's edition of Jon Snow's Paralympic Show had been a bit of a write-off. Jonathan Edwards missing his cue and then looking rudely over the shoulder of the person he was meant to be interviewing did not inspire condfidence. Nor did Snow's apparent lack of knowledge of all things sport, never mind Paralympic sport. He's a newsreader, and it showed.
Snow and Edwards are in attendance again for the grand opening, and they are joined by Paralympic wheelchair basketball bronze medallist and television presenter Ade Adepitan. He's a much safer pair of hands. I'm loathe to pepper this piece with clanging examples of name-dropping, but he is the first of several faces familiar to me throughout the night. Being around the same age, I played against Ade at junior levels and in the league on countless occasions.
The junior matches were particularly intense. It seemed like almost every year the national junior title would be between his London-based Tigers and our North West-based Meteors team. We won some, we lost some but they were all great battles. There is an old cover of the Great Britain Wheelchair Basketball Association Handbook which has a photograph of Ade and I contesting a ball. It is not a word of a lie that a split second after this photograph was taken I lobbed the ball over his head as he over-stretched to try and take it away from me, and then I had the whole court open to drive straight in for an easy lay-up. Well, as easy as lay-ups ever got for me. Which wasn't very. I can't remember whether we won or lost that game but I'm doing aeroplanes around the room just thinking about that moment. It doesn't get any better. Unlike Ade, who got an awful lot better than me and most other players very quickly.
Back to the plot. There's a countdown to the start of the ceremony appearing intermittently in the bottom corner of the screen. We only have about 18 minutes at this point, but this is time enough for a truly humbling and inspiring film about one of the athletes competing in the games. Martine Wright is part of the women's sitting volleyball team, and her back story is of her experience of the 7/7 London bombings of 2005. Just a day after it was announced that London would be hosting the games, Martine lost both of her legs when a device was detonated on the tube train near Aldgate Station. Her journey to this point has been a remarkable one. She feels lucky, she says, which is a stark reminder to all of us that as difficult as things get from time to time, there is always something to be grateful for, to be positive about.
And then it starts. Snow hands over almost seamlessly (almost) to Krishnan Guru-Murthy and Jeff Adams. Adams is a former Paralympic athlete from Canada, six times a world champion on the track. The relationship between the two should work. The vastly experienced broadcaster and news man and the sporting expert, but they have their moments. When the Canadian team enters the parade Guru-Murthy instructs his co-commentator to stop talking about his country. He's only half joking and there is a troubling silence for a couple of moments afterwards.
The parade has several moments of uncertainty and intrigue, moments when you wonder whether what you have just seen was really meant to happen and when you wonder what might happen next. An Australian athlete stumbles on the track and nearly incapacitates himself before competition has even begun. An Algerian waves a two-fingered salute to the camera. There's a Danish athlete propelling his wheelchair around the track using only his legs and feet, and to help him do so more quickly he is doing it backwards. A Brazilian enters fully into the spirit by painting his face entirely in the colours of his national flag. There are Irish and Belgian athletes accompanied by helper dogs. All this aswell as Ghanaians dancing, Mexicans decked out in faboulously colourful ponchos and sombreros, and German ladies in striking pink outfits.
But there's a gripe. There's always a gripe, unfortunately. In the Beijing Paralympics of 2008 China topped the medal table by the proverbial country mile. Their Paralympic team is vast, almost epic. They are expected to lord it over everyone once again here in the UK. Nobody has told the producers at Channel 4 however, who within a few moments of the emergence of the Chinese team into the stadium, choose to go to a commercial break. Now, we all understand the need for commercial channels to raise the funds to be able to afford to broadcast events of this importance, but really, does the timing of ad breaks have to be so well......untimely? Undeniably it takes something away from the event. The Chinese athletes are set to become some of the biggest stars of the London 2012 Paralympic Games. I'm sure the audience would have benefitted from a little introduction.
It's not that Channel 4 haven't considered the need for their audience to get to know the athletes. They have taken certain steps to do so which would never have been taken for the Olympic Games. Several athletes (including the Australian who later stumbles during the parade and our very own Martine Wright) are interviewed by Claire Balding as they wait to enter the stadium. This just would not happen during the Olympic Games opening ceremony. Not a second of Boyle's show was sacrificed to add in interviews with athletes outside the stadium. It's hard to say whether Channel 4's alternative approach helps or hinders the viewing experience. It's a debate we could have I suppose. But alternative is exactly what Channel 4 are. It's always been pretty much their raison d'etre.
So what are we potentially missing during these sometimes unwanted interludes? In short...Englightenment. This is the title of the ceremony which, introduced by theoretical physicist and author Stephen Hawking, has just about everything. There's Sir Ian McKellen as Prospero from Shakespeare's The Tempest, an unrecognisable Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson (among many others and yes I did meet her once) suspended from a wire above the stadium, hundreds of dancers (including one double amputee ballet dancer), Birdy, Beverley Knight, a model of the statue of Alison Lapper - a double amputee as pregnant as one of the pauses during a conversation between Snow and Edwards - and finally Margaret Maughan, the first Brit to win a Paralympic gold medal all the way back in 1960. Maughan lights the flame, but not before it is brought into the stadium on a zip-wire by another double amputee and aspiring Paralympian Joe Townsend. Swimmer Liz Johnson takes the athletes oath and then there are the speeches, plenty of speeches.
Following Lord Coe is Sir Philip Craven, President of the International Paralympic Committee. Clang, there goes another name-drop but the paths of Sir Phil and myself have crossed many times. He was involved in wheelchair basketball long before I was born and, from what I have heard of that time, was among the very best players in the world in his day. When I played against him he was a little way past that, but he was still outstanding. He had this metronomic, almost faultless shooting technique and was just deadly from anywhere inside the three-point line, particularly from either baseline. I remember him trying to pass on some of this wisdom to me at the many junior international training camps I attended years ago. Before the beer and women. Before Haj and Nigel. That's a whole other blog. Suffice to say that not even Sir Phil Craven could have drummed the requisite attributes into me.
But....it does bring me nicely onto what for me was the spine-tinglingly bitter-sweet highlight (and lowlight) of the whole shebang. Just after the parade, and just before Maughan lit the flame, the Olympic flag was carried into the stadium by members of the Great Britain Men's under-22 wheelchair basketball team. You can probably fill in the rest yourselves by now but just for the avoidance of any confusion...I used to be in that! I can't explain to you what it would have been like to be a part of the opening ceremony, carrying the Olympic flag into the stadium with my team-mates. No really I can't explain to you because it never happened. I was 15 years too late, as I explained immediately and somewhat impulsively on my Facebook page. One man who does know now is Billy Bridge, a member of my former side the Vikings and one of the lucky ones able to take part with his under-22 team-mates. We also have a former Viking in the men's squad competing in London in Dan Highcock. Another former Viking, Dave Heaton, will be competing in his sixth Games in the sport of wheelchair fencing. It's a proud time to be associated with the club.
But this not about me and the Vikings. Much. So we'll move to the finale. It was well past my bedtime but I wasn't missing Beverley Knight's jaw-droppingly rousing rendition of 'I Am What I Am'. If it didn't move you then the bad news is that you're dead. Choosing a Gloria Gaynor number might ordinarily be considered a little cliched, but somehow it just seemed to fit. The brilliance of Knight helped win me over here, I have to admit. The cynic in me might normally have argued that we want to focus on the sport itself and not the overcoming of adversity or the ongoing fight for acceptance in society. Sometimes as a disabled person you feel like there is no in between. You're either a hero and an inspiration or you're an embarrassment. I don't want to be either and I don't feel like either. I'm just a bloke from Thatto Heath.
As I finish this I have just started my lunch break and I'm into the action. Spain are making short work of Italy in the men's wheelchair basketball (yes, for the umpteenth time, the place I maybe could have been if I hadn't been railroaded by my alcoholism and my lack of ability). It's really here.
Enjoy it.
I could just start and end this piece by telling you that it was utterly phenomenal. It really was inspiring, moving, spectacular, all of the things that you would hope for but dare not expect from an opening ceremony charged with the daunting responsibility of following on from Danny Boyle's superb extravaganza a month ago. It was well after midnight by the time it finished and I got to bed, but when it finally came to an end it left you in no doubt that the Paralympic Games were here, and that they were huge.
I have to say that at the start of Channel 4's live broadcast of the ceremony I wasn't expecting to feel quite so enthused and excited about the event by the end. I just didn't trust Channel 4 to be able to convey the magnitude of the thing to our living rooms. The previous evening's edition of Jon Snow's Paralympic Show had been a bit of a write-off. Jonathan Edwards missing his cue and then looking rudely over the shoulder of the person he was meant to be interviewing did not inspire condfidence. Nor did Snow's apparent lack of knowledge of all things sport, never mind Paralympic sport. He's a newsreader, and it showed.
Snow and Edwards are in attendance again for the grand opening, and they are joined by Paralympic wheelchair basketball bronze medallist and television presenter Ade Adepitan. He's a much safer pair of hands. I'm loathe to pepper this piece with clanging examples of name-dropping, but he is the first of several faces familiar to me throughout the night. Being around the same age, I played against Ade at junior levels and in the league on countless occasions.
The junior matches were particularly intense. It seemed like almost every year the national junior title would be between his London-based Tigers and our North West-based Meteors team. We won some, we lost some but they were all great battles. There is an old cover of the Great Britain Wheelchair Basketball Association Handbook which has a photograph of Ade and I contesting a ball. It is not a word of a lie that a split second after this photograph was taken I lobbed the ball over his head as he over-stretched to try and take it away from me, and then I had the whole court open to drive straight in for an easy lay-up. Well, as easy as lay-ups ever got for me. Which wasn't very. I can't remember whether we won or lost that game but I'm doing aeroplanes around the room just thinking about that moment. It doesn't get any better. Unlike Ade, who got an awful lot better than me and most other players very quickly.
Back to the plot. There's a countdown to the start of the ceremony appearing intermittently in the bottom corner of the screen. We only have about 18 minutes at this point, but this is time enough for a truly humbling and inspiring film about one of the athletes competing in the games. Martine Wright is part of the women's sitting volleyball team, and her back story is of her experience of the 7/7 London bombings of 2005. Just a day after it was announced that London would be hosting the games, Martine lost both of her legs when a device was detonated on the tube train near Aldgate Station. Her journey to this point has been a remarkable one. She feels lucky, she says, which is a stark reminder to all of us that as difficult as things get from time to time, there is always something to be grateful for, to be positive about.
And then it starts. Snow hands over almost seamlessly (almost) to Krishnan Guru-Murthy and Jeff Adams. Adams is a former Paralympic athlete from Canada, six times a world champion on the track. The relationship between the two should work. The vastly experienced broadcaster and news man and the sporting expert, but they have their moments. When the Canadian team enters the parade Guru-Murthy instructs his co-commentator to stop talking about his country. He's only half joking and there is a troubling silence for a couple of moments afterwards.
The parade has several moments of uncertainty and intrigue, moments when you wonder whether what you have just seen was really meant to happen and when you wonder what might happen next. An Australian athlete stumbles on the track and nearly incapacitates himself before competition has even begun. An Algerian waves a two-fingered salute to the camera. There's a Danish athlete propelling his wheelchair around the track using only his legs and feet, and to help him do so more quickly he is doing it backwards. A Brazilian enters fully into the spirit by painting his face entirely in the colours of his national flag. There are Irish and Belgian athletes accompanied by helper dogs. All this aswell as Ghanaians dancing, Mexicans decked out in faboulously colourful ponchos and sombreros, and German ladies in striking pink outfits.
But there's a gripe. There's always a gripe, unfortunately. In the Beijing Paralympics of 2008 China topped the medal table by the proverbial country mile. Their Paralympic team is vast, almost epic. They are expected to lord it over everyone once again here in the UK. Nobody has told the producers at Channel 4 however, who within a few moments of the emergence of the Chinese team into the stadium, choose to go to a commercial break. Now, we all understand the need for commercial channels to raise the funds to be able to afford to broadcast events of this importance, but really, does the timing of ad breaks have to be so well......untimely? Undeniably it takes something away from the event. The Chinese athletes are set to become some of the biggest stars of the London 2012 Paralympic Games. I'm sure the audience would have benefitted from a little introduction.
It's not that Channel 4 haven't considered the need for their audience to get to know the athletes. They have taken certain steps to do so which would never have been taken for the Olympic Games. Several athletes (including the Australian who later stumbles during the parade and our very own Martine Wright) are interviewed by Claire Balding as they wait to enter the stadium. This just would not happen during the Olympic Games opening ceremony. Not a second of Boyle's show was sacrificed to add in interviews with athletes outside the stadium. It's hard to say whether Channel 4's alternative approach helps or hinders the viewing experience. It's a debate we could have I suppose. But alternative is exactly what Channel 4 are. It's always been pretty much their raison d'etre.
So what are we potentially missing during these sometimes unwanted interludes? In short...Englightenment. This is the title of the ceremony which, introduced by theoretical physicist and author Stephen Hawking, has just about everything. There's Sir Ian McKellen as Prospero from Shakespeare's The Tempest, an unrecognisable Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson (among many others and yes I did meet her once) suspended from a wire above the stadium, hundreds of dancers (including one double amputee ballet dancer), Birdy, Beverley Knight, a model of the statue of Alison Lapper - a double amputee as pregnant as one of the pauses during a conversation between Snow and Edwards - and finally Margaret Maughan, the first Brit to win a Paralympic gold medal all the way back in 1960. Maughan lights the flame, but not before it is brought into the stadium on a zip-wire by another double amputee and aspiring Paralympian Joe Townsend. Swimmer Liz Johnson takes the athletes oath and then there are the speeches, plenty of speeches.
Following Lord Coe is Sir Philip Craven, President of the International Paralympic Committee. Clang, there goes another name-drop but the paths of Sir Phil and myself have crossed many times. He was involved in wheelchair basketball long before I was born and, from what I have heard of that time, was among the very best players in the world in his day. When I played against him he was a little way past that, but he was still outstanding. He had this metronomic, almost faultless shooting technique and was just deadly from anywhere inside the three-point line, particularly from either baseline. I remember him trying to pass on some of this wisdom to me at the many junior international training camps I attended years ago. Before the beer and women. Before Haj and Nigel. That's a whole other blog. Suffice to say that not even Sir Phil Craven could have drummed the requisite attributes into me.
But....it does bring me nicely onto what for me was the spine-tinglingly bitter-sweet highlight (and lowlight) of the whole shebang. Just after the parade, and just before Maughan lit the flame, the Olympic flag was carried into the stadium by members of the Great Britain Men's under-22 wheelchair basketball team. You can probably fill in the rest yourselves by now but just for the avoidance of any confusion...I used to be in that! I can't explain to you what it would have been like to be a part of the opening ceremony, carrying the Olympic flag into the stadium with my team-mates. No really I can't explain to you because it never happened. I was 15 years too late, as I explained immediately and somewhat impulsively on my Facebook page. One man who does know now is Billy Bridge, a member of my former side the Vikings and one of the lucky ones able to take part with his under-22 team-mates. We also have a former Viking in the men's squad competing in London in Dan Highcock. Another former Viking, Dave Heaton, will be competing in his sixth Games in the sport of wheelchair fencing. It's a proud time to be associated with the club.
But this not about me and the Vikings. Much. So we'll move to the finale. It was well past my bedtime but I wasn't missing Beverley Knight's jaw-droppingly rousing rendition of 'I Am What I Am'. If it didn't move you then the bad news is that you're dead. Choosing a Gloria Gaynor number might ordinarily be considered a little cliched, but somehow it just seemed to fit. The brilliance of Knight helped win me over here, I have to admit. The cynic in me might normally have argued that we want to focus on the sport itself and not the overcoming of adversity or the ongoing fight for acceptance in society. Sometimes as a disabled person you feel like there is no in between. You're either a hero and an inspiration or you're an embarrassment. I don't want to be either and I don't feel like either. I'm just a bloke from Thatto Heath.
As I finish this I have just started my lunch break and I'm into the action. Spain are making short work of Italy in the men's wheelchair basketball (yes, for the umpteenth time, the place I maybe could have been if I hadn't been railroaded by my alcoholism and my lack of ability). It's really here.
Enjoy it.
Thursday, 23 August 2012
Pushed Too Far
You can let something go once, but when it happens twice it becomes a trend. Or if not a trend, then at the very least it becomes blog-worthy.
Actually I didn't let it go last time. I wrote it on my Facebook. But there didn't seem any way that it would stretch to an entire blog entry. Until now. Until it has happened again. A few months ago I was getting off the train at Thatto Heath station. This is something I do around 100-150 times a year (when I am in one of my sporadic gym phases in any event). It is important to remember just how routine this is for me. As I pushed up the admittedly large and fairly steep ramp towards the main road leading home, I felt a hand on my back. Then another. I actually took a push up the ramp with two as yet unidentified mits upon my personage. A little startled, I turned around to find a middle-aged man nodding at me and continuing to push his hands into my back in a hopeful attempt to propel me up the ramp;
"No thanks, mate. I'm alright." I said.
His hands did not move. I took another push, still with his hands upon me. I turned around again, only this time I didn't say anything. I just gave him a look. A look that said everything I needed to convey. A look that said 'take your frigging hands off me now, you moron. Do you really imagine that I only make this journey home from work this way in the hope that someone like you will kindly offer to push me up this fucking ramp?'. He got the message and shot me back a look that said 'I was only trying to help, God, chip on your shoulder or what?
Yeah mate, deep fat fryer, now fuck off.
And so to today. I have had an appointment at the doctors. I have been having regular appointments at my surgery for reasons which, while they would make hysterical blog material I am sure, are too personal to discuss here. It went well anyway, thanks for asking, but just as there is a large ramp between me and the exit to my local train station, so there is a similarly whopping great hill on the road between the surgery and my house.
I had almost reached the top of said hill when I heard a car engine behind me. This hapens a lot because I tend to forget that I am not in possession of an engine, and only take into account the fact that it is easier to push on the road than it is to push on the pavement, which is often uneven, sloped or, horror of all horrors, cobbled. So I moved sideways wearily, further towards the unfavoured terrain of the pavement to allow the car to pass me. Only it didn't. Instead the driver, another ageing man who looked no more capable of running up a hill than I, actually got out of his car and asked whether I might like a push up the hill. Now I know he might mean well, but again I must enquire as to whether people really believe that a person who needs a push up a bloody great hill would be out on his own trying to conquer a bloody great hill?
I have already commented elsewhere that the man offering me a push today is likely to need a push up a hill himself before I do. He was not exactly young and not exactly in the peak of his physical fitness. Yet he took one look at my wheelchair and decided that he was the best man for the job of lugging my arse up to the top of the hill. That there were only around ten yards remaining to the summit at that point in any case seems a moot point now.
The Paralympics start next week. You will see disabled people performing physical and mental acts which make pushing up a steep hill near a local park look like rolling over in bed. I just hope that the man I encountered today, and his predecessor from the train station a few months ago, actually witness some of Channel 4's coverage and adapt their perceptions of what disabled people can and can't do for themselves.
My hope is very probably a forlorn one.
Actually I didn't let it go last time. I wrote it on my Facebook. But there didn't seem any way that it would stretch to an entire blog entry. Until now. Until it has happened again. A few months ago I was getting off the train at Thatto Heath station. This is something I do around 100-150 times a year (when I am in one of my sporadic gym phases in any event). It is important to remember just how routine this is for me. As I pushed up the admittedly large and fairly steep ramp towards the main road leading home, I felt a hand on my back. Then another. I actually took a push up the ramp with two as yet unidentified mits upon my personage. A little startled, I turned around to find a middle-aged man nodding at me and continuing to push his hands into my back in a hopeful attempt to propel me up the ramp;
"No thanks, mate. I'm alright." I said.
His hands did not move. I took another push, still with his hands upon me. I turned around again, only this time I didn't say anything. I just gave him a look. A look that said everything I needed to convey. A look that said 'take your frigging hands off me now, you moron. Do you really imagine that I only make this journey home from work this way in the hope that someone like you will kindly offer to push me up this fucking ramp?'. He got the message and shot me back a look that said 'I was only trying to help, God, chip on your shoulder or what?
Yeah mate, deep fat fryer, now fuck off.
And so to today. I have had an appointment at the doctors. I have been having regular appointments at my surgery for reasons which, while they would make hysterical blog material I am sure, are too personal to discuss here. It went well anyway, thanks for asking, but just as there is a large ramp between me and the exit to my local train station, so there is a similarly whopping great hill on the road between the surgery and my house.
I had almost reached the top of said hill when I heard a car engine behind me. This hapens a lot because I tend to forget that I am not in possession of an engine, and only take into account the fact that it is easier to push on the road than it is to push on the pavement, which is often uneven, sloped or, horror of all horrors, cobbled. So I moved sideways wearily, further towards the unfavoured terrain of the pavement to allow the car to pass me. Only it didn't. Instead the driver, another ageing man who looked no more capable of running up a hill than I, actually got out of his car and asked whether I might like a push up the hill. Now I know he might mean well, but again I must enquire as to whether people really believe that a person who needs a push up a bloody great hill would be out on his own trying to conquer a bloody great hill?
I have already commented elsewhere that the man offering me a push today is likely to need a push up a hill himself before I do. He was not exactly young and not exactly in the peak of his physical fitness. Yet he took one look at my wheelchair and decided that he was the best man for the job of lugging my arse up to the top of the hill. That there were only around ten yards remaining to the summit at that point in any case seems a moot point now.
The Paralympics start next week. You will see disabled people performing physical and mental acts which make pushing up a steep hill near a local park look like rolling over in bed. I just hope that the man I encountered today, and his predecessor from the train station a few months ago, actually witness some of Channel 4's coverage and adapt their perceptions of what disabled people can and can't do for themselves.
My hope is very probably a forlorn one.
Wednesday, 15 August 2012
Lord Morris - What's Changed?
Before yesterday I had never heard of Lord Alf Morris, who passed away earlier this week at the age of 84. Most disabled people will, if they are honest, tell you the same thing. But those of us now in education, employment, involved in sport, indeed who are integrating into society in all sorts of different ways owe Lord Alf a great debt of gratitude.
The perception of members of the House of Lords is one of old farts nodding off during readings of legislatory bills which have already been passed elsewhere. While that may be true of many, Lord Morris is one whose political career has seen him make a real difference to the lives of a great many people, myself included. It was Lord Morris who was at the forefront of the very first UK disability rights legislation back in 1970. It was a model which has been copied throughout the world and it laid the foundations for all of the greater freedoms we now enjoy.
You might not believe me if you have been trawling through my photographs on Facebook (which you have, admit it), but I wasn't around in 1970. I can only imagine what it must have been like for disabled people in Britain at that time. Regular visitors to this page will probably have been persuaded that it is not exactly shits and giggles even now, but it must have been far worse back then. Many disabled people were institutionalised, denied education and employment, locked away from the rest of society lest they bring about embarrassing attention. Sport was mostly off the agenda too, yet millions will tune into Channel 4 to see the best disabled athletes in the world compete at the London 2012 Paralympic Games in a couple of weeks. That we have come so far is due in no small part to Lord Alf and that first piece of legislation.
It has been a slow process. Improvements did not happen overnight. Where now we take disabled toilets, ramps, lifts etc for granted in many places, this was not always the case even after 1970. I started school in 1979 (at the age of three!) and was straight away unable to attend the same school as my sister, my cousins and all of the other children who grew up in the same area. None of the mainstream schools had the structures in place to provide access for a child with a phsyical disability back then. By the time I was 11 and ready to enter secondary school it was probably possible for me to attend a mainstream school but I never really considered it or even looked any further into it. There was still a social barrier which I feared could not be overcome. It was too much of a wrench to leave the familiar environment that had been created for me over the previous eight years. I was too comfortable, but I was contributing to my own social exclusion. I'm still paying for that.
Instead I was sent out to local mainstream schools to get myself a more rounded education. The special school I attended, as wonderful as all the staff there were, could not provide teaching to the standard that we were now showing that we required. Because we were able, because we could progress academically just as well as the able bodied children. This was somehow not thought possible before, or at least not important. We weren't going to be able to go out and work, so they thought, so why bother educating us? People like Lord Morris changed all that, but it hasn't been an easy transition.
During the time I spent at mainstream school I got a taste of what it might have been like had I attended full time. At Sutton High School my friend Phil and I studied French, Media Studies and Science to GCSE level. The vagaries of the timetable had it that on one day of the week we would have a session in all three of these subjects, so we spent the whole day there and just tried as best we could to fill in the gaps between lessons. That proved far more difficult than it should have been. It was the early 1990's but still our segregation from the others was plainly obvious. The school had social areas for the pupils to use during breaks and at lunchtime. Yet some pupils had damaged some of the seating, meaning that no students were allowed in from then on. Fine, we will all go outside then, right? Not you two. We can't have you going out in the rain or rolling over that dangerous concrete. We were told to stay in the social areas, indoors. We couldn't go outside, the other pupils couldn't come inside. It's too strong to compare it to Apartheid, but it was clearly segregation through lack of trust, through fear of what might happen. To us, to the other children. To society.
Even today we still have an awful long way to go in my view with regards to social attitudes and genuine integration and that is a two-way street. For every person who devalues you and thinks that you can't do your job or play sport or contribute to a debate because of your disability, there is a disabled person sat on his or her fat arse asking him or herself why they should bother and therefore doing nothing.
The government don't help, regardless of which party is in power. As much as I would relish the opportunity to call David Cameron a twat again, this is not a party political issue. I didn't start working until I was 31 years old, simply because they were paying me too much money to sit at home. There is still a perception among many disabled people that they are better off not bothering, and this extends to sport, education, socialising, everything. It's a miserable, sad state of affairs in many cases but then when you consider how poorly some of the older generation of disabled people were educated it is hard to argue with the notion that they have become too far disadvantaged to be employable now. Positive discrimination will get you an interview if you know what they are looking for in the job spec and you can communicate that effectively in writing, but after that you are on your own. The treatment they have had has made many disabled people set in their ways and lacking in belief. In themselves and in others.
I think in many ways, the younger you are as a disabled person now, the better chance you have of fully integrating. I have friends who are 5-8 years younger than me and it is noticable how much better they communicate with able bodied people their own age than even I do. I know able-bodied people who, if you asked them, would tell you they are my friends but whom I know are distinctly uncomfortable in my company, particularly if it is my company alone. Yeah it's cool to knock about with a disabled person, it shows you have an open mind and you're not shallow, heaven forbid. But don't take a disabled person out on the pull with you, is very much the philosophy. More and more, the young just don't think this way because they have dealt with it at an earlier age. Like learning a foreign language from the age of five instead of trying to learn it when you are 11. I'm sure if you took a camera into a school now you would find it hard to notice any difference between the treatment of disabled kids and any of the other kids. Maybe in 20 years from now people won't even acknowledge or notice disability in any meaningful way at all.
If that happens it will be largely down to the efforts of Lord Alf Morris.
The perception of members of the House of Lords is one of old farts nodding off during readings of legislatory bills which have already been passed elsewhere. While that may be true of many, Lord Morris is one whose political career has seen him make a real difference to the lives of a great many people, myself included. It was Lord Morris who was at the forefront of the very first UK disability rights legislation back in 1970. It was a model which has been copied throughout the world and it laid the foundations for all of the greater freedoms we now enjoy.
You might not believe me if you have been trawling through my photographs on Facebook (which you have, admit it), but I wasn't around in 1970. I can only imagine what it must have been like for disabled people in Britain at that time. Regular visitors to this page will probably have been persuaded that it is not exactly shits and giggles even now, but it must have been far worse back then. Many disabled people were institutionalised, denied education and employment, locked away from the rest of society lest they bring about embarrassing attention. Sport was mostly off the agenda too, yet millions will tune into Channel 4 to see the best disabled athletes in the world compete at the London 2012 Paralympic Games in a couple of weeks. That we have come so far is due in no small part to Lord Alf and that first piece of legislation.
It has been a slow process. Improvements did not happen overnight. Where now we take disabled toilets, ramps, lifts etc for granted in many places, this was not always the case even after 1970. I started school in 1979 (at the age of three!) and was straight away unable to attend the same school as my sister, my cousins and all of the other children who grew up in the same area. None of the mainstream schools had the structures in place to provide access for a child with a phsyical disability back then. By the time I was 11 and ready to enter secondary school it was probably possible for me to attend a mainstream school but I never really considered it or even looked any further into it. There was still a social barrier which I feared could not be overcome. It was too much of a wrench to leave the familiar environment that had been created for me over the previous eight years. I was too comfortable, but I was contributing to my own social exclusion. I'm still paying for that.
Instead I was sent out to local mainstream schools to get myself a more rounded education. The special school I attended, as wonderful as all the staff there were, could not provide teaching to the standard that we were now showing that we required. Because we were able, because we could progress academically just as well as the able bodied children. This was somehow not thought possible before, or at least not important. We weren't going to be able to go out and work, so they thought, so why bother educating us? People like Lord Morris changed all that, but it hasn't been an easy transition.
During the time I spent at mainstream school I got a taste of what it might have been like had I attended full time. At Sutton High School my friend Phil and I studied French, Media Studies and Science to GCSE level. The vagaries of the timetable had it that on one day of the week we would have a session in all three of these subjects, so we spent the whole day there and just tried as best we could to fill in the gaps between lessons. That proved far more difficult than it should have been. It was the early 1990's but still our segregation from the others was plainly obvious. The school had social areas for the pupils to use during breaks and at lunchtime. Yet some pupils had damaged some of the seating, meaning that no students were allowed in from then on. Fine, we will all go outside then, right? Not you two. We can't have you going out in the rain or rolling over that dangerous concrete. We were told to stay in the social areas, indoors. We couldn't go outside, the other pupils couldn't come inside. It's too strong to compare it to Apartheid, but it was clearly segregation through lack of trust, through fear of what might happen. To us, to the other children. To society.
Even today we still have an awful long way to go in my view with regards to social attitudes and genuine integration and that is a two-way street. For every person who devalues you and thinks that you can't do your job or play sport or contribute to a debate because of your disability, there is a disabled person sat on his or her fat arse asking him or herself why they should bother and therefore doing nothing.
The government don't help, regardless of which party is in power. As much as I would relish the opportunity to call David Cameron a twat again, this is not a party political issue. I didn't start working until I was 31 years old, simply because they were paying me too much money to sit at home. There is still a perception among many disabled people that they are better off not bothering, and this extends to sport, education, socialising, everything. It's a miserable, sad state of affairs in many cases but then when you consider how poorly some of the older generation of disabled people were educated it is hard to argue with the notion that they have become too far disadvantaged to be employable now. Positive discrimination will get you an interview if you know what they are looking for in the job spec and you can communicate that effectively in writing, but after that you are on your own. The treatment they have had has made many disabled people set in their ways and lacking in belief. In themselves and in others.
I think in many ways, the younger you are as a disabled person now, the better chance you have of fully integrating. I have friends who are 5-8 years younger than me and it is noticable how much better they communicate with able bodied people their own age than even I do. I know able-bodied people who, if you asked them, would tell you they are my friends but whom I know are distinctly uncomfortable in my company, particularly if it is my company alone. Yeah it's cool to knock about with a disabled person, it shows you have an open mind and you're not shallow, heaven forbid. But don't take a disabled person out on the pull with you, is very much the philosophy. More and more, the young just don't think this way because they have dealt with it at an earlier age. Like learning a foreign language from the age of five instead of trying to learn it when you are 11. I'm sure if you took a camera into a school now you would find it hard to notice any difference between the treatment of disabled kids and any of the other kids. Maybe in 20 years from now people won't even acknowledge or notice disability in any meaningful way at all.
If that happens it will be largely down to the efforts of Lord Alf Morris.
Thursday, 2 August 2012
The South West - Part One
Perhaps he won't thank me for telling you this but Emma's Dad celebrated (if that is the word) his 60th birthday recently. To mark the occasion we spent the weekend in a cottage in a place called Keinton Mandeville near Yeovil. That's Somerset for those of you who get lost once you turn off the East Lancashire Road.
Since Emma and I had the whole of that following week off from work the plan was to spend a few nights in Bath also. As ever when I am involved, what followed was a heady mixture of chaos, farce and shouty Scottish men.
It starts in Bristol. It's quite a long drive to Keinton Mandeville so Emma wants to break it up by staying somewhere along the way. So we check into the Arnos Manor Forestdale Hotel. This isn't a bad little place, but it has to be one of the colder places I have been to in mid-July. An apalling summer isn't helping, but someone somewhere has clearly decided that air conditioning in the restaurant is a good idea. But it's not. It's freezing cold and it feels even colder for the fact that it is all but empty.
There is just one other couple in the restaurant tonight and while I am tucking into my fish and chips I can hear the gentleman complaining to the waiter about immigrants. It's real Daily Mail stuff about how those rotten foreigners have taken all the jobs but the man has managed to miss two superb ironies. Firstly, that the basis of his story centres around a son of his who lives in Australia. Immigration? You bet. Secondly, the waiter unfortunate enough to be listening to the man's archaic ramblings happens to be from South Africa. It's unfathomable how he hasn't realised this since the waiter is chatting away in the kind of accent which makes Kevin Pietersen sound like Boris Johnson. Regardless, the man ploughs on, bemoaning the invasion of foreigners and no doubt the demise of capital punishment. I don't know, I've stopped listening by now.
We return the following morning for breakfast. We are greeted by an incredibly smiley young woman. She looks around the room with a puzzled look on her face as if she doesn't quite know where to place this strange individual who has insisted on bringing a wheelchair to breakfast. Finally she hits upon the brilliant idea of putting us at a table next to the wall, just in behind one that is already occupied by two men. One of the men is decidedly portly, and you can see the crack of his arse from Leeds. He is wearing trousers, but only in the same way that Rihanna wears trousers when she wants to promote a new album. But the man is no Rihanna in visual terms. Not unless Rihanna has put ten stones of weight on and developed a serious problem with body hair since her last performance. Mercifully, I take the seat facing away from butt-crack man, and Emma can't see it either because I am now blocking it out.
There is considerably less meat on a woman sitting just across the room from us. Excess skin puts you off your sausage and egg. The woman is, shall we say, mature, and is as bony as it is possible to be without being in an Indiana Jones or a Sinbad film. I'm finding it hard to look at her, but I'm also finding it hard to look away. I start to feel like Austin Powers looking at Fred Savage's mole. These really are the major issues concerning me from our otherwise uneventful trip to Bristol.
Skipping the journey down to Keinton Mandeville almost completely (we took quite a while to find the cottage itself once we had found the right street because they all look the same) we arrive at the grandly named Coombe Hill Cottage. The path outside is covered entirely in gravel, and the woman we are renting from happens to be at the house and advises us that it will be ready in a couple of hours once they have finished cleaning. She also tells us that the entrance we need to use is around the back of the cottage, which is great news for anyone who thinks pushing a wheelchair on gravel might be fun.
With the car parked and a couple of hours to kill we hobble back down the path out on to the main road and head up the street to find a pub. We stop at a small local shop for local people for reasons I cannot and care not to remember, but I am pleasantly surprised to find that it is only a further minute or two to the pub. The Quarry is a very nice little establishment and it helps that finally, after what seems like three months of solid rain day after day, the sun is beating down. We order a drink and spend a very agreeable hour in the beer garden. The couple of beers I down when we get back to the cottage have an effect, and I'm still asleep when the rest of Emma's family get to there at around tea-time. I had been watching golf also, which might not have been the best way to keep my mind occupied and stave off the lethargy which inevitably results from afternoon drinking. And normally I like golf.
We're not going to elaborate on the evenings in Keinton Mandeville. Principally this is because I find forced fun quite traumatic. I can summarise thus; There were barbecues, quizzes and beer and it was unseasonably cold especially given the warm temperatures in daylight hours. If there was a highlight then for me it was the sight of Emma's one-year-old neice smashing the pinata with a stick and shouting 'whack' with every swing. Then her mother, Emma's sister-in-law, took a turn and knocked the donkey's head clean off with one swing. The head then found it's way around the dinner table and it was all a bit like something out of a Godfather movie. Whack.
So anyway we will stick mostly to the daytime activities because that is when we travelled around and experienced a little of the local south west culture. On Saturday morning, after an interminable wait for everyone to get ready, we venture towards the city of Wells. Test Match Special is on the radio in the car and England are taking a fearful pasting from South Africa. They have been bowled out for 385 and the South Africans are something like 4,384 for no wicket. Or something. Prospects for the team are so bad that the commentators have already started ignoring the action and instead playing word games or making up lists of the best left-handed South Africans and so forth.
Wells is one of the smallest cities in England and is best known for it's cathedral and other religiously associated architecture. Again I must re-iterate my utter disdain for religion, but that doesn't mean I'm not interested. We go into St.Andrew's Cathedral and end up on a short guided tour. The guide is called Elizabeth something or other, and she's informative enough but you get the feeling she wishes she was elsewhere. There are only myself, Emma, her mum and another couple on the tour which, considering it is free, is a pretty poor return. Religion might be crap, but what about history and architecture? It seems that they are not enough to interest the public of Wells today and so we press on in our uncomfortably small group.
Wells Cathedral of St.Andrew is the seat of the Bishop of Bath and Wells who, on the balance of probabilities, does not eat babies. It dates back to the 10th century but now, by far it's most pleasing attribute is it's clock. Alongside the large 24-hour clock face sits a model of a man called Jack. When Jack kicks his legs a series of wooden soldiers on wooden horseback appear from the top of the clock like demented cuckoos. They play out a brief battle in which one soldier is killed, only for him to re-emerge patched up to go through the whole thing again five or six times. It's a kind of mini-purgatory for the poor wooden soldier, but given that he is wooden and therefore devoid of any feelings it is all good, harmless entertainment.
Our guide gives up after around half an hour of shining her torch at the 'monsters' she finds carved into the architecture and speculating on what they may have originally represented. She seems very unsure of herself throughout and is particularly befuddled when one man asks whether Wells Cathedral is the final burial place of King Ethelred or some such. She doesn't seem to know, but she doubts it. Shortly after she is gone, wishing us a nice day and convincing us that half an hour touring Wells Cathedral of St.Andrew is probably enough. To be fair, she might just be right.
We find a cafe by the riverside and meet up with the others who had chosen not to take the cathedral tour. Maisie the cathedral cat is patrolling the area very protectively. Several small children try to pull her tail but she remains unphased by their gropings. She merely trotts off to a grassy area away from the cathedral and takes a nap. While we are enjoying a drink a man dressed like a member of the committee at Lords Cricket Ground strolls by. He is delivering some sort of message to a newlywed couple, and in doing so he is making quite a scene. I have absolutely no recall of what he actually says, but the bride is impossibly polite to him and thanks him for his efforts, calling it 'lovely'. The man turns to Emma's dad and asks;
"Care for a poem?"
"No thanks. I'm trying to give them up." he replies.
A little wounded, the man moves along the river to bother his next victim. We would be seeing him again later in the week.
Since Emma and I had the whole of that following week off from work the plan was to spend a few nights in Bath also. As ever when I am involved, what followed was a heady mixture of chaos, farce and shouty Scottish men.
It starts in Bristol. It's quite a long drive to Keinton Mandeville so Emma wants to break it up by staying somewhere along the way. So we check into the Arnos Manor Forestdale Hotel. This isn't a bad little place, but it has to be one of the colder places I have been to in mid-July. An apalling summer isn't helping, but someone somewhere has clearly decided that air conditioning in the restaurant is a good idea. But it's not. It's freezing cold and it feels even colder for the fact that it is all but empty.
There is just one other couple in the restaurant tonight and while I am tucking into my fish and chips I can hear the gentleman complaining to the waiter about immigrants. It's real Daily Mail stuff about how those rotten foreigners have taken all the jobs but the man has managed to miss two superb ironies. Firstly, that the basis of his story centres around a son of his who lives in Australia. Immigration? You bet. Secondly, the waiter unfortunate enough to be listening to the man's archaic ramblings happens to be from South Africa. It's unfathomable how he hasn't realised this since the waiter is chatting away in the kind of accent which makes Kevin Pietersen sound like Boris Johnson. Regardless, the man ploughs on, bemoaning the invasion of foreigners and no doubt the demise of capital punishment. I don't know, I've stopped listening by now.
We return the following morning for breakfast. We are greeted by an incredibly smiley young woman. She looks around the room with a puzzled look on her face as if she doesn't quite know where to place this strange individual who has insisted on bringing a wheelchair to breakfast. Finally she hits upon the brilliant idea of putting us at a table next to the wall, just in behind one that is already occupied by two men. One of the men is decidedly portly, and you can see the crack of his arse from Leeds. He is wearing trousers, but only in the same way that Rihanna wears trousers when she wants to promote a new album. But the man is no Rihanna in visual terms. Not unless Rihanna has put ten stones of weight on and developed a serious problem with body hair since her last performance. Mercifully, I take the seat facing away from butt-crack man, and Emma can't see it either because I am now blocking it out.
There is considerably less meat on a woman sitting just across the room from us. Excess skin puts you off your sausage and egg. The woman is, shall we say, mature, and is as bony as it is possible to be without being in an Indiana Jones or a Sinbad film. I'm finding it hard to look at her, but I'm also finding it hard to look away. I start to feel like Austin Powers looking at Fred Savage's mole. These really are the major issues concerning me from our otherwise uneventful trip to Bristol.
Skipping the journey down to Keinton Mandeville almost completely (we took quite a while to find the cottage itself once we had found the right street because they all look the same) we arrive at the grandly named Coombe Hill Cottage. The path outside is covered entirely in gravel, and the woman we are renting from happens to be at the house and advises us that it will be ready in a couple of hours once they have finished cleaning. She also tells us that the entrance we need to use is around the back of the cottage, which is great news for anyone who thinks pushing a wheelchair on gravel might be fun.
With the car parked and a couple of hours to kill we hobble back down the path out on to the main road and head up the street to find a pub. We stop at a small local shop for local people for reasons I cannot and care not to remember, but I am pleasantly surprised to find that it is only a further minute or two to the pub. The Quarry is a very nice little establishment and it helps that finally, after what seems like three months of solid rain day after day, the sun is beating down. We order a drink and spend a very agreeable hour in the beer garden. The couple of beers I down when we get back to the cottage have an effect, and I'm still asleep when the rest of Emma's family get to there at around tea-time. I had been watching golf also, which might not have been the best way to keep my mind occupied and stave off the lethargy which inevitably results from afternoon drinking. And normally I like golf.
We're not going to elaborate on the evenings in Keinton Mandeville. Principally this is because I find forced fun quite traumatic. I can summarise thus; There were barbecues, quizzes and beer and it was unseasonably cold especially given the warm temperatures in daylight hours. If there was a highlight then for me it was the sight of Emma's one-year-old neice smashing the pinata with a stick and shouting 'whack' with every swing. Then her mother, Emma's sister-in-law, took a turn and knocked the donkey's head clean off with one swing. The head then found it's way around the dinner table and it was all a bit like something out of a Godfather movie. Whack.
So anyway we will stick mostly to the daytime activities because that is when we travelled around and experienced a little of the local south west culture. On Saturday morning, after an interminable wait for everyone to get ready, we venture towards the city of Wells. Test Match Special is on the radio in the car and England are taking a fearful pasting from South Africa. They have been bowled out for 385 and the South Africans are something like 4,384 for no wicket. Or something. Prospects for the team are so bad that the commentators have already started ignoring the action and instead playing word games or making up lists of the best left-handed South Africans and so forth.
Wells is one of the smallest cities in England and is best known for it's cathedral and other religiously associated architecture. Again I must re-iterate my utter disdain for religion, but that doesn't mean I'm not interested. We go into St.Andrew's Cathedral and end up on a short guided tour. The guide is called Elizabeth something or other, and she's informative enough but you get the feeling she wishes she was elsewhere. There are only myself, Emma, her mum and another couple on the tour which, considering it is free, is a pretty poor return. Religion might be crap, but what about history and architecture? It seems that they are not enough to interest the public of Wells today and so we press on in our uncomfortably small group.
Wells Cathedral of St.Andrew is the seat of the Bishop of Bath and Wells who, on the balance of probabilities, does not eat babies. It dates back to the 10th century but now, by far it's most pleasing attribute is it's clock. Alongside the large 24-hour clock face sits a model of a man called Jack. When Jack kicks his legs a series of wooden soldiers on wooden horseback appear from the top of the clock like demented cuckoos. They play out a brief battle in which one soldier is killed, only for him to re-emerge patched up to go through the whole thing again five or six times. It's a kind of mini-purgatory for the poor wooden soldier, but given that he is wooden and therefore devoid of any feelings it is all good, harmless entertainment.
Our guide gives up after around half an hour of shining her torch at the 'monsters' she finds carved into the architecture and speculating on what they may have originally represented. She seems very unsure of herself throughout and is particularly befuddled when one man asks whether Wells Cathedral is the final burial place of King Ethelred or some such. She doesn't seem to know, but she doubts it. Shortly after she is gone, wishing us a nice day and convincing us that half an hour touring Wells Cathedral of St.Andrew is probably enough. To be fair, she might just be right.
We find a cafe by the riverside and meet up with the others who had chosen not to take the cathedral tour. Maisie the cathedral cat is patrolling the area very protectively. Several small children try to pull her tail but she remains unphased by their gropings. She merely trotts off to a grassy area away from the cathedral and takes a nap. While we are enjoying a drink a man dressed like a member of the committee at Lords Cricket Ground strolls by. He is delivering some sort of message to a newlywed couple, and in doing so he is making quite a scene. I have absolutely no recall of what he actually says, but the bride is impossibly polite to him and thanks him for his efforts, calling it 'lovely'. The man turns to Emma's dad and asks;
"Care for a poem?"
"No thanks. I'm trying to give them up." he replies.
A little wounded, the man moves along the river to bother his next victim. We would be seeing him again later in the week.
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