Quote: john tregorran @ 17th September 2019, 9:46 PMI have a soft spot for the Bush.
Don't we all - or rather hard spot.
Quote: Definitely Tarby @ 17th September 2019, 11:32 PMIt happened so it's news. If you don't think it's 'news worthy' there are websites you can join. Tabloid forums for example.
I wonder how many of your posts are as pointless as this wank.
Thanks for all the good comments. It's great when there is dialogue.
Dave - you obviously haven't heard of the brand new global wide initiative "We are the news now". People across the world are signing up to switch off news bulletins and instead for that five minutes they say aloud in their kitchens "we are the news now" before describing in a newsreader's voice what is their news, whether anyone is there to hear it or not. I started it actually, 10 seconds ago in my head. It is going to make me a millionaire. GIve me £5. I will send you the form.
Tarby - you are right on all counts and it was very nice to hear your good news story today.
John T - I would have loved to have gone to QPR in the 1970s but I was a bit too young. Bowles was brilliant, I always read the Francis article in Shoot, and remember listening to the radio on the night they were runners up. Football allegiance wise, I did flit about as a kid beginning with Chelsea and Arsenal, then moving to QPR and Arsenal before finally settling on just Arsenal to which I added York. It was then only Arsenal and York for three and a half decades until I decided to broaden it two years ago.
I was never going to pick names out of a hat. All my new teams have very long historical personal connections and are therefore meaningful. With QPR, it is that 70s period when the stadium was much more open, my Auntie Lil had lived on the Westway plus of course my love of the Clash which also has a connection. But I have a problem this Saturday. I've got replica shirts for all these teams and I wear them. I was in the QPR one last week but I want to wear the Millwall one against QPR this week. It makes sense to me - I like Millwall above QPR and QPR way above Luton but the authorities might think it mighty bizarre.
Remember that we now live in an era where standard normality is to be called Hobbit and Wulfrun and to raise your child gender neutral whereas if you were to wear a bowler hat people would decide that you were a dangerous radical. .
I met Stan Bowles in the 80's
I used to work on exhibitions - ya know the motor show and air show and all that.
He was an electricians labourer.
They weren't the mega stars they are today.
Word around the camp fire was he'd pissed his money away on women and gambling.
And as they say, fritted the rest away.
Quote: Stephen Goodlad @ 18th September 2019, 6:12 PMI met Stan Bowles in the 80's
I used to work on exhibitions - ya know the motor show and air show and all that.
He was an electricians labourer.
They weren't the mega stars they are today.
Word around the camp fire was he'd pissed his money away on women and gambling.
And as they say, fritted the rest away.
Interesting, SG - I used to go to motor shows and air shows for fun and did airport exhibitions in my work so our paths may have crossed. Most of us liked these people better for earning less and being more normal. We had Steve Kember living opposite my best mate and used to chat to him a bit. Later, my Nan gate-crashed Kenny Sansom's wedding and ended up merry as the vicar plied her with drink in the crypt. That wedding was in the church where my parents had got married. I think she had entered some sort of time-warp and thought she was attending that instead. Kenny loved her.
I briefly knew people who knew Merson. The flawed ones were always my favourites, especially if they pulled through. But some of that was later. Back in the days of wearing parkas on our chopper bikes, we were for Bowles, Charlie George and Rod Stewart. Yep. You did read that last one right. The world for kids is like a wonderful kaleidoscope if they are allowed to be kids. Football and music blurs. Everything blurs and is just accepted like the sea and the sky and the trees all merging..
This is why it really gets on my nerves when you have Muslim and gay punch ups over relationship education. It's all about adult egos. Just let kids talk about their parents rather than teaching them and it will all seem part of everything else. Snails, BMX, clowns, some rubbish rapper. Boris Johnson......now that they have done that change, and whatever you or even I might think of it and I'm not sure, just let it be what it is organically in the next generation coming through. Somehow I have managed against the odds to keep a little bit of that early kaleidoscope in me. It makes me happy and my dear old Dad has dementia - but that is exactly where he is today and he seems unruffled. I hope to be the same.
Alan Clarke (sniffer) worked as a rep for a fork lift company after Leeds United.
And the day Peter Lorrimer and Norman Hunter walked into my local in Cleckheaton was like a dream.
These Gods ordered two pints of Tetley bitter. I'd watched them kick seven colours of shite out of Osgood at the weekend and now they were in my pub drinking the common man's ale.
Quote: Stephen Goodlad @ 18th September 2019, 6:56 PMAlan Clarke (sniffer) worked as a rep for a fork lift company after Leeds United.
And the day Peter Lorrimer and Norman Hunter walked into my local in Cleckheaton was like a dream.
These Gods ordered two pints of Tetley bitter. I'd watched them kick seven colours of shite out of Osgood at the weekend and now they were in my pub drinking the common man's ale.
Bite Yer Legs Hunter. Yes - this was the start. I have Bremner's autograph somewhere which was given to me by a neighbour who worked at the RAC and got it at a function. I have never actually been to Elland Road. I find Leeds OK, because the standard southern response is "oh, they were dirty buggers" and it always brings out the Yorkshire defence in me : "well if you had ever travelled beyond Watford you might not be so blinkered, you southern twerp" (and I am southern myself). If I have a big Yorkshire team it is Wednesday but I love Bielsa for his eccentricity so I have been mulling it over. When I went to York in '82 we were in that era where some beer was real (Sam Smiths) and some wasn't (John Smiths) and I can't remember where Tetleys stood. I think it might have been real but tasted the opposite or vice versa.
Some things change though. Probably the first match I was ever allowed to stay up for to watch on TV was the Chelsea v Leeds FA Cup replay. The seven year old's Chelsea love affair was dropped quickly and I will always be grateful, not least now that Lampard is at the helm. I just cannot stand that bloke. There is just something about him that I can't tolerate. But I should to be nice contextualise it. Many - perhaps half - of my best friends are Chelsea supporters. And I like them all. I have even had warm friendships with the dickheads who support Spurs - they are always strangely distinctive - so I can't say fairer than that, I am an extremely reasonable person who would ban serious polarisation and ;punish it with hanging.
I was a big Leeds fan in those days. I used to go on my motor bike (Yammy 125) wearing my Leeds scarf around my face.
Opposing fans often saw the scarf billowing out behind my helmet and would run into the road to push me off. They came off worse as I booted them as I went by.
That scarf reeked of Brut for 20 years.
Quote: Stephen Goodlad @ 18th September 2019, 7:25 PMI was a big Leeds fan in those days. I used to go on my motor bike (Yammy 125) wearing my Leeds scarf around my face.
Opposing fans often saw the scarf billowing out behind my helmet and would run into the road to push me off. They came off worse as I booted them as I went by.
That scarf reeked of Brut for 20 years.
I'm envious Stephen.
Two years ago, I addressed not venturing further than two miles from my home for six years and generally cowering under the covers by pushing myself into a glider three times and then doing an eight hour kayaking course in two days. That is, as totally unfit, old enough to be a grandad if early family had been especially promiscuous in the teenage years and risking panic attacks and drowning. I did almost drown actually. I had to be rescued by the young instructor but he was very good to me. He said he had seen worse while heavily hinting that his Dad was younger and simply pottering in boats sedately on the river. He gave me the certificate of achievement,, noting that for all of my difficulties I never mucked the group up and stuck it out to the very end with tenacity. I have never been on a motorbike and am still considering trying an off road Yamaha day - the sort where 28 year olds say it made them totally knackered and unable to have sex.
I do think I will end up crippled and regretting it but such is my way that what is holding me back - I have made the enquiries - is that I could be a pain in the arse for the youngsters attending it and I would be regarded as utterly bizarre. But I kind of want to do it. With each day that passes, I think "I've got to stay OK for my parents" but to be honest they could easily outlive me. They are going to 100. Some might say it is all talk except quite obviously in the cloud and on lake I walked the walk. But I would be doing it on Denim or Old Spice. Brut now is strictly for my kitchen news. Walls don't only have ears. They also have olfactory senses and while I am blasé about my own odour, I don't want to be thrown off air.
I tell you what, my friend, and it's the serious post and I am grateful for your engaging comments. This will be my last for a few hours, probably, and I will then shut up. My lifestyle choices are quite shabby. All legal but not what the GP would recommend. I've had so many mates - a couple of hundred - although it all dwindled. My parents at their best, and they are far from their best now, were probably the best of them all. I had this thing. How would I cope when they went? Well, they have kind of gone already. It's a confusing state of limbo. But what I said to myself was that I did have a big list.
I would work my way through it. And it came to the point in 2017 when I thought, blimey, I had better start on it as I am now getting on. So I did. Apart from what I have said, genuine, I had on that list to do the family trees. That's done. I'm a Glastonbury veteran. But I wanted to do opera for the first time and a few times. That's done. I wanted after ten years away from them to do football and a few gigs. Those are done. I wanted to see a lot of places in England that I had never seen.
That is about 80% done. I am supposed to be attending my first ever golf tournament tomorrow. And still I have the song "we are the ovalteenies" ringing in my ears. I should be delighted. Increasingly it makes me nervous. It's wonderful in its way - thank Christ we didn't have the current bunch seeing us through a war - but you do wonder what the hell the future holds for all of us. I spoke honestly earlier on about the reassurance I find by being around sturdy blokes who are not relevant to me and as I said before ostensibly non-sexual. But, you know, my favourite monument is Stonehenge. I've always needed that sturdy reference point - and, man, that is especially true now. My second favourite "monument" is stable and coherent government which is why I find these days so unsettling. Still, we all do out best in our own ways.
Thanks for listening - and being involved.
(sorry Herc if you assumed - not that it would be an issue for me - I was the type who wanted to leap into your bed : if you really want a mutual wank I'm indifferent and it won't work to your full satisfaction but I'm a tolerant man of this world : just don't try none of your power games : I'm still waiting for that invite to count those pebbles and drive the tractor) 
So, Essex CC having now realised that hadn't kept up with their promise to plant two new trees for every mature one they cut down, are now going to plant 1,000 to make up for it; but stress that is going to cost £300,000 to plant and take care of them.
Excuse me - £300K ?!? WHY? How come? £300 to plant and take care of a tree - do they have personal carers?
Yet another example of figures seemingly clutched out of thin air, which seems to be rampant these days with councils - still, with the money some of these people are on I suppose it loses all meaning.
Quote: Hercules Grytpype Thynne @ 19th September 2019, 9:23 AMSo, Essex CC having now realised that hadn't kept up with their promise to plant two new trees for every mature one they cut down, are now going to plant 1,000 to make up for it; but stress that is going to cost £300,000 to plant and take care of them.
Excuse me - £300K ?!? WHY? How come? £300 to plant and take care of a tree - do they have personal carers?
Yet another example of figures seemingly clutched out of thin air, which seems to be rampant these days with councils - still, with the money some of these people are on I suppose it loses all meaning.
You sound barking mad. Just shrub it off.
Moment 'vile' mother goads her 15-year-old daughter to 'bang out' another teenager in vicious park scrap:
In timely fashion. the Daily Mail picks up on my theme but obviously it can't bring itself to knock the professional classes so it chooses a chav example.
But we are the news now. Yes - I did get to the golf today. Had never been to a golf tournament before. Man, is Virginia Water a posh neighbourhood. I should have taken a cap to doff. Mostly, it was a great success and a very pleasurable experience. Professionally run apart from the two inches of urine that had to be waded through in the Gents at Hole 6.
Great free buses. Helpful people on ticketing. A nice mix of folk. The better end of the mega-rich and the better end of the plebs. I walked the entire course so got in my exercise. Thanks especially to the Northern bloke - Yorks or Lancs - who was ahead of me at the bar at 16 and ordered ten pints before turning to me and said "sorry, I'm the customer from hell". "I only want one" I said laughing and he said "oh mate, mate, let me buy that for you and put you ahead of the queue." I accepted the priority but paid him. A very, very nice bloke.
Can't say too much about the golf. Mostly it was names not known to me but I loved Ramsey's caddy who looked like a tramp and had a fag permanently in his mouth. Tickets were £50 but I got mine at £28 having done it early and I think I did alright with that. There was - and it pains me to say it - a posh geordie git at the bus stop on the way back, very priggish - who made no bones about telling me that Lindisfarne and Prefab Sprout were way before his time. In my day, we were interested in our superior elders and our local heritage.
Plus the inevitable two vile overly pushy and aggressive 23 year old middle class women. The one who was virtually having sex with me by pushing past me at the barrier at Richmond with the words "I need to get through". And then when coming into Clapham Junction on the way back, one who was annoyed that I didn't stand aside so that she could push past me and 20 people ahead of me all waiting to get off the train. I was calm but firm. "You can see I'm getting off too but I am waiting for the other people". Don't get me wrong about the gender and the age. There are 23 year old women at Millwall who live in council tower blocks and they are delightful, beautiful, attractive and well mannered. But then a lot of them do have great parents.
I had spent most of my time on that train observing the 15 people nearest to me. Every single one was on a device. Mobile. Ear phones. This generation isn't normal. It can't communicate with anyone and instead types lengthily on forums or reads lengthy pieces on them about Christ knows what. Golf probably - or girl power. Forget Brexit. Forget diversity. Forget liberalism. What really marks people out from previous eras is that they have all been lured into being robots. Sheep these days have more of an independent mind, not to mention lemmings.
In my teenage years, I was so shy I could barely look around me. Time and experience changes such things radically. The final shy bone in me disappeared 5-10 years ago and I am not going to say where that was exactly. But I wouldn't have a problem if I was that age now anyhow, It is easy to see that everyone is staring at a screen and totally oblivious to everyone else. We all have a problem if there is no answer other than rampant morning wood. And now over to Sally, who if I am not mistaken is in Coco Mademoiselle. She's by the kettle and here is your weather.
I was walking through the city centre today and there was a guy shouting abuse at people and walking up to people getting in their faces and shouting things like "what's your problem?"
He walks up to a lad leaning against a wall who doesn't back down so it leads to a bit of pushing and shoving and choice words. This guy eventually walks off and the lad says "yeah, f**k off". Shows how he was all mouth and probably blind drunk. I'm glad no punches were thrown because no-one likes to see that sort of thing but that twat deserved a knuckle sandwich and I don't mean a sandwich with some knuckles in it.
Quote: Definitely Tarby @ 19th September 2019, 8:28 PMI was walking through the city centre today and there was a guy shouting abuse at people and walking up to people getting in their faces and shouting things like "what's your problem?"
He walks up to a lad leaning against a wall who doesn't back down so it leads to a bit of pushing and shoving and choice words. This guy eventually walks off and the lad says "yeah, f**k off". Shows how he was all mouth and probably blind drunk. I'm glad no punches were thrown because no-one likes to see that sort of thing but that twat deserved a knuckle sandwich and I don't mean a sandwich with some knuckles in it.
It's commonplace Tarby unfortunately. Where are you based? I assume from your name that you are on Merseyside but I could be wrong. I don't know that area. I'd like to visit it - especially the Beatles and other music museums and some of the Carla Lane connections. But I've seen it in Croydon, Ipswich, Exeter, York, Southampton........it's often terrible now. I'm not too harsh on most people per se. Life's tough now. I just feel that society went wrong and I put the blame largely at the top. There was an 18 hour lockdown in Purley, 4 miles from me, last month. That's virtually Terry and June country.
I've been to Virginia Water,once.
One morning commute I caught the wrong train from Reading and ended up at Waterloo instead of Paddington.
On the way we stopped at Ascot ,Virginia Water and others.Never seen so many bowler hats.Looked very amusing particularly in a sort of rural setting.
