Monday, February 19, 2024

My Favourite Smell


Wrekin College

If I was to ask you what your favourite smell is – what would you say? Your favourite after shave lotion? Some expensive scent like Chanel? 

Let's think of something else like the smell of rain; smells good doesn't it but what if it was from an aerosol!! The smell of lavender from a fabric softener? What about the smell of shit from an aerosol. Smells just as good to me as anything from an aerosol like rain or lavender.

When I was a student I worked as a milkman for a short while, and oh how it sent me round the twist. I was at a dairy in Wellington, Shropshire; I had to cycle on a old bike for half an hour every morning at the crack of dawn, get to the bakery, load my van and go out to deliver milk.

It was an electrically controlled vehicle powered like the dodgem cars at a fairground, which I have written about before on here. It had two pedals, like an automatic car, but we used our left foot on the brake with the right on the accelerator which is not recommended in cars.

Each house I delivered milk to had its own smell; the the big posh school, Wrekin College, had it's own smell too; the masters and mistresses and the professors lived 'in house' and when I delivered I discovered my favourite smell, a welcoming smell the greatest smell in the world . . . .. well bear with me, indulge me for a little while and see where this goes. Believe me I don't know at the moment which, I think, is the reason I write this blog, which is to discover what's going on in my mind.

After I delivered to the school – which was to various staff members as well as the place where they cooked for the pupils – I went to private houses and as usual I formed impressions of each of them. 

I could kind of tell who were the clever people, the people who were newly rich (the nouveau riché), the pretentious, the thoroughbreds, the educated and the people I envied, at that time, but no more.

For instance, there was a big house called 'Mad-hatters' another called 'Karjohn' and it became obvious to me that Karen and John had named the latter and didn't have much of an imagination – okay, okay they couldn't call their semi-detached 'Grey Gables' or anything like that, but why not leave it just to its number? 

Mad-hatters had my favourite smell and every time I went there I could tell that they were a warm family – and indeed they were – with their multitude of children (or what seemed a multitude) and great taste in cars, clothes, furniture and the very building itself. 

Each time I opened their gate, carrying three bottles of Jersey Cream milk (in one hand I venture to add) the smell would hit me the closer I got to the kitchen – of course you can guess what it is by now! 

As this Wellington was in Shropshire, which is in the West Midlands, and where sterilised milk was and is also available, meant the people who bought it didn't have a fridge or were brought up in a household who didn't have a fridge, and if you have never tasted sterilised milk you have never suffered. 

Of course if you haven't tasted Jersey Cream Milk you've never tasted milk.

By the way everything in America is homogenised; you get skimmed, semi-skimmed and full cream milk but it's all - - - homogenised! 

But that's America; let's go back to Wellington: there was a big house on the corner of a very big street – in fact I think it was actually on a roundabout; it had a wide gateway, which was surrounded by a high privet, and I could drive the van – hang on it was called a milk float – I could drive the milk float, and the drive had enough room for me to get in and turn around quite easily.  

Living in this house was a very tiny woman with a very high squeaky voice. I don't know what kind of house it was, but there were loads of teenagers hanging around all the time, and sometimes, I could smell dope – yes I knew the smell of dope I was at drama school even though I never smoked any. 

I think, in retrospect, that it might have been some kind of half way house, with the tiny woman working for some kind of rehab organisation; I had to deliver all kinds of milk to them, apart from the expensive kind, and I figured that the inhabitants were from broken homes and dysfunctional families, because of the large order of sterilised – or sterra as they called it – I delivered.

Okay so I generalise, but sociology generalises too, otherwise sociologists would never have anything to write about!

On Friday evenings I collected money from the customers, which meant calling around at their houses; some people would leave their money on the doorstep, in the mornings, but one particular man would invite me in to his house: as soon as I went in, it was quite obvious he was anticipating my visit. I followed him to the back part of his house to a tiny room. In this room there was a table, with nothing but an exercise book laid open to a particular page. Next to the page, was a little bit of money; enough for the seven pints of milk I had delivered that week; I had to take the money, but not before I signed for it.

After that he walked me to his door and got on with his oh so busy life – I don't think!!!!

Now let me tell you this – I was going to write this post today about something else – and it was this:

When the nuclear accident happened in Chernobyl, the population were told that they had to leave - every single one of them. They were told they could only take one thing away with them, and the people scurried around to choose and find, find and choose and take it to their new life, wherever that might be. One man chose a door – a single door; the door had been used to lay out members of his family when they died. . . . and I got to thinking what would I take – what would it be? I thought about it for some time and was disappointed that I couldn't think of anything so what would yours be?

But back to my favourite smell – bacon. The smell of cooking bacon and indeed the smell of cooking and food, when going in to people's houses, is so welcoming that any attempt to cover it with aerosols or fresh air is to be discouraged.

But the smell of bacon and the taste of it – to me – are two totally different things: It's nearly as disappointing as the taste of coco cola.




 

Saturday, February 3, 2024

Los Angeles to Chicago by train: including a death in Fort Madison, Iowa. 2.

                                      Our train resting in Chicago.

                                                        .

This is an entry from 2011: we were returning from Los Angeles to London. I find it hard to believe it was thirteen years ago and I read it again just now.

We are on a train and stopped in Albuquerque, New Mexico where the temperature between the inside of the train and outside is vast. We were out walking along the platform, looking at the array of Indian trinkets, blankets and the like and, as we were doing this, it was over ninety degrees Fahrenheit.

The journey, so far, has been entertaining. The priority of time on this train has taken a back seat to the attention to detail, the running of the system, and the pleasure of travel.

There is no wi-fi on the train, so I will write in bits over this journey through America from Los Angeles to Chicago; unless anything extraordinary happens between Chicago and New York, I won't write about that part of the journey as I've already written 'On a Train in England' in March, 2011.

The first thing we heard last night, when we got on, was a message over the speaker system from Chip the lounge car attendant, telling us he was delayed slightly getting his groceries, and had a problem with his fridge, and asked us to give him a break, and that he would be starting shortly with a bill of fare which includes coffee, beer, pizza, burgers and potato chips.

After a little while he came on again to say, he was open which meant that everybody on the train went to Chip the lounge car attendant and lined up; his little lounge car is like a mini Seven Eleven – maybe about 30 feet long, with passengers seats on either side – so you can imagine the hustle and bustle.

On the menu it said that they had 'freshly brewed' decaf coffee but when I went there afterwards he told me they were out of decaf!!!

NB: in those days I didn't take caffeine.

After that we heard from 'Jackie in the Diner' – she was asking people if they wanted to make dinner reservations; she would say 'this is Jackie in the diner – would anybody wishing to book for dinner make your reservations now.' This voice would come on at various intervals asking people to come in for dinner, lunch or whatever.

Then Chip from the lounge car would come on again telling us he was going on a break, so if anybody wanted anything they needed to hurry up and come and get it.

Things were swinging along and we were travelling, then Jackie came on the speaker system again, and wanted to know if people could hear her, as the system didn't appear to be working. Chip from the lounge car came on to say he could, in fact, hear her.

When he said this a woman, sitting close by, using her cell- phone, and speaking quite loudly in a New York accent, said 'This is Dolores from Delaware; I need to speak to Mr Jefferson.'

This sounded interesting but then Jackie came on the speaker system again saying 'I can't hear you at all, Chip; you're not coming through.'

Then again 'This is Delores from Delaware! Can you put me through?'

'This is Chip from the lounge car – I am back from my break; if you want bagels or drinks now is the time to come.'

Whilst this was going on over the speaker system, a ticket collector interrupted all by saying he was coming around for tickets and 'don't forget to sign them in the top left hand corner.'

Each time he took a ticket from someone who hadn't signed it he would say 'I need you to put your autograph in the top left hand corner.'

Jackie came on again 'This is Jackie in the diner – am I coming through?'

'I can hear you, Jackie' said Chip from the lounge car.'

'This is Delores from Delaware – is Mister Jefferson there?”

The ticket inspector approached us puffing and blowing after climbing some stairs 'those stairs are killing me' he said; we're on the top deck.

'This is Jackie from the diner; I will be coming around to take dinner reservations, starting with the sleeping section and then coach.'

I sat reflecting about my years in America, seventeen of them, knowing that they are contemplating an all electric super duper rail system which will get you from point A to point B faster than a speeding bullet, and wishing they wouldn't do it, as it would spoil this lot.

The food in the lounge car was ropey to say the least, but the food in the diner was excellent and reasonably priced.

There are four seats at each table, so you are forced to face the other two people, which more or less forces you to communicate with them.

On the first evening at dinner we sat with a Navajo professor and his wife; he was quite famous as he was the first Indian professor – I don't know if he was the first in the state or the country, but he told us he had celebrated his 67th birthday recently by walking down one side of the Grand Canyon, along the flat bit, and up the other side; he was a very fit looking guy, for his age, and he told us he does 10K runs, and was formally a baseball pitcher. I don't know if he was a major league pitcher or just played at college level, as we never got that far, but they were getting out at Flagstaff, Arizona the following morning at 4:30.

The next morning, at breakfast, we met Tom and Jenny from Victorville California; famous for the place where Roy Rogers used to live, and have his western museum; I remember his horse, trigger, nearly stepping on me at the stage door, after I saw Roy Rogers live at a theatre in Birmingham, England. I have to say that as there are quite a few Birminghams in America apart from the one in Alabama.

Tom and Jenny were also an interesting couple having cycled the world, by all accounts; regular train travellers.

In the Observation Car I met another Navajo Indian, this one lived on the reservation. As we sat watching New Mexico flash by, he pointed out lots things about the area, particularly some black stones, in the distance, which he said were from the top of 'that mountain' which exploded with the help of the volcano hundreds of millions of years ago. He went on to say that they used the black stones (he had a name for them which I have forgotten) in their sweat lodges.

He was going from Gallup, New Mexico, to Albuquerque, to meet his son; he was sending his son a message using the modern equivalent of the 'smoke signal', he joked; his Blackberry phone.

He said he was proud of his son as he took the decision to leave the reservation and set up by himself 'abroad.' He said he had lived 'abroad' for a short time – abroad was anywhere off the reservation.

Indeed it is abroad as the reservations have their own sovereignty.

Later that day, Saturday, we had dinner with two people on their way back to live in Chicago from Los Angeles – we wished them well on their journey and they did the same for us.

Before we met them for dinner – in the usual accidental way – a man two seats in front of us was getting leery; he had been drinking all day and his voice was sounding very horse.

Whilst we were away, he called everybody names and started shouting; someone called the conductor who came and told him off; he sat in his seat for a moment but when the conductor went away, he started again. Saying the same things, but this time he was really screaming, so the conductor, a young woman, threw him into his chair, called the cops and they threw him off the train at the next station, and into gaol somewhere; we were oblivious to all this as we were at dinner with our bicycle travellers.

Chip in the lounge car came on the loud speaker, as we pulled in to Fort Madison, Iowa, to say that he was running out of food in the lounge car; he was out of bagels, pizzas and most of the cheese and ham sandwiches.

As the train pulled out of Fort Madison it stopped; we had run over somebody. We were travelling at about 15 - 20 mph and apparently the person was killed. We don't know anything about it at the moment but within two or three minutes I saw a cop car outside scaling a six feet fence; then he was told where the body was by some kids outside.

The latest news is a few young guys tried to cross the tracks and the last one was hit and killed by the train; there's no need to describe what we know or what I saw but you know what train wheels are like; the young guys were all in their early twenties.

As we sit here waiting to move a voice in the background is heard: 'This is Delores from Delaware; I am just north of the train station in Fort Madison, Iowa. Today a man was killed . . . .”

As if oblivious to everything, whilst this was going on, another voice was heard ' this is Chip in the lounge car – I'm just back from my break.'

               Cops look at the body (out of shot) as paramedics call the coroner.




Sunday, January 14, 2024

Yes - The Guardian, Private Eye, etc and The Post Office.

This is not going to be a long hi falutin essay about the rabbiting of Farage (the) Cabbage or Trump (the) Hump on our backs, but the whole world by now must be aware of the goings on concerning the post office here.

I used to work for the post office before I went to college. My mother always wanted me to be in a safe job at the age of 15, would you believe, for that is when we left school in my day. When they fitted me out in a uniform with a stupid hat, I felt like a bell boy at an hotel – an hotel? it is correct.

My job was to deliver telegrams and I was offered twice the money I was earning at an 'army and navy' store nearby. I used to hide the hat, I have to say, and I remember the guy who was fitting me out in the uniform saying to me 'oh you'll have all the girls after you when you wear this' – well there are uniforms and uniforms and this was not one of the attractive ones.

But there was a chance of riding a motor bike when I was 16 so that was something to look forward to. Geoff Duke, the great motor cyclist was one of my heroes so I looked forward to it.

All around the offices were big black windows, just below the ceiling – this was in every office – and behind the black windows were people spying on the workers down below. Somewhere on the outside of the building was a secret door where the spies would come in and go out. They were called the I.B., the Investigation Branch.

When I started the job I had to sign The Official Secrets Act – we were civil servants. In fact I signed the Official Secrets Act again, later when I was part time with the SAS which in conjunction with the post office, I was also paid.

That was when I was 18. A lot of the time I would go to the SAS at the weekends, sometimes to a firing range or other outdoor activities.

It was fun - 23 SAS, look them up.

If we had an accident on the motor bike we didn't carry any papers, just our driving licence. If anybody wanted to see proof of insurance we would say 'it's handled by the post office.'

The mighty post office.

The mighty post office with its own laws it's own police (the I.B.) and was a law unto itself. Where was I heading?

Needless to say I got out as soon as I could.

In those days it wasn't acceptable to be out of work – factory fodder and every other kind of fodder when bosses and gaffers talked down to you.

I heard some of the inquiry the other day when the post masters and post mistresses reported that they'd been given the third degree by mafia like interrogators.

The post office sent a guy with a black shirt and jacket in as a witness – nothing like playing the part.

Lots of people in this country for some strange stupid reason, think that anybody who reads The Guardian, is some kind of lefty revolutionary. 'What do you want that for?' I would hear when I was younger, well it was The Guardian, Private Eye, the BBC and their programmes who did all the work to expose the scandal at the post office. It was initially started by an ex postmaster called Alan Bates, no not the late movie star, writing to Computer Weekly Magazine and taken up by a reporter there called Tony Collins, that was in 2004 and the next person was Rebecca Thompson in 2009 – so you can see how long all this has been going on. She hunted for other people accused and charged and eventually a guy at the BBC did a radio series about the whole business and at the end of the day, after all these years, ITV commissioned the series.

Now you may ask why ITV when a lot of other people did the ground work – I don't know, but would as many people have viewed it on the BBC? It had already been on Panorama and loads of times  on Radio 4.

So don't criticise The Guardian and the Private Eye with the brilliant Ian Hislop – we need them.


Thursday, January 11, 2024

The Fibonacci Sequence, again.

This Post was viewed the other day by forty odd people. I often wonder how they find the posts so I read it, found it interesting and here it is again. It was up here on November 26th 2014 which will explain references to the film about Alan Turing (above).

This is going to be a strange old post but I was thinking of something so let's see how it goes.

Everywhere you look these days you will see the name of Alan Turing; this is for a number of reasons. One may be because there is a movie on release starring Benedict Cumberbatch – yes of course that's his real name and we will all remember it just as we remembered Schwarzenegger.

In the film Breaking the Code, Derek Jacobi played Alan Turing and he is seen staring at a fir cone; here:

If you look at it you will see that there is a distinct pattern. What we see when we look at it is the same pattern but when a mathematician looks at it he sees a pattern of numbers. 

That pattern is called the Fibonacci Sequence and was spotted nearly a thousand years ago by someone called, would you believe Fibonacci. 

He didn't invent it as it was used by Indian mathematicians in the 6th century.

What do the numbers mean?

Well the Fibonacci numbers are the sum of the two previous numbers and so on so 1, 2, is followed by 3. 

Simple?

So far.

Then 3 is followed by 5 and 5 is followed by 8. What does this all mean; how can it be useful.

It's supposed to be  a way of predicting how many rabbits two rabbits will begat in a year.

But.

Somehow it is the meaning of life when it comes to a computer.

There is line in Breaking the Code when Turing, quite well in to middle age by now, says 'look at this cone; a Fibonacci sequence.'

Great piece of writing aye? Engels, meet Marx, Rolls meet Royce!! (you know what I mean).

Well look at this:

That is the pattern created by a Japanese Puffer Fish; the fish is about two inches long and in order to attract a mate he makes this pattern in the sand at the bottom of the ocean. When the female arrives he flattens the middle. It was on TV the other day in the David Attenborough series.

Isn't nature wonderful?

Here are some more patterns from nature all with Fibonacci numbers.


Amazing aren't they?

So how does the Fibonacci sequence lead to a genius inventing the computer?

That's why the genius who invented the computer invented it and not me – nor you.

Unfortunately Alan Turing was born in the wrong age: as with Leonardo da Vinci, Alexander the Great, Michaelangelo and many more he was homosexual; gay.

But in the time he was active the practice was against the law; it was never against the law for one man to love another man but the actual practice was.

In Britain that is; in some countries it still is.

Gay marriage is legal in lots of states in America and lots of other countries but in Uganda and really backward countries homosexuality is still against the law.

So instead of praising Alan Turing the authorities persecuted him; they chemically castrated him and he eventually committed suicide.

At a time when people knew very little about genetics or DNA, Turing used the early computer to try to crack how a soup of cells and chemicals could transform itself and grow into complex natural shapes - a subject known as morphogenesis. In an incredible article published in 1952, Turing suggested that everything from the spots and stripes on animals to the arrangement of pine cones and flowers could be explained by the interactions between two chemicals. Turing’s work in this area is intimately connected with the timing of his trial and conviction for homosexuality, and his subsequent ‘treatment’ with a course of chemical injections.

Hope you like the patterns:





 

Friday, January 5, 2024

Me and Tom, back in the day.


 

There I am – above – that was in the BBC Shakespeare series As You Like It with Helen Mirren – no I'm not fighting Helen Mirren!!

That thing in my right hand is my sword – it seems to be angled right at the camera so you can't see it properly.

It's not my hair, of course, and that thing at the top of my legs is a small cod piece.

The other fella, by the way, seems to be tied up in knots and believe me if he'd known the photo was being taken he would have bent his head around. The photo was taken by one of the ace guys who take the tennis photos at Wimbledon each summer.

The photo below is going back even farther – or further - I am on the right and the play we were in was called The Alchemist by Ben Johnson – not the runner, the 17th century playwright.


On the left, looking very elegant and proud is Julian Fellowes (now Lord Fellowes) of Gosford Park and Downton Abbey fame, and in that photo you can see something similar at the top of my legs – yes a cod piece. 

The other fella, nearer Julian, is the (now) famous wine expert Oz Clarke and the fella with his hand out is an actor called Eric Corlet, who I haven't heard from since – yes I have a great memory for names; not the ones I have been told last week, but many from 50 years ago.

In that photo I am 'wearing' rather a large one cod piece – I got these two photos from the Internet but I'm sure I have originals somewhere.

I did The Alchemist at The Royal Theatre, Northampton and we stayed on in Northampton to live for some years. That's where we brought the children up, in a small village about six or seven miles east of Northampton, and it would take over an hour to get in to London on a good day – but that would be from the train station which was at least half an hour away.

A year or two after that photo was taken I was walking through the market square in Northampton, when a stocky young fella with long hair and a beard came up to me. He seemed to be dressed in many colours and he said – 'hello boy; you that fella with the cord pace; ent that right?'

Yes, I said.

'I remember that cord pace in that play.'

I asked him if he went to the theatre much and he said no that he only came that once.

He was with a girl and I could see he had a few drinks on him. Tom, his name was, and it turned out that he was quite famous as a singer of folk songs and led a folk band. We talked for a while and went for a drink in, I think, Shipman's bar just off the market square.

Now this little story is a bit vague, in places, as alcohol was used so it might not have been Shipmans, but when I did this entry before that's what I deduced.

I bumped in to him lots of times after that and sometimes we would have a drink and maybe end up at his place. I can't remember where it was but he had loads of musical instruments around the place and I was never sure if it was his place. 

Those were hazy days and one time I bumped into him London near Ward's Irish House in Piccadilly and whilst we were there an old friend of mine walked in with his dog.

I don't know what pedigree, the dog was, but it had kind of curly fur as opposed to hair; Tom looked at the dog, very carefully, and said to my pal 'I think his trousers are too short.'

What Tom was doing in Piccadilly that day I don't know but my pal wanted to know if I could do a West Indian accent 'course he can' said Tom 'he can do any accent you like. I saw him doing Walsh and carckney – you name it.'

Walsh? Oh yes he was from Northampton.

'I thought you didn't go to the theatre?' I said.

'Oh I snuck in once or twice.'

So my pal said his friend wanted someone who could do a West Indian accent and go to his flat to read his play.

'You go and do that' said Tom.

'He's a white West Indian' said my pal ' says he Irish.'

'He'll be from Barbados' said Tom 'you heard the saying "Hell or Barbados?"

My pal gave Tom a blank look.

Tom said 'The Irish slave trade; 50,000 Irish men, women and children were sent to Barbados - how about that then?'

'I didn't know that' said my pal.

'Well there you go' said Tom 'some of them were sent to Virginia.'

So Tom wandered off and I went up to Muswell Hill to my pal's friend's flat.

When we got there, he sure was a white West Indian, and he'd written a play 'I need to hear this' he said, and he poured a large whiskey for me.

We sat down and read it and my pal read the other English part.

My accent wasn't that good – more Jamaican – but the whiskey was Jameson's, it flowed and we had a few laughs reading the play.

When we finished the play we played darts – with an air pistol.

We were shooting tiny coloured darts at an ordinary dart board and there was a lot of cheering and shouting, if we hit the bull, and the playwright's wife went out to fetch more whiskey. When it came back it flowed again till it was time to go.

I got to Euston Station just in time to catch the last train to Northampton which was ten minutes past midnight.

As I walked along the platform a loud voice shouted and there was Tom carrying a small bottle of whiskey.

We walked up through the carriages and there, sitting on one of the seats, I met someone else I knew. An actor called Raynor Bourton and he was with his pal who was strumming on a guitar.

Tom passed the whiskey around, and we sipped from the bottle as we travelled up to Northampton. Raynor and his pal were going all the way to Birmingham, and as we travelled, sipped and laughed, Raynor's pal went into one of my favourite Bob Dylan songs Lay Lady Lay; it was beautiful.

You would think we were a nuisance, singing and drinking and laughing, but no. 

I could see people were smiling and we sang a couple of folk songs with Tom to the fore and then the guitarist starting singing 'Where do you go to my lovely? When you're alone in your bed' and the whole carriage joined in.

Not too many people as it was the middle of the night and when we finished we had reached Northampton.

Tom left the whiskey with the boys as they continued the other half of their journey to Birmingham and we wandered off in to the night.

I never saw any of them again but when I looked Tom up on the Internet I saw that his name was Tom Hall and he played with a band called The Barback Riders and he died in 2003; R.I.P.





Sunday, December 31, 2023

Happy Hogmanay


Happy Hogmanay to you. Or in Irish athbhliain faoi mhaise daoibh, Spanish, feliz año nuevo or Happy New Year, in English.

But look above for Hogmanay in Edinburgh.

This is something I wrote nine years ago. So here it is again and why not?

I have many happy memories of it at new year's eve parties and watching it on TV – letting the new year in. I had black hair so I did a lot of 'first footing' – that is going out with a lump of coal and knocking the door as soon as I heard the midnight bells. My brudder did it too as his hair was blacker than mine.

It means that the first one over the threshold has to be a stranger (I think) with black hair bringing fuel – that was all for luck even though I wasn't a stranger. I did it for others too and I was always welcomed with a kiss and a whiskey! My brudder too with his blacker hair and deeper thirst for the whiskey and the kisses.

Let me digress here, I'll come back to hogmanay later but I mention this as most of the New Year parties I went to over the years had the TV on so we would know when Big Ben struck twelve so we could sing Auld Lang Syne but: do you place your television (if you have one) in the corner of the room?

Why?

Don't you find you get a crick in the neck after a while?

We used to have ours in the corner, with the back towards the window.

I suppose this was very handy when something boring came on and we could avert our eyes up a little and see what was going on outside. Most of the time this would be something like a lamp post or a parked car. Later in the day a curtain as it was usually dark out there and in any case as it was a sin to watch TV in the day time.

I suppose the problem being that many rooms have a fireplace in the middle so think of this:

what if there wasn't a fireplace there and you could sit back and watch the TV sitting on your sofa straight ahead.

I would often do this and think 'wouldn't it be great if the TV was there? Or maybe a little higher and a little bigger just like the movies?'

I really did think those things but I didn't think it for very long.

Eventually I moved the television to a point in front of the sofa so I could view it straight on – it's at eye level and about eight feet away so I can see the detail of the picture. It's not in anybody's way with its back to the wall between two sets of book cases.

Here we are:



Our sitting room is about twenty five feet long – nearly the whole nine yards!! - and I cannot imagine trying to be involved in anything on television from that distance.

I have heard people saying that they don't want the television to dominate the room; why not? They watch it all the time – I don't; I sit in here and type crazy posts for the blog – but that's another story.

But when I do watch it I watch it.

Whilst I am at it - we didn't have a telephone when I was a child in fact we didn't get one till we were married and when we got one we put it in the sitting room – everybody else put the bloody thing in the hall, usually in the cold, but in any case people I knew with small babies couldn't have a conversation in the hall as their voices would carry up the stairs and wake up the babies.

When we bought our first house, in 1967, we put the telephone in the sitting room.

You'd ring people and they'd tell you off for waking the kids – well MOVE it then!!

Move it move it move it!

These days, of course, people use their cell phones more and in any case their land lines (ha ha, land lines!! As if that is what they are) are usually cordless.

By the eway Land Lines don't exist any more, a land line goes directly into the wall and across the street to the telegraph pole – land line – anything else isn't a land line.

But what happened?

Why were they put out there in the first place and why was the TV in the corner?

Who started these crazy rules?

Now that Christmas is out of the way for another year this week we expect Hogmanay, which is celebrated in Scotland. This year a lot of people were expecting it to be the first Hogmanay of an Independent Scotland but not to be (for a while, anyway) – so that is a current meaning of the phrase to be or not to be!

Hogmanay is held by a lot of Scots to be the most important holiday in Scotland – and for the Scottish diaspora – so if you are Scottish and are reading this let me wish a very sincere and happy Hogmanay.

One of the reasons it holds so much importance in Scotland is that Christmas was considered too papist by the Church (Presbyterian) of Scotland so they banned it.

It wasn't even a public holiday till 1958.

In Scotland it is customary to serve a steak pie with mashed tatties, mashed neeps and carrots on Hogmanay which is actually December 31st.

For the uninitiated tatties are potatoes (pronounced bedadaters in Ireland!!) and neeps are – well what are they? I like to think they are parsnips but fear they are probably turnips.

I heard last week about a woman living down here with her Scottish husband and that she could not match his mother's cooking of the steak pie so she called her husband's mother to ask what the secret ingredient was and was told it was sausages!!!

We would always watch TV at Hogmanay and if I never get to spend it in Scotland I will go my grave disappointed – just as my dad did because he never went to the Grand National.

I took him the The Derby though even though we had a fight on the way back.

What about?

He said Peter Shilton was England's best goalkeeper and I said it was Ray Clemence – or was it the other way around?

Who cares we soon got over it.

We would watch Andy Stewart on TV; he would say words of welcome, something like 'nice to see you' then finish the show with:

Haste ye back, we loue you dearly,
Call again you're welcome here.
May your days be free from sorrow,
And your friends be ever near.

May the paths o'er which you wander,
Be to you a joy each day.
Haste ye back we loue you dearly
,


Haste ye back on friendship's way


To be pedantic – that word loue is an obsolete typography of the word love – but I used it in any case.

During the show Duncan MacRae would recite the poem A Wee Cock Sparrow

Many years ago when I first met my wife, I was invited to meet the parents on New Year's eve – Hogmanay – and I went around there with my brudder.

We sat on the sofa and recited this poem. They looked at us as if we were drunk – we were!– here it is:

A wee cock sparra sat on a tree,
A wee cock sparra sat on a tree,
A wee cock sparra sat on a tree
Chirpin awa as blithe as could be.

Alang came a boy wi'a bow and an arra,
Alang came a boy wi'a bow and an arra,
Alang came a boy wi'a bow and an arra
And he said: 'I'll get ye, ye wee cock sparra.'

The boy wi' the arra let fly at the sparra,
The boy wi' the arra let fly at the sparra,
The boy wi' the arra let fly at the sparra,
And he hit a man that was hurlin' a barra.

The man wi' the barra cam owre wi' the arra,
The man wi' the barra cam owre wi' the arra,
The man wi' the barra cam owre wi' the arra,
And said: 'Ye take me for a wee cock sparra?'

The man hit the boy, tho he wasne his farra,
The man hit the boy, tho he wasne his farra,
The man hit the boy, tho he wasne his farra
And the boy stood and glowered; he was hurt tae the marra.

And a' this time the wee cock sparra,
And a' this time the wee cock sparra,
And a' this time the wee cock sparra
Was chirpin awa on the shank o' the barra.
meaning of unusual words: (but you knew them didn't you?)
arra=arrow
sparra=sparrow
barra=barrow
farra=father
marra=marrow
shank=leg

That makes sense now doesn't it??

Well this should and you should know the translation:


Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne! 

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We'll take a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

 

Sláinte (health)