Creative writing!

Rather ironically, given the title, I couldn’t for the moment think of anything to write about today.

I therefore resorted to the tried and tested method of dipping into the master list of subjects that I keep for just such an eventuality. I have mentioned this list in previous postings – on the last occasion (2nd July) I mentioned that there were still 30 headings listed and since that was over 30 posts ago you might expect that number to have gone down.

Not so! I just counted and, because some of the things I write not only come off the top of my head rather than off the list but also make me think of other things to put ON the list, there are, in fact, STILL 35 items there.

Fascinating insight into my way of working, I’m sure you’ll agree but you probably also want to know what the hell this piece is ABOUT!

Well, I have this problem!

I thank you for all of the remarks no doubt spilling from your lips right now advising me to get some ointment or to seek professional help but it’s not actually THAT big a deal! It only afflicts me when I’m on holiday and only for a tiny percentage of the time even then. My dear wife doesn’t suffer from it and is somewhat bemused by my finding it a problem.

It concerns something that’s been around all of my life but which presumably must, with the advent of holiday hotel internet cafés, be slowly dying out. To what do I refer?

Postcards!

One of the first things Faith and I do when we reach our holiday destination, be it in the UK or abroad is to buy a batch of these with an equal number of stamps. These will usually be for her Mum, my Mum, her Sister, my Sister, our two daughters and maybe a couple of friends. I think Faith sends one to work – I haven’t done THAT since about 1988 when I was at Barclays Bank Trust Company’s Cambridge Office and found that I didn’t want even to THINK about the team there! Not even for the time it took to write a postcard!

And it’s the TIME it takes me that is my problem!

Faith takes about 5 minutes to knock out cards to her Mum, her Sister, one of the girls and the people at work and there is a good reason why this is so. She writes EXACTLY the same on all of them!

This isn’t a problem because her Sister lives in Colchester (and rarely visits), her Mum lives just up the road from us (and doesn’t need to visit) so if her final family one is to the daughter who lives at home (who will keep it in her room) none of her recipients will ever see what has been sent to any of the others.

Similarly there is little chance that my Mother, Sister, other Daughter and friends would actually notice if I were to do the same thing. That’s not the point! The point IS that I would know.

And how can I, with pretensions of being a writer, possibly think that I can get away with something as amateurish as copying the same piece of text down three or four times? It feels like cheating and that isn’t something I want to do in this aspect of my life.

So, while Faith bangs off her four postcards in very short order and gets on with enjoying herself, I find myself stuck on a beach or in a hotel room struggling manfully with the production of four or more unique works of creative writing often concerning a holiday which has only just begun! This is because with overseas holidays, if you want your cards to have any chance of arriving before you get back to the UK you have to post them as soon as you get there!

It isn’t easy I can tell you – especially if I abide by my own rule that something mentioned in one card must not be mentioned in ANY of the others! What this means in essence is that if you receive a card from me when I’m on holiday it will either tell you about a)how we got here, b) what we’re doing now or c) what we are going to do later in the week. The recipient MAY, possibly, get a mention of any two of those but never all three.

Earlier I mentioned Internet Cafés doing away with postcards altogether. Oddly and inconsistently, in spite of all that I’ve said above, I do NOT have a problem with writing JUST ONE email and sending it to multiple recipients, probably because I’ve done that at work a good deal.

So, with any luck, all my friends and family will get in the future will be an email saying “We’re here! Attached please find our digital photos to date. Bye.” If that sounds a bit terse I may also throw in the old “Weather here, wish you were lovely!” just for fun!

Except for our respective Mothers that is! Neither of them would know one end of a computer from the other and would still have to receive cards the old-fashioned way. Writing ONE card (which can now mention a), b) and c) above all at the same time) is not a problem. And even if I did accidentally say the same thing as Faith neither of them are going to see what was in the other’s!

That way, most of them will know all they need to know and they’ll be able to look at some of the photos nearly a week in advance.

And me?

I’ll be able to get on with soaking up the sun, drinking the local beer and generally not bothering about being CREATIVE!

Alfie

PS. If anyone is wondering why the hell I’m sticking in a holiday related post in January, there is a simple explanation! I actually wrote most of it last summer and FORGOT to finish it and post it!

Either I’m getting old or I really need a holiday!

So you want to be a Rock and Roll Star?

Just lately there have been a number of programmes on UK television showing shots of what was known as “Beatlemania” back in that part of the 1960s that was still in black and white!

The old newsreel film showed young girls screaming themselves into dead faints at the merest glimpse of the four floppy–haired Liverpudlians. I don’t know why John, Paul, George and Ringo ever bothered to sing at their concerts – nothing could ever be heard unless you were within a few feet of the loudspeakers!

The fans would then be shown (as in many scenes in the film “A Hard Day’s Night”) chasing the band to their car while the objects of their desire set unofficial sprint records to avoid capture!

And it was while the family were passively watching it all unfold that I threw in my little bombshell!

“I used to hate it when they chased ME like that”, I said, casually!

There was a slight pause followed by a couple of snorts of derision and unsuccessful attempts at not laughing out loud!

They didn’t take me seriously, knowing full well that when the Beatles began in late 1962 I was all of 9 years old!

Which just goes to show – your children don’t actually know everything!

In 1963 I was in the third year (under the present UK school numbering system that would be Year 5) at Luther Road Primary School in Ipswich. It’s now called Hillside Primary – a more accurate name because while it IS on a hill it was NEVER in Luther Road but rather surrounded by Belstead Road, Maidenhall Approach and the railway line. I just mention that in case you want to look it up on Google Earth or something similar.

My best friend in the school was Paul Adams. Actually we had 2 Paul Adams’ in my class so my friend was usually designated “Paul Clifford Adams” – the other one didn’t have a middle name. As I was only friends with Paul Clifford, I shall just refer to him as Paul for the rest of this article.

Paul had something that the rest of didn’t have – a singing voice! By which I mean he was a choir boy at the local church and was therefore TRAINED to sing. He had been trying for some time to get me to join the choir too; while I was perfectly willing my parents made various excuses that I didn’t understand at the time. In fact they were looking at moving to another part of town in the next year or so and didn’t want me to get into anything that it would upset me to give up.

And then along came the Beatles!

After they became well established with a few hits Paul and I came upon the idea of performing some of their songs in the school playground and set out to find an appropriate stage.

In the corner of the playground was an enormous metal grid covering the chute down which the coal which fired the school boiler was delivered. To keep out the elements this grid was covered by a sloping wooden frame covered in the stuff they use to waterproof shed roofs. This made a “stage” about 4 feet deep and maybe 10 feet wide and, despite the way it sloped slightly forwards, it was ideal for our purposes.

I cannot particularly remember our first performance but I know we had prepared well, learning the words from a “pop” magazine, and had briefly practised who was to do what in the cloakroom at breaks and lunchtime. For information Paul did lead vocals (whether it was a Lennon or a McCartney lead in real life) while I did all the “Yeah, Yeahs”, “Oooos” and repeated lines that would be done by the other three.

We didn’t know it but it is just possible that two 10 year old boys in Ipswich invented the Tribute Band!

I do, however, recall that there wasn’t much of an audience the first few times we got up there but word soon got around. We did all of the hits: “Please Please Me”, “I want to hold your hand”, “Twist and Shout” and, eventually, “She Loves You”.

I don’t understand the psychology of young girls or what it is that makes them fixate on things but it wasn’t long before we were having the same trouble as the Beatles! We could hardly hear ourselves sing for the screaming and when we had finished we had to leg it for our classroom with a hoard of seven, eight and nine year old girls chasing after us!

Eventually we managed to time things so that the bell for the resumption of lessons would ring just as we started our run to safety and most of the crowd would have to head for another door, taking the pressure off us.

I do, however, wonder what on earth they thought they were going to do if they caught us!

After a while we began to tire of doing the same “concert” once or twice a week by public demand and started to think of ways to branch out. During a series of wet lunchtimes we sat together in the cloakroom and tried to devise lyrics for instrumental songs from the charts.

We managed, eventually, to compile what seemed to be apt words to the tune of “Telstar” by The Tornados. I don’t recall them all but one line remains with me. It went “Star above, send a message to my love”, which given that the original commemorates the first communication satellite seems pretty clever to me!

I understand that some artists with a few hits under their belt experience a situation where they can’t put out new stuff because live audiences only want to hear the hits – and that’s what happened to us.

The “faithful” didn’t want to know anything but Beatles’ hits so that was what we had to stick with. Fortunately the “Fab four” were churning them out regularly so the repertoire wasn’t too monotonous but it would have been nice to be appreciated for something original as well.

What would have happened if my parents had not moved us to the other side of town in January 1964 cannot now be known! I commuted across by bus every day until the “11 Plus” exams were finished around Easter and Paul and I performed for our fans until I finally left.

Paul went to a different Secondary school to me and my pop career did not progress from that point onwards. His, however, did move on. I found out later that he became lead singer with an Ipswich band which was pretty popular there in the early to mid 1970s called “Fourth Gear”. I don’t ever remember hearing them perform live so I can’t say what type of music they played but I DO wonder whether they would have been able to go further if our song writing partnership had taken off.

Just think! I might have been half of a new Lennon & McCartney and immensely famous and wealthy by now!

Ah yes – but would I have been HAPPY?!

Alfie

The things people say!

Some months ago I wrote of my holiday in Cumbria in the company of my Mother-in-law and her (sadly now deceased) dog, Lucy. In that article I was able to quote one of the ludicrous things that she comes out with from time to time. You can find the piece in question entitled “Mother-in-law” and posted on 7th July 2009.

I was able to do that because I had by that time been writing these articles for some months and had learned that one sure way of guaranteeing being able to have something to write about is to make copious notes, not only of subjects but of funny or inappropriate things said.

I have, as of this moment, four quotes which I found somewhat amusing – three of them arising from the mouth of my dear Mother-in-law and the last, unthinkingly, from my elder daughter.

It is often said of such quotes that “you had to be there” and there would be very little amusement in them were I not to take the trouble to set each one in its appropriate situation and try to make it as if you WERE there! This also means that instead of briefly quoting four separate lines, I get to run on for several paragraphs and knock up the old word count a bit more!

Scene 1:

Location: Driving to holiday cottage in Cumbria on A66 (Scotch Corner to Penrith), a road that passes over the northern edge of the Yorkshire Dales; countryside considerably more rugged and hilly than our native East Anglia. Specifically, somewhere near Brough.

Weather: Gloomy – the only bad day of the whole fortnight’s holiday!

Anyway, there had been one or two small rain showers as we went through villages at the bottoms of valleys and now as we climbed a particularly steep hill visibility diminished noticeably and the automatic windscreen wipers came on.

It was then that Mother-in-law’s voice came from the back of the car.

“Is that proper rain or are we just in a cloud?”

I nearly went off the road – not from laughing but at the shock of someone in their 80s having picked up so little about how weather works!

Scene 2:

Location: Mother-in-law’s own little retirement bungalow a couple of hundred yards down the road from the Little Alfie household.

Present: Mother-in-law and my younger daughter “Charity”, who had done one of her lightning return visits from Carlisle where she lives and works.

They were discussing a UK television programme, “Loose Women”, which, for the uninitiated, is an exclusively female lunchtime chat show. The remark that was made about it is perhaps a little surprising from an old lady whose favourite cable TV show is “Girls of the Playboy Mansion”!

“I don’t like it when they keep talking about sex”, she told my daughter, and added “IT GIVES ME THE WILLIES!”

Oh dear!

Scene 3:

It is the evening of Christmas Day 2009 and those of us interested in the penultimate appearance of David Tennant as Doctor Who have had their Sci-fi fix for the day and have a week to wait for the grand finale! It is therefore, time for the Little Alfie family Christmas night tradition – a nice game of cards!

Present are Faith, Hope and Charity (my wife and daughters), Mother-in-law and myself.

I should mention that in the past I have sometimes ducked out of this part of the “festivities” mainly because I do find it terribly wearing every year having to explain to the old folks (and MY mother is just as bad as Faith’s in this regard) the rules of each and every card game that we’ve been playing together for the last thirty years.

And sometimes it isn’t just the rules of particular games she forgets. This year we had been playing for about an hour and I announced to the players, “Hearts are trumps”.

As quick as a flash my Mother-in-law responded with, “Is that the RED hearts or the BLACK hearts?”

Scene 4:

And finally….

The day before Christmas Eve this year, heavy (for the UK anyway) snow had fallen and the roads were completely snarled up as is usual in this country!

I mean it’s WINTER in the northern half of the northern hemisphere and bad weather comes as a SURPRISE?!

When I lived in Norfolk just under thirty years ago we had heavy snow and I got a lift into Norwich with a neighbour who had done some rally driving in Norway. He slid his Saab expertly into the car park at Norfolk County Council HQ and I asked him about a commotion that seemed to be taking place on the far side of the site.

“Oh”, he said, “they’re just digging out the gritting lorries!” And things don’t seem to have improved much in the meantime.

ANYWAY, my daughters and I were given a couple of tasks to do if possible and one of these was to collect the Turkey for Christmas dinner from the farm shop from which it had been ordered some weeks before. This was way out on the back roads between Peterborough and Stamford and I was trying to work out the best route to it. There were two possibilities and I asked the girls (who were in the car with me) which they thought was preferable.

My elder daughter, Hope, chirped up with “Take the road by the Crematorium Dad. That’s sure to be well gritted”.

Charity and I simultaneously responded with a slightly disgusted “Eeewww!”

To paraphrase the Irish comedian Frank Carson, “It’s the way you tell ‘em”!

Alfie

Goodbye 2009 – and good riddance!

You will, no doubt, have noticed that there has not yet been a Little Alfie posting in 2010 – there are reasons for this!

Firstly, since doing the 3000+ word two-parter about my school teachers just before Christmas I needed a rest!

Secondly, and far more seriously, I have had neither the inspiration nor the inclination just lately to do anything of this sort.

To explain THAT I must give you a quick review of the important plusses and minuses of the year 2009 as I saw it:

January – nothing bad happened and I got to go fishing on Aldeburgh beach in -4 Deg. C. temperatures. I did that while my wife and daughters attended my sister’s “hen party” at a nearby health spa. It may surprise you to know that this counts as a plus!

February – my sister got married and Faith and I went to Lincoln for my birthday with my new DSLR camera. They were both plusses. On the minus side the company I worked for sold a large part of its operation to a rival leaving those of us remaining with a lot less to do and a terrible sense of foreboding!

March and April – nothing particularly memorable, either good or bad.

May – was definitely a plus because of a nice relaxing week in Majorca with Faith.

June – another good one for the same reason as May – holidays! A great family one in a cottage in Cumbria followed by a few days in Aldeburgh which was, fortunately, slightly warmer than January. You can of course read about certain aspects of all of those holidays in the May, June and July archives of this blog.

July – began well with me still on holiday but went downhill when the uncertainty about the company’s future was ended by the arrival of “The Administrators” – a bunch of clueless accountants who plainly had no intention of trying to save the company but merely wished to grab as much money from the creditors as they could in order to make sure their fees were covered. At this point I lost my manager but also so many other colleagues that I had even LESS work to do so even that wasn’t all bad!

August – first half fine but then the Administrators found out where the IT Department was located and paid me a visit to tell me that I was redundant as of the 14th of that month. Actually the visit was all that they did pay me – everything else that was due to me I had to claim off the government!

September and October – neutral really – things didn’t get any better or worse during this period.

November – will never be a bad month while I still have my annual Sea Fishing match to look forward to. You may already have read about this so I won’t go on about it further.

December – I was seriously thinking of stopping at November because December was so appallingly awful that it has taken a great effort to bring myself to write ANYTHING about it!

The first 12 days were OK but then I managed to come down with that wonderful variation on a theme – SWINE FLU! There has been a lot of fuss about the coming of the Swine ‘flu epidemic and, more recently, even more fuss about why it hasn’t happened yet! It is typical that I should be the odd one out in this regard and kind of inevitable that I should give it Faith too.

We checked it out online and had more than enough of the symptoms to get allocated courses of the “Tamiflu” remedy which seemed to make no difference whatsoever.

Now, I hate admitting to weaknesses of any sort but whenever I get anything that impedes my airways in any manner I get claustrophobic and panicky! (Oh and glowing green rocks make me feel weak too!) Because of this (the panic attacks NOT the green rocks) I averaged about 2 hours sleep per night while I had the ‘flu and could only get that much by sleeping in the reclining office chair in the study. Some of the stuff about my school teachers was written at that time, so if some of it seems a little foggy and unfocused…….

Gradually, however, things began to improve EXCEPT for my throat. It seems that the bit of Swine ‘flu that takes longest to pass is the sore throat and this left me with a horrible dry cough that made my throat incredibly sore. It also reduced my voice to a quavering squeak that lasted right through Christmas and even at the time of writing (10th January) is only just beginning to come back to normal.

I went back to the Doctor and was told I’d got into a vicious circle – my throat hurts, I cough, this makes my throat sorer so I cough more! His advice with all the weight of 7 years of medical studies and numerous years of General Practice behind it was “Try not to cough”!

And then to make it really a month to forget – my Brother-in-law (Faith’s sister’s husband) went to the gym on the Tuesday after Christmas, had a heart attack on the rowing machine and died before the Medics (they called out the helicopter because the pre-Christmas snow was still causing problems with the roads) could reach him! They had spent the previous Sunday with us and he seemed to be as healthy as ever!

I will miss Steve. I didn’t see THAT much of him really but he was often on the phone (especially in the last few months, strangely) about this or that piece of equipment or software that he had bought for his computer or I had given to him. He was quite a few years older than me but stayed “sharp” as far as technology was concerned. About the only male in either Faith’s or my family (apart from me) who was even remotely interested in having the lid off and poking around inside a computer!

As I have said before of my late Father “Our loss is the Cosmic Overmind’s gain”! And I’ll try to explain what I mean by THAT some other time.

So that was my 2009. I think you’ll agree that from my viewpoint we’re well rid of it.

Hopefully now I’ve got that lot off my chest I can get back to being a bit more lighthearted.

Alfie

Master Piece (Part 2)

The first part of this discourse on my Secondary School’s teachers and their nicknames covered what I think of as the “main players”.

The ones I have left on my list (unless or until Mike or Hank come along and tell me “You missed out…..”) by and large either had nicknames that they may or may not have been aware of or no nicknames at all but some interesting characteristic instead.

I will tackle the ones with nicknames first concluding with two concerning whom I am “in dispute” with my classmates.

“Min”.

Mr Chenery, the Technical Drawing master and our Form Master in the 3rd and 5th Years was (to me anyway) another really nice guy. Given our surreal collective class sense of humour you might imagine the nickname to be something to do with the Goons but this was not the case. It was in fact something of a parody of the sweep’s song from Mary Poppins – “Min Chenery, Min Chenery Min Chen charoo”! This does still, of course, show signs of that surreal sense of humour. I don’t ever remember this man being annoyed or upset about anything.

“Noddy”.

Mr Moore our Chemistry teacher seemed to qualify for his nickname twice over! He was a small bird-like person whose neck didn’t seem strong enough to carry his head with the result that it seemed to bob about in a nodding motion for some seconds after he stopped moving. Furthermore he only needed the addition of the hat with the bell on it to actually LOOK like Enid Blyton’s famous character.

I rather lost interest in Chemistry when it got to the stage where everything was theoretical and to do with Molecular weight – rather than making things either explode or make nasty smells in the lab.

“Wetsocks”.

The nickname was just a schoolboy variation on the real name of Mr Warsop, our History master and Form master in the 4th Year. He was well known in the school as something of a left-winger politically – one of the few teachers who ever made their political leanings known to us. As usual this was a bad move as someone (not from my class) commented on it by spray painting “Warsop is a Commie” on the large mirror in the main toilets.

As with Physics which I mentioned in the earlier part of this article, I failed History at examination level. Again this was down to me and not the teacher. I learned an awful lot of stuff about British History over the years that Mr Warsop taught us but he was unable to make me anything other than bored rigid concerning the Reform Act of 1832 and the Corn Laws! That was what the syllabus required when all I wanted to study was BATTLES!

He eventually became a Labour Councillor and I once saw him on local TV proclaiming his triumph at the partial pedestrianisation of Ipswich Town Centre. This clever scheme closed the main shopping street to all traffic EXCEPT BUSES! While he was being interviewed one of these roared past so close that you could see his hair move in the slipstream!

“Big Bruno”.

Mr Nicholson, our Biology master for most of our stay at Copleston was nicknamed, I believe, from his habit when out of the classroom of smoking an enormous pipe filled with St. Bruno tobacco. I really liked him and I think it is fair to say that I learned more things that have “stuck” from him than any other teacher.
He was always extremely trusting of John Lamb and myself and granted us permission to work on lab experiments unsupervised during break time. We didn’t waste TOO much time knocking each other out with the chloroform bottle that was kept in the back room and did actually get a lot of lab work done.
He had plainly played Rugby at University and, when free to do so, could be found shouting instructions to one of the school teams – still with that pipe in his mouth!

“Wombat”.

Mr Woolford, Art teacher (I think he must have been the only Art teacher we had because I don’t remember any others). Small, inoffensive and harmless like the creature he was named after! He would probably have been called something else equally non-controversial, such as “Koala”, if we hadn’t all been avid fans of the Radio forerunner of “Monty Python” and “The Goodies”; “I’m Sorry I’ll Read that Again” which featured a serial entitled “The Curse of the Flying Wombat”.

My school reports in “Art” swing between “Shows no great ability” and (a magnificent) “Satisfactory effort”. My “Art” obviously lay in written work!

Mr Woolford was, by tradition, the school pianist, accompanying our somewhat scratchy singing (well in a school of 11 to 16 year old boys at least half are always going to be having their voices breaking!) on the Grand Piano to the left of the stage.

“The Lord of the Flies”.

A nickname that I don’t remember from the time! It was applied by my old classmate in Thailand to Mr Max Page our 2nd and 3rd Year English teacher and a recorder player par excellence. The name is said to have come from the book of the same name which was one of our set books in English Literature. I SEEM to recall, however, that the book was assigned for GCE exams which would make it something we had in the 4th and 5th Years, i.e. AFTER Max had gone. (On reflection, however, the name MAY have been conferred by one of the years above us who were already studying the book – we had no monopoly on the granting of clever nicknames! – Alfie)

Nevertheless it was an apt name for one whose interest in young boys went beyond teaching them English! He was eventually sacked for messing about with a pupil in the Library stockroom! I seem to remember hearing that he went to teach in Switzerland (no Sex Offenders register in those days!) after that.

“Jumping Jack fact”.

Another one where I’m in dispute with my classmate! According to MY recollection the name refers to Mr Mallett who was recruited after Mr Page’s sudden disappearance from the scene to take us to our English GCEs. He was the one of our teachers most in tune with our collective weird sense of humour and was most remembered by me for the occasion when he walked into the classroom to find us all apparently reading a selection of “Mad” magazines, Superman comics and the like. The “Bunters” of this world would have gone ballistic, turned bright red and started a mass confiscation.

Not this guy! He walked up to the nearest one of us, pushed the magazine down, saw the copy of “Twelfth Night” being read behind it (which was, of course, the whole point of the joke), shook his head sadly and sat down at his desk without saying a word!

My recollection is that the name came from a combination of the Rolling Stones hit “Jumping Jack Flash” and his habit of sprinkling his conversations with the words “in actual fact”.

Mike in Thailand, however, has that nickname applying to the head of the P.E. Department, Mr Adams who I don’t particularly recall using the catchphrase. Some of the confusion may be arising from the “actual fact” (sorry!) that Mr Adams name WAS Jack.

Whatever the truth was it will have to wait until we make contact with some more of the class and can get some sort of consensus.

And then…..

There were those who didn’t have nicknames but had odd or memorable characteristics.

“Mr Williams”.

Our Geography teacher and as Welsh as the name suggests – his voice when describing an escarpment with “shallow slopes” and “steep slopes” was as distinctive as Richard Burton uttering those immortal lines “Broadsword calling Danny Boy”!

Many teachers in those days smoked. They couldn’t do it in the classroom or the playground but in the staffroom was OK. Mr Williams rolled his own cigarettes and when he had finished them he put the “dog ends” into a tobacco tin. While we were reading quietly he would then sit at the front and pick the old stubs apart then roll the strands of tobacco into new ones! God alone knows how strong those cigarettes must have been by the time they got to the third or fourth generation!

“Mr Southgate”.

Nothing gets expert taunters of teachers rubbing their hands with glee quite so much as a teacher newly arrived from training college! Such a one was Mr Southgate who arrived to take us for Religious Education one year. Rather than making any kind of effort to engage with us (which was perfectly possible as other teachers would have been able to tell him) he marched in and laid down the law as to how we would behave with a heavy hand.

From our viewpoint this was not to be borne. He was new, while we had been there 3 years and he didn’t actually seem THAT much older than us.

Oddly enough I don’t ever remember anyone discussing what we were going to do but we must have done because when he came into the room for the next lesson we stood up as one man, clicked our heels together and gave a crisp Nazi salute! He ran for the Headmaster who gave us a class detention but I think he must have given Mr Southgate a bit of a talking to as well because he slackened off a good deal after that!

Looking at my old school reports to try to get information for this two-part article I see that most of the entries are initialled and in a great many cases I have absolutely NO IDEA who the teacher was. It seems that they had to have some behavioural or physical quirk to in order to be memorable and an awful lot were just, frankly, ordinary.

Perhaps the Grammar school got all the good ones!

Alfie

A Merry Christmas to All my Readers!

Ever since I discovered that I really wanted to write stuff and have other people read it I have ALWAYS wanted to type the title of this piece and now I’ve done it!

Don’t get me wrong – it’s not just that it’s Christmas because I have serious doubts about the origins of that particular story. There seems little doubt that even if the Messianic birth DID take place as reported then it certainly didn’t happen in December – that was just an opportunistic hi-jacking of the much older and (to my eyes, at least) more significant Winter Solstice celebrations that the ancient peoples faced by the rather crafty Monks charged with spreading Christianity were already celebrating.

Speaking of celebrating I do have a mental picture of the small stone cell in which the two monks who’ve been given the task of writing “The Rules for Priestly Behaviour” are toiling away in the early days of the new religion. The following exchange takes place:

Monk 1: Excuse me, Brother but how do you spell “celebrate”?

Monk 2: Let’s think. Ah, yes. C-E-L-I-B-A-T-E.

Which, it seems to me, is as good a way of explaining THAT particular piece of nonsense as anything else I’ve heard!

No, as I said above, it’s not particularly because it’s Christmas that I’ve always wanted to type this article’s title.

It’s because I now have READERS to wish a Merry Christmas TO!

As far as the “regulars” are concerned you are a small exclusive club comprising both of my daughters, two people I went to school with and one, maybe two, that I used to work with at Barclays Bank Trust Company in Peterborough. Plus a couple of the guys from my quiz team who I haven’t seen lately and who have probably lost their links to this site!

Unfortunately the “viewing figures” graph that I get to see doesn’t tell me WHO visited on any particular day so I have no way of knowing how many strangers are finding me and coming back for repeat visits.

So, thanks for YOUR contribution to my statistics, keep up the good work, and (if you’re not just reading this out of a misplaced sense of duty) spread the word to anyone else you think might like it.

I’m still hoping that someone will find this blog one day and take me on to write Company Intranet copy or a column on a small local newspaper on the strength of it. That would be fun.

And if you ARE a new reader, there are over 50,000 words of my musings to catch up on in the month by month archive pages. ENJOY.

Best wishes

Alfie

Master Piece (part 1)

To anyone who thought on reading my last posting that entitling it “Introduction to a masterpiece” was a move which showed exactly how much of an arrogant monster I am, I would like to say, “Yes I am an arrogant monster but not THAT much of one”!

I always intended for this article to be titled “Master Piece” – TWO WORDS – because it is nothing more than a “piece” about “masters” and put it in as ONE word in the previous title just to annoy anyone who feels that way about me!

If you have come to this post without reading the previous one (or better still the previous two) I suggest you go back and read them otherwise this will be gibberish to you.

To briefly summarise I promised one of my “regulars” that I would write on some of my secondary school teachers (MASTERS – got it now?), their nicknames and their little quirks. Actually it is perfectly correct to use the entirely masculine term as there was only one woman in the entire boys’ school – the Headmaster’s Secretary.

As I have described elsewhere the all-girl school was in the other half of the building which was shaped like a letter ”E” but with an extra arm. They had both male & female teachers – I have no idea why we didn’t.

Anyway, let’s start at the top for the first two and then at random as I remember them.

“Batman”.

Mr Armstrong the Headmaster. As previously mentioned the nickname was perfectly obvious once you saw him in full “sail” along a corridor with his Cambridge University robes flying out behind him. Usually quite tolerant but you had to watch out if you were trying some new stunt or piece of mischief because you never knew if he’d burst out laughing or put your whole year in detention! Didn’t like it if no-one asked questions when anyone came to address us on something.

“Fairy”.

Mr Northway, the Deputy Head and our Fourth and Fifth year Maths teacher. I have no idea where the nickname came from but it was plainly meant as a derogatory term and he had the knack of getting up a LOT of kids’ noses. This was evidenced by the four foot high white painted slogan on the corrugated iron wall of the girls’ school cycle sheds which backed onto a public footpath leading to the recreation ground where the clandestine smokers would gather at lunchtime. I don’t know if that activity had anything to do with it but certainly everyone who walked down there was reminded that “FAIRY IS A C**T”!

My own memory of his nasty side concerned his attitude to “long hair”. Now I was never long-haired by the standards of those days – my mother told me that as long as she was paying for my haircuts I’d have it done when SHE said! Fairy had other ideas, however, and HIS way of discerning whether your hair was “too long” was to see if he could lift you out of your chair by the bits growing down in front of your ears. THAT really bloody hurt! Spiteful GIT!

As may be expected he had no sense of humour and was completely lost when the whole school erupted one morning when he read out an announcement. This concerned a complaint by the Caretaker concerning inappropriate objects being put down the toilets. He listed several of the types of object concerned – I think it was things like books and PE gear – and then made the immortal addition!

“Someone even threw a ruler in FOR GOOD MEASURE”!!! And he genuinely didn’t get why half the school were wetting themselves laughing!

“Gassy”.

Mr Chambers, our first year Physics teacher. An obvious nickname really and not one that anyone I know would have used to his face! He was getting on a bit in 1964 and I’m not sure if he left for something else or simply retired at the end of that year or the one following. An old-style school master who you only annoyed if you really fancied meeting the gym shoe sole that he kept in his drawer for corporal punishment purposes. (Yes, they WERE allowed to do that and if you got it your parents would assume you deserved it!)

He actually seemed to me to have quite a sense of humour and I always remember one of the first things he said to us in his quite broad Suffolk accent.

“Booys”, he said, “If you don’t understand something I (he pronounced it “OY”) want you to put your hand up and say ‘Mr Chambers, WOY?’”

“Tuskers”.

Mr Hewitt, who replaced “Gassy” as head of Physics by the time we got to the Third year ( Year 9 in the modern way of counting school years) He had extremely protruding front teeth and a luxuriant handlebar moustache – the two together did make him look something like a Walrus, hence, I think, the nickname.

From his accent I would say that he originated from the London side of Essex and his accent plus his dental difficulties meant that he simply could not say the word “force” – used a lot in Physics – without it coming out as “FAWSE”. Naturally this compelled us to make him say it as often as possible! “A WHAT, Sir?”

I have him down in memory as one of the “good guys” even when we discovered in his lessons that, provided you were sat at one of the side workbenches and far enough forward, you could wipe the blackboard behind him while he spoke by hooking up a Bunsen burner to one of those high pressure lab water taps!

I did, however, fail Physics at GCE “O” Level. This was not down to HIM it was down to ME. You see, the curriculum required us to be studying snappy stuff like the Latent Heat of Evaporation of Naphthalene, when what I wanted to be doing was the up-to-date stuff I was reading about outside school. Mundane stuff like the Big Bang theory, Quasars and Pulsars, Origins of the Universe – that sort of thing! There was just no way they were going to give US anything like that and I bet they still don’t.

“Bunter” (or “Spider”).

Mr Webb (which makes the “Spider” alternative immediately understandable), took us for Physics, Chemistry AND Maths in the Second Year. He was somewhat rotund, which is probably where “Bunter” came from and would, I imagine, have been suitably jovial too – if he hadn’t been the most mocked, ridiculed and persecuted Teacher in the school!

It appears that shortly before I started in 1964 he took an English class involving one of the lower streams (this was told to me by an older, distant cousin who was there at the time) and was explaining to them how in films and plays extras with no actual lines would fake background conversations by muttering “Rhubarb, Rhubarb!” over again. They thought this was hilarious and proceeded to disrupt every following lesson with him by incessant murmuring of that phrase. He then made a BIG mistake and flew into a rage about it whereupon (of course!) the whole school took it up!

By our time it was not necessary to utter the words; just a long, rolling “rrrrrrr!” sound could get you a detention if done in a way that enabled him to identify you!

I have to admit that in my Class there were no really first class Footballers or Cricketers but we had more than our fair share of world class “Bunter-baiters”, as they were known. Far better than the more general “Master-baiters” more prevalent in the rest of the school (in more spellings than one!).

Being the “A” stream and, therefore, considered maybe a little bit brighter than some we confined our efforts in this line to out of class baiting (shouting down a corridor and running away) as we recognised the stupidity of openly and blatantly winding someone up while you’re shut in a classroom with him for over an hour!

I have no idea whether Bunter was a good teacher of his subjects or not – the universal lack of respect concealed any talents he may have had. I daresay he cannot have been too bad to teach those three subjects to the top flight of our year.

He was certainly easily distracted and we had some fun once we noticed that we had him for a double lesson (80 minutes) three mornings per week and that he sometimes seemed unsure as to which of the three subjects he was meant to be teaching us. From then on all of our efforts were taken up getting him to talk on the wrong subject every time.

I also recall that he was a bit slow on the uptake when we appeared to be genuinely concerned at not understanding some small point. On one great occasion we kept him talking (and I’ve no idea what started it) for almost an entire double lesson on how it could possibly be that if you have seven lampposts in a row there will only be SIX spaces between them!

I see that by this point in the article I have already gone over 1500 words – which I think is quite enough to absorb at a single sitting. I don’t want you getting verbal indigestion, now, do I?

I have, therefore indicated what will now happen by adding the words “Part 1” to the title. Part 2 will follow with the shorter pen portraits when I’m allowed time off from Christmas preparations or have another ‘flu induced sleepless night!

See you then,

Alfie

Introduction to a masterpiece!

Regular readers may have noticed that in my Last Post (all stand to attention while bugle call fades away) I referenced, for the first time in many months, my old school.

Those who have been with me from the start or who have taken the trouble to read through my archives right back to (and including) March 2009 will also have noticed, without my needing to mention it in the text, that I gave the school its correct name instead of using its Latin motto as a pseudonym.

There is actually very little point in persisting with this pretence when my former classmate a.k.a. Cornelius\Damien\Morpheus (whose sites are bookmarked in the “Blogroll” on this page) calls it Copleston whenever he refers to his (= my) schooldays.

I do note that when HE mentions it he goes for the slightly classier sounding “Copleston High” – a name that it wasn’t given until the co-educational, comprehensive days some four or five years after we left.

I, however, prefer the more proletarian and sexist “Copleston Secondary Modern School for Boys” that was its ACTUAL title in our time.

As usual I have gone and distracted myself from the point I had in mind when I started!

One of my readers, with whom I am in direct contact via Facebook, sent me a message asking for more information on people rejoicing in names such as “Batman” and “The Wombat”.

I agreed to pass something on to him about them and to tell him of many others with strange nicknames. I have a feeling, however, that the guy wants to be my Literary Agent some day because he came back instantly with “Don’t tell ME! Write it down and use it in the blog!”

So while I’ve been stuck inside with “the-doctor-thinks-it’s –Swine-‘flu-but-if-it-isn’t-it’s-one-pig-of-a-cold” for the last few days, listening to old Moody Blues albums (What other kind of Moody Blues albums are there?) I have been preparing a list of my secondary school teachers, their nicknames and their little quirks to delight and amuse you.

And this short piece is nothing more than an introduction to that article.

Still, while you are enjoying those innocent years of 1964 to 1969 you are, at least, avoiding having to listen to off-colour tales from 1975 to late 1977 – the period I think of as my “Men behaving badly” years and which I intend one day to turn into a novel entitled “Confessions of a 1970s lust monkey!” (There! That’s gone and embarrassed the children! One – Nil to me!!)

Alfie

Hark now hear….!

As I begin this article it would only be fair for me to say that I’m not altogether sure where it will be going!

This is largely because, while I do have a storyline and a not quite unrelated “punch line” that I wish to link together, I am currently suffering from an uncharacteristic fuzziness of mind and don’t know quite how I’m going to achieve that linkage. I don’t THINK I have Swine Flu but more likely a heavy cold that is manifesting itself mostly in my throat with the result that every time I fall asleep I cough and wake up.

Consequently I am writing this on the afternoon of Tuesday 15th December 2009 having had 1 hours sleep on Saturday night, 5 hours on Sunday and 3 hours last night so I doubt that this will be either one of my best or longest pieces. That’s TOTAL sleep each night not necessarily continuous!!

Anyway……….

In my post of 6th December 2009 I mentioned that from 1976 I frequently indulged in a certain amount of “creative lyric changing” of hits of the day. Somehow, I managed to convince myself that this was a new thing for my circle of friends to be doing.

It was only last Sunday when the dear old BBC did what amounted to a “Songs of Praise Christmas special” concert from the Royal Albert Hall that I realised how stupid I had been in that way of thinking.

Incidentally, before proceeding I should just mention that the official title of the concert that was being shown in the “Songs of Praise” slot was “The Big Sing”. Unfortunately someone in my household had been messing about with the aspect ratio of our TV. This resulted in the amusing situation of Aled Jones, a fervent Christian, apparently hosting the programme in front of a banner proclaiming it to be called “The Big Sin”!

Christmas Carols!

Who among us can put our hands on our hearts and say that NEVER EVER in our schooldays did we sing “While Shepherds washed their socks by night” in a school assembly? Not many, I bet, and not me either, I must confess.

Oh, and we mustn’t forget “We three kings of Leicester Square, selling ladies underwear”, must we?

I do have a memory from my schooldays of at least one assembly each year in the approach to Christmas being stopped because too many people had the same silly idea and those lyrics became audible to the teachers up on the stage. Our headmaster, “Batman” (after the way he would sweep through the school at high speed wearing old-fashioned robes) would gesture to “The Wombat” (the art/music master and resident pianist) and the music would stop followed several seconds later by a fading out of the singing!

We would then be subjected to a tirade on unacceptable behaviour and threatened with a “full school detention”. This ultimate punishment was actually only given once in my five years at Copleston (formerly known in these articles as Prospicimus) Secondary Modern School for Boys and THAT was nothing to do with Carol singing. But the story of the pipe bomb in the waste incinerator will have to wait for another posting!

And what exactly was the event that inspired all of the above?

Well it wasn’t quite a Christmas carol but certainly a Christmas song – Boney M’s rendition of “Mary’s Boychild” to be exact.

I was driving back from the Chemist’s with the latest load of cough and cold remedies for Faith and myself when a Squirrel ran across the road in front of the car ahead of me and I experienced the best bit of lyrical synchronisation I have ever known!

Here follow the words of the bit of the song that was playing when he braked hard and for (as it appeared to me initially) no particular reason – the lower case bits came out of the radio speaker, the uppercase bit came out of me with somewhat more force!

“….. a new King born today, And Mary’s Boychild JESUS CHRIST! was born on Christmas Day.”

No, I didn’t go up the back of him and that was EXACTLY how the words came out, honestly it was!

Alfie

Another milkman!

While I was finishing off my posting about my Grandfather, Jack the Milkman, the other day I was for some reason reminded of a joke.

It was originally told to me by my Sister’s ex-husband in the autumn of 1995 – I know this because I have a terrible memory for jokes but this one was still fresh in my mind when I went to the Barclays fishing match that year.

The event was in a place called Mumbles – a coastal suburb of Swansea and I recall recounting the story that follows to my friend Mike T, who is mostly Welsh and who we had recruited to the fishing squad partly for his knowledge of the area, while we walked down from the hotel to the shopping area on the Friday morning for the usual cans of drink, sandwiches and pork pies that we take with us to the Match for sustenance.

As we walked we were avoiding the hardening patches of “pavement pizza” – the previous night’s vomit that marked out the large number of pubs along that piece of seafront!

The young people of Mumbles plus a certain percentage of Swansea University students had seemed to us to be real “oblivion” drinkers! I mean WE had been putting a fair amount away on the Thursday evening but everything we ate or drunk stayed eaten or drunk! As we had walked back to the hotel at closing time the previous night there had been dozens of them peeing up walls and throwing up on the footpath quite unconcernedly – and THAT was just the girls!

Anyway, as the smell of other peoples sick is one of the few things that can get me doing what is known as “the Technicolor yawn”, or, as the Mumbles bar staff referred to it, “Number threes”, I was telling a few jokes to keep my mind off it!

And THIS was the best one of the lot – I think it’s rather good:

Old Jim was the milkman on a rather posh suburban housing estate and had been for as long as anyone living there could remember.

One day the word went round at the Residents Committee meeting that Old Jim was to retire at the end of the month and some discussion took place as to what should be done by the Residents. As not everyone was a customer of Jim’s dairy and as some had been customers for much longer than others it was eventually decided that it would be left to each household to arrange its own gift for him.

The retirement day dawned and as Old Jim progressed through his round each householder came to the door with some small gift – a fiver in an envelope here, a half bottle of Whisky there.

Indeed on this morning Old Jim was filling up the cold box on his milk float with gifts as fast as he was emptying it of yoghurt!

At one house near the end of his round Old Jim found the front door opened by a gorgeous, young, well-to-do housewife wearing the traditional skimpy negligee of a million Milkman jokes.

“Old Jim”, she said in a husky voice, “tell me. What do you normally do for breakfast?”

“Well ma’am”, he replied, “I get up every morning at 3.30. I usually have time for a mug of tea while loading the float but I don’t usually eat anything until my wife makes my dinner at about 6 o’clock in the evening. Then I’m straight off to sleep.”

“Aha!” she exclaimed, “I thought as much! That’s why I’m cooking you a great big fry up! Come in.”

Old Jim went through into the kitchen and sure enough the young woman made him a slap-up breakfast. Bacon, Sausage, Fried Egg, Beans, Mushrooms – THE WORKS! When he couldn’t eat any more he rose from the table to thank her.

“Well Ma’am”, he said, patting his stomach, “that was wonderful. I haven’t had a present as original or delicious all day. Thank you so much”.

“You’re very welcome”, she replied, “I’m so glad you enjoyed it. BUT….” she paused and fluttered her eyelashes seductively at him, “That’s not all I have for you!”

“After a gift like that breakfast I’m sure nothing else is necessary, Ma’am” said Old Jim, not quite catching on despite all those old milkman jokes.

“On the contrary”, came the response, “from what you’ve told me about your way of life I don’t imagine that you and Mrs Old Jim have had much of a sex life over the years. I’d really like to take you upstairs and show you what you’ve been missing!”

The penny finally dropped and with hardly a thought as to what either Mrs Old Jim or their six children would have said about it, he allowed himself to be led up to the master bedroom.

Incidentally he reassured himself on the way by recalling that Milkman’s Union rules said that this sort of thing was OK as long as he kept his cap on!

Once in the room common decency prevents me from giving details of what went on but, as with the breakfast, Old Jim got THE WORKS!!

Much later, exhausted but still with his cap on, Old Jim staggered downstairs and prepared to complete his last few calls.

“Well, Ma’am”, he said to his benefactress, “I don’t know what to say. What with that and the breakfast I won’t forget this day. Thank you again.”

“Don’t mention it”, she said in a rather dreamy voice, “it was my pleasure. BUT…..that’s not all I have for you!”

Before Old Jim could think about this, she popped a pound coin into his hand.

“I can’t accept this after everything else” he said, slightly puzzled!

“Oh but you must”, she replied, “My husband will be upset if you don’t”.

“Your husband…… will be upset?!”

“Oh yes. You see it was like this. We heard you were retiring and I wanted to discuss what we should get you. My husband was busy reading the paper, and when I kept asking him what he thought about it he said …..

“Oh, F**k the Milkman, give him a quid!”

She paused.

“…….. But the breakfast was MY idea!”

Alfie

I’m dreaming of a white blog page!

I’ve done a really silly thing!

You see, when you have these WordPress blog thingies you don’t normally (well I don’t anyway) type the entries straight into the “add new post” area on the dashboard – which is what they call the administrative area that you, the reader, don’t get to see.

What I do is create a Word document and when I’m happy that it is finished and spellchecked to my satisfaction I copy the text into the aforementioned administrative bit then, after tweaking it still further, I click on publish and away it goes!

Now in the dashboard area there sometimes appear announcements that the site manager s think will interest we bloggers and I noticed a particular one when putting up the previous posting.

“Ah! That’s nice!” I thought and duly went into my “appearance” settings as advised and ticked the necessary box in the “extras” menu.

My readers should from that point on have been experiencing a graphical representation of a gentle, festive fall of snow wafting down the page.

EXCEPT!

I forgot one thing!

The page that the nice, white snow is falling down is also WHITE!

I only noticed this when looking at the page from your viewpoint and thought that the monitor was playing up!

Now I have no intention of mucking about further with the settings to give them a nice dark background to highlight the snow and the snow will, anyway, be turned off at source on 4th January.

So, to summarise (actually “winterise” would be more apt but there’s no such word):

a) There’s nothing wrong with your screen – bits of the letters ARE being eclipsed from time to time.

b) I’m not going to do anything about it.

c) If you want to see the snow properly click on your left mouse button with the cursor on the text. Then highlight a big chunk of text in a rather fetching shade of blue against which the snow can be much more easily seen.

Actually I rather hope that virtual snow on my screen is the only version of that phenomenon I get to experience this year. It’s a real bugger having to drive to work in………… Oh! Hang on a minute I don’t have to do that at present! I KNEW there were advantages to being unemployed!

Perhaps this year I’ll be able to help my elder daughter make her snow Daleks on the lawn! I can’t think WHERE she gets it from!

Alfie

“Yes” is not the answer!

Many moons ago (“Oh -insert hypothetical deity or swear word of choice-!”, I hear you scream, “He’s off in the past again!”) I was sent on a course about Sales Techniques. This was to enable me to sell Barclays’ products that they didn’t want or need to my Taxation clients!

As far as Barclays was concerned sending me on it was a dead loss as I steadfastly refused to recommend anything that wasn’t in the independent top ten of that type of product, despite much cajoling by the Business Development Manager about my “duty” to the company!

I, however, got two important things out of the course.

Firstly I discovered, along with the other members of the course, a pub in Kidderminster (where the course was held) named, strangely, “The Little Tumbling Sailors” which served a magnificent and powerful home brewed bitter, aptly named “Lumphammer”. We sampled it extensively!

Secondly, and more importantly as far as this article is concerned, I learned an extremely useful skill – one that is taught to everybody in the world who has ever or will ever try to sell you something. And knowing this technique has been far more useful to me as a defence against salesmen over the years than it ever was in my job!

The technique is called “The Agreement Staircase” and it works by leading you (the victim) through a series of questions to which the word “Yes” is the one and only indisputable answer. After an appropriate number of such answers you are then hit with “So you’ll buy it then?” or some variation on that theme in the expectation that the instinctive reaction will be to continue to answer “Yes”.

And so the sale is made!

Unless, as I suggested earlier, you know the technique, can watch it happening and then deliberately and with malice aforethought throw a spanner in the works!

I did exactly that with the man who sold us our replacement windows a couple of years ago. Faith and I had more or less decided that we were going to go with his product before he arrived to sell it to us but I had no intention of letting him off easily and let him go through his entire “show”. Sure enough, the textbook “Do you agree that….?” and “Isn’t it great that…..?” questions came trotting out and I answered “YES” as emphatically as I could while trying not to laugh.

Then the key question “So you’ll have your new windows from us will you?” made its appearance and, without any change to the fixed smile I had been wearing throughout, and with no hesitation at all, I replied with “NO”!

Watching his face as his carefully prepared structure came down around his ears, I almost felt sorry for him. I waited a couple of minutes while he tried to think what to do next and then explained that I had been given sales training, couldn’t resist using it back at him, and then told him we would, indeed buy his windows. I hope he got his commission because I certainly made him earn it!

There was one last thing that my course taught me and that is that a question that requires nothing more than a flat “yes” or “no” answer is called a “closed question”. It is intended to leave the questioner still in control of the conversation, interview or whatever. It does NOT provoke discussion.

The opposite, “How are you?” type of questions are intended to invoke more general conversation and are called (I bet you can’t guess) “open questions”. You cannot have a “yes” or “no” answer to an open question.

HOWEVER, I have noticed of late a rather strange tendency, not only amongst members of my own family but much wider afield, for conversations to occur as follows:

ME: “How are you today?”

OTHER: “Yes. I’m fine thank you”.

ME: “And how were your friends you visited today?”

OTHER: “Yes. They’re all fine too”.

Where did those “YES” bits of the reply come from? They weren’t a part of the answers to the open questions I actually asked! I’m forced to the conclusion that people aren’t actually listening to the words I’m saying but have unconsciously formulated stock answers so that they don’t have to make a decision about whether I asked it in the open or closed format.

I find it to be very annoying and now that I’ve pointed it out to you, I expect you will notice it cropping up too!

I just hope I don’t fall victim to it myself.

You will tell me if I do, won’t you? (Closed question!)

Alfie

The song remains the same – only the words have been changed!

Firstly, apologies to the gentlemen of Led Zeppelin for borrowing one of their songs for the first half of the title of this piece! It is getting VERY difficult now to think of appropriate “headlines”.

Secondly, advance apologies to my reader(s) for the fact that this is ANOTHER of those items that begins “Way back in 1976” or something similar! Get used to it though – I had a lot of fun in that year and occasionally I remember bits of it and want to write it all down. Anyway……

Way back in 1976 my lodger, Andy, and I did NOT (as you might have imagined from my earlier post on those days entitled “Saturday!” and posted 5th October 2009) go out drinking every night.

For one thing neither of us could afford it and for another I was, for part of that year anyway, usually quite shattered from my train journey from the office in Chelmsford back to Ipswich. It was only about 40 miles but involved a change of train at Colchester and a journey time of about 1 hour “station to station”. It wasn’t just the journey either; Colchester station didn’t half sap one’s energy too! It stands in an elevated position above the town and seems to have an ambient temperature at least 10 Degrees C. below its surroundings.

To make matters worse I would, in an effort to warm up, partake of a cup of particularly nasty British Rail coffee between Colchester and Ipswich even though I well knew of its laxative effects!!

Timing was everything – if I started drinking the coffee as we went through Manningtree station I would be OK! However, I still had to leave Ipswich station at high speed, recover my bike from the cycle sheds and pedal like the clappers along the riverbank path for about a mile to get home. I always made it – although if the toilet was occupied when I got into the house there would be anxious moments!

It did keep me fit and comparatively skinny though!

Back to the point!

So, both too skint and/or too tired to leave the house, what DID we do?

Well, perhaps surprisingly, we didn’t watch much TV – I think we both recognised that there was too much scope for conflict if we both accumulated too many different favourite programmes. When I arrived home Andy would usually be watching “Crossroads” (he was quite an intelligent guy normally but had the “I like soap operas” character flaw that afflicts some poor souls) and we would try to catch Messrs Thaw and Waterman in “The Sweeney” when we could.

Apart from those regular shows and the occasional film we mostly spent the time listening to music – Andy had brought his record collection up from his home in Kent and soon after moving in purchased the latest Amstrad music centre (complete with BIG speakers and amplifier) to play them on. During that period of my life I caught up with some of the stuff I had missed out on during my disastrous first marriage. Basically, if SHE didn’t like it we didn’t listen to it – that’s how it was I’m ashamed to say!

I was reintroduced to Genesis, Yes, Pink Floyd, Hawkwind and The Moody Blues and much of the music I got to know, belatedly, in that time remains in my “favourites” to this day.

The other thing we did was to listen to the radio and a favourite sport of the two of us and any other visitors about the place was changing the lyrics of current hits. Usually, it must be said, to something rather disgusting and unromantic! We got quite good at it and regrettably my failing memory can only retrieve a few examples.

To give you just a flavour, one of Abba’s hits became “Are you still on the game?” and a little Bee Gees number from the disco era became, somewhat cryptically, “How deep is yours, Love?” Not what you’d call the best chat up line in the world! Slightly more blatant than those was the changing of the opening line of Chicago’s “If you leave me now” to “If you castrate me now, you’ll take away the biggest part of me”!

Try it for yourself with more up to date stuff – it gets to be a habit after a while. (Hint – that Christmas one from The Darkness a few years ago is a good place to start, although to be fair they’ve almost done all the smutty innuendoes for you. “Don’t let the bells end” – way too easy! )

Now I’m sure you all know that all this IS going somewhere and I’m getting to the reason soon. Just be a bit patient – although you’re probably not going to like it when we DO finally get there!

Last week I was mooching about in one of those enormous Sport shops while Faith and her Mum did some Christmas shopping in Boots and Sainsburys’ and they were playing THAT Christmas album – the one that every shop in the UK has been playing since about 1994 except for the year when they called it in and reissued it without Gary Glitter.

A particular track was playing and I went immediately into “rearrange the lyrics” mode. Why, I asked myself is this woman obsessed with a lack of roof storage and with stockpiling adhesives?

Got it yet?

Try Mariah Carey – “I don’t want a loft for Christmas…….All I want for Christmas is glue!”

I TOLD you that you wouldn’t like it!

Alfie

Jack the Milkman

My paternal Grandfather was, by all accounts, a rather unsavoury old coot with whom I got on very well – which probably reveals things about me that I’d prefer you not to dwell on!

He was born in 1903, the youngest son of the man I have previously labelled “Biggest Alfie” in another post. At that time Biggest Alfie was 56 years old – the age I am now!

Of his childhood on what was then the eastern edge of Ipswich only a small number of anecdotes have come down to me and of these the most entertaining concerns what he and a gang of fellow 9 or 10 year olds would do at the local pub, the Lattice Barn.

There being not very many cars about before the First World War anyone having to travel any distance for a night out (or indeed anyone with only a short distance to travel but no expectation of being able to walk home afterwards!) would go by pony and trap or some other sort of horse and buggy arrangement.
Consequently the land that would now be the pub car park would then have been a fenced paddock where the “transport” could have a bit of a graze while its owner got plastered.

I assume that they left the beasts harnessed to the trap or buggy in the expectation of just getting in and driving away on falling out of the pub at closing time.

Enter Granddad and his chums!

They would sneak into the paddock, detach a buggy and shove the shafts through the bars of the fence. They then walked the horse around the OUTSIDE of the fence and harnessed it up to the shafts again! I would LOVE to have seen the faces of the local drunkards when they tried to work out exactly how they could have parked up THROUGH the fence! I was not told if or how often they actually drove away carrying a section of fence with them!

When he was 14 (towards the end of 1917)he got a job as a milkman (not TOO surprising as most men older than 18 would have been conscripted as machine gun fodder for the Western Front) doing his rounds with a horse and cart, a number of milk churns and a measuring jug. This was a job he was to continue doing until he finally retired well into his 70’s.

He never ever told me any salacious stories of the kind that one might traditionally expect to hear about a milkman but I have a feeling that there may have been some and it would never surprise me to learn that I am related genetically to a much larger percentage of Ipswich than the records would suggest!

Mind you I have no more evidence of that than the discrepancies between the dates on my father’s birth certificate and his parents’ marriage certificate! Plus a general feeling of “roguishness” that he had about him all the time I knew him.

Jack, as he was always called by everyone who knew him (his real names were John Joseph) liked all of the other traditional vices too!

He never smoked less than 20 Rothmans’ King Size cigarettes a day – often many more. He also loved his beer and, after my grandmother died in 1957 he moved in with his sister and her husband – a move that enabled him to spend many evenings in his old haunt, The Lattice Barn, referred to above.

There he was a member of the team that took part in the local Cribbage league, becoming individual Champion for Ipswich for several years in a row. While his working hours (up at 3am nearly every day) meant that he couldn’t play in that team too, he fancied himself as a pretty good darts player as well.

However, he gave up playing darts in 1972 when he, my father and I had an evening out at The Shepherd & Dog public house near Ipswich and I absolutely hammered him at the dartboard. I was 19 at the time, not inclined to show mercy to my elders, and completely failed to mention to him that I had been playing for another nearby pub’s league team for the past two years – so I was pretty good too!

Then the final straw; my little sister (3 years younger than me), having learned from our father, walloped him at cribbage – this was too much for his pride and I don’t think he ever played again!

When his sister died and his brother-in-law sold up and moved away to live with one of his daughters we managed to find Jack a place in sheltered accommodation – a one bedroom flat with its own front door but opening on to communal areas shared with the other “residents”.

Never being one to baulk at something merely because someone else said it was “against the rules” (and that must be where I get my own attitude to the European Union from) he enlisted an accomplice called Len, a couple of years his junior, and set up an illegal brewery. Most of the process was carried out in a big cupboard in his room, which smelled of hops most of the time and Jack and his “runner” would take the orders and make the deliveries. I don’t imagine he would have charged much more than sufficient to recover his costs but I think there would still have been serious disapproval from the Housing Association Management had they found out.

It’s a great shame that he never had to go abroad during those years – just think of the glorious feeling you would get from having a passport with “Bootlegger at an Old People’s Home” in the “Occupation” section!
He might still have been plying this trade at nearly 107 years of age if he hadn’t been quite so hot on Quality Control!

Obviously Jack felt that the beer he had brewed for Christmas 1986 needed more than the usual amount of pre-delivery sampling and unfortunately he overdid it!

Getting up in the dark in the middle of the night for a visit to the bathroom, still drunk, he forgot the geography of his room, tripped over the furniture and managed to break his thigh bone!

In hospital for many weeks while the bone struggled to mend itself his past caught up with him and all those Rothmans King Size ciggies that he had smoked during his lifetime gave him a lowered resistance to pneumonia and in April 1987 he died aged 83.

While the pneumonia wasn’t nice, as far as the rest of that story is concerned I have to say “What a way to go”!

Some days after the funeral my father and I cleared out his flat – my garage loft now contains the more durable parts of his brewing kit. I don’t use it because I’m saving it for when I have to go into sheltered housing of that sort! Well, you have to keep family traditions of THAT sort going, don’t you? I’ll try to watch out for excessive sampling, though!

If there is such a thing as the traditional heaven, and if Jack managed to charm his way into it, I wouldn’t mind betting that there are a number of illicitly pissed angels flying erratically around up there!

Alfie

(NB. For readers from the USA the word “pissed” is used in the British sense of “seriously drunk” NOT the American sense of “seriously annoyed”)

Delay!

Yesterday I received a message from one of my regular readers (looking at the statistics for this page “the regular reader” would be nearer the mark!) asking whether Little Alfie was gone for good as he could have done with one of my postings to cheer him up!

“What a nice boy – even if he is Welsh!”, I thought because I really hadn’t realised that the column was actually something anyone would go looking for. I HOPED that would be the case but suspected that those few who do view it do so out of a sense of “keeping the old boy happy” rather than a genuine enjoyment of the content.

Let me say now that rumours of my death are greatly exaggerated – I am working on a number of postings simultaneously but, unfortunately, none of them seem to want to come to a satisfactory conclusion so none can yet appear here!

Additionally, I am now on Chapter 2 of my novel (Chapter one took seven years so don’t hold your breath!) and am writing up the last two years of my “Great Fishing Trip” memoirs, the early bits of which you can find in the side bar of this page under “Gone Fishing”. I have to tell my friend who sent me the message above that the chapters for the years when he participated in that event aren’t there yet – but keep watching out for the 1995 and 1996 sections boyo.

So, be patient, more IS coming but in the meantime I would like to share the following with you. It was found in the “My Documents” folder that I copied from my last work PC onto a memory stick before I left the job in August.

“THE WORLD’S SHORTEST FAIRY TALE”

Once upon a time a guy asked a girl to marry him.

The girl said “No”!

And the guy lived happily ever after and went fishing, hunting and played golf a lot and drank beer and farted whenever he wanted.

The End.

And if any of my (almost but not quite) exclusively male readership want a REALLY horrible Christmas holiday they will pass THAT little gem onto their female significant others!

Back soon.

Alfie