Children on the Train

Child One: WOW! Look at that stadium!
Child Two: It's massive! Wicked!
Child One: Mum, look at that stadium. Is it United's?
Mum: No, that's City's.
Child Two: It's rubbish.
Child One: Yeah, it should be knocked down.

Dandelion Update

'The Project' are no more.

Dry your eyes though because there is a good reason for this; we had a breakthrough at practice last night. We've been playing for four weeks now, once a week, and have been trotting out a few standard covers that I used to play with 'The Best Covers Band in Southampton'. It was alright, fun to make loud noises again. Last night we finished a song and I held the last note, then improvised a riff from it, as I often do when given a guitar plugged into a loud amp. Our drummer kept playing along and our singer started singing. We stopped. What was that? Singer asks me. I dunno, I tell him, I just made it up. What were you singing? I dunno, he tells me, I just made it up. Sounded good , we all agree. We should write our own songs. I'd prefer that, drummer says. So would I, I say. So would I, singer says.

So we did and at least one of them sounds half decent already. It's exciting.

We've vowed never to play a cover again. Only problem is we need a new name now.

New Employee Induction Day

We've already sat through four irrelevant and tedious half hour talks by senior dullards, thankfully missing out the planned 'ice breaker' section, when a young lady from the Equality and Diversity department is placed in front of us.

"What I'm going to do," she explains, "is to give each table a large sheet of paper and the name of a group of people commonly discriminated against. What I want you all to do is write on the paper some stereotypical characteristics associated with that group of people." There's silence in the room. I look at my fellow inductees around the table; all have blank expressions. Our speaker feels the need to clarify, "No one's going to judge you, we won't think that you think these things, just think of some ways they're described in the media. You know, like in newspapers." I look around again and am met by blank expressions. "Doesn't anyone else feel like they're in an episode of The Office?" I ask. The faces remain blank, with the exception of a bloke to my left, thankfully, who seems to agree with me.

We're given our sheet and a post-it with 'Blonde Women' written on it. I contain my amazement and listen on as the others on the table start suggesting adjectives: Dizzy, stupid, big breasted. This isn't happening, I decide. Either someone's playing a joke on me or I've fallen asleep and am dreaming it. Unfortunately I'm wrong. My table are trying to come up with more words to describe blonde women, descriptions that you apparently find in the newspapers. I decide to play the game and suggest 'slags' and 'shit drivers'.

The equality and diversity half hour ends with our words being read out (she balked slightly at slags, muttering something like 'well, that's perhaps a bit harsh', apparently unaware of the evident hypocrisy) and the other tables trying to guess what group we had been given. The overall message we are left to ponder: We shouldn't treat people who have different coloured hair or skin any differently. And there I was thinking I'd joined an intelligent, adult organisation, not a playgroup (although I suspect even children don't need to be told these things).

Spoke Too Soon

It's pissing it down again now.

Moaning Works

Clear blue skies and warm sunshine this morning.

Myth Busters

Before I moved up here, stereotypical comparisons between 'The North' and 'The South' were never far from the surface. One particularly choice one came from two lads sharing a taxi with my girlfriend and I one night down South. When told that the pub was shutting in 10 minutes, so we'd bettter hurry up, my girlfriend commented innocently, "They're open all the time up in Manchester." "Yeah," replied one of our taxi companions, "but you don't get shot around here."

My girlfriend's Grandma was once offering me a custard tart and, while I was considering the offering, whispered,"Does he know what they are?" to my girlfriend. She then turned to me and asked, quite seriously, "Do you have these down there?"

She is also convinced that the South coast basks in year-round temperatures never dropping below 20 degrees and that rain is as welcome and rare as it is in drought ridden areas of Africa. Funny, I thought at the time. It's not quite so funny now because I sort of see where she's coming from - it rains here. All the time. I mean it - it's not a myth. I don't think there's been one day in the last three months when it hasn't rained.

In Southampton I used to ride my bike to work and walk when it was raining. During the year before I quit I didn't have to walk to work once - for a whole year. Two weeks ago, after two weeks of riding to work here, I fitted my bike out with full mudguards, front and back, because I was sick of sitting in my office soaking wet. I've even lived in Wales before and I don't remember it being this bad.

Numberplate Entrepreneur

A friend writes: "Classic Blog material here but I can't be arsed to start a blog." Saves me doing it I suppose.

Late Saturday night...

So the door bell rings at 1am Sunday morning and a slightly pissed bloke with an odd European accent asks me if its my numberplate he's holding in his hand. I'm in me kecks and half asleep so say yeah, thinking he found it on the road and wondering why he couldn't have just left it next to the van. So I take the number plate off him at which point he gets slightly more animated and asks for money...yep he's selling me back my numberplate! I shut the door on him and I wander off back to bed to find the wife watching him out the window - the bloke eventually gives up on me and wanders across the road and rips the number plate of a neighbours car. He appeared to try knocking on the wrong door to do the same routine. Called the police to pick him up and go to bed (he was wearing the most obvious jacket possible).

This morning found another number plate outside our house and wondered how many more. Popped round the shop for milk to find a bloke in the next road inspecting the empty place where his number plate was - he had the same experience with said bloke.

Only conclusion of this one man, night time, money making venture...what the bleeping-firk was he on?!

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Monday afternoon...

Youngest son has lost one of his gloves so I pop into Mothercare to buy some more. Mothercare - yep, the place that exclusively sell childrens clothes and kit. "Gloves please" I ask the woman behind the counter. "We don't have any" she says. "Uh?" I respond. "Out of season sir, they are winter items." "Madam, it was fucking snowing yesterday, since when was snow NOT glove wearing weather, you gormless shop drone?" I politely rebutt. "Sorry sir, but er..."

As I cycled home it started to hail just to prove my point.