My Family And Other Animals Part 4

Maslow and the "Killer" Instinct

On one occasion, Maslow, our pet cat and furball baby, was having to go to the vet for a general anaesthetic in order to have his teeth cleaned. Consequently he was not allowed food or the liberty of the great outdoors that night. Being the soft parents that we are, with concerns over anaesthetic risks, Maslow was allowed to sleep upstairs....never the best tactic for a restful night, but eventually we all settled down and managed to get some sleep despite the "boy" fidgeting at our feet and the sound of his gentle snoring. It could have been C but I don’t think so. It certainly wasn't me.......

At 5am in the morning I was awoken by this strange scratching noise. At first I thought it must be Maslow seeking attention but then realised he was still fast asleep at the foot of the bed. I listened again to locate the sound and opened my eyes to see a dark shadow climbing up the bedroom curtains. I leapt (yes, even at my age) out of the bed and switched the light on, which prompted mutterings of complaint from both Maslow and C alike. I went to the curtains and there, sat on the curtain pole, and looking down at me, was a field mouse. When I made a grab for it, it leapt to the floor and took refuge behind the wardrobe. The big, heavy, immovable wardrobe.

Maslow is a flawed mouser! There then followed a couple of hours of Maslow and I running from corner to corner of the bedroom, in a Benny-hill-like pursuit, trying to catch the blessed rodent....to no avail. Maslow eventually got bored and went in search of food and liberty......in vain. He couldn’t be fed until after the vet. C and I eventually got bored and decided to shut all other doors except the bedroom and leave a clear path for the mouse to he front door, which we left open. It was very cold........Fortunately, Maslow survived the anaesthetic and came home with pearly white gnashers. He has been given some toothpaste to help keep them that way, which he absolutely adores. Also, fortunately, the mouse has not been seen again…..unless he sprouted wings.

One summer morning I was awoken with a start. C had leapt out of bed and ran out of the room to the sanctuary of the spare room, shutting the door firmly behind her, shouting “F*ck, f*ck, f*ck!”. I came around quite quickly. I soon located the source of C’s distress. A bat! A furry little vampire mouse on wings, circling our bedroom.

I opened the curtains. I opened the two windows, but to no avail. The bat, being blind, could not see it's way to freedom. Unlike birds, bats do not fly towards the light.The bat also seemed unable of smelling (do they have a sense of smell?) the fresh air of freedom, nor could his sonar detect the open windows. The bat continued to circle, swooping ever so closely to my head. I don’t like bats. Not when they are so close you can see their teeth. Clearly, this winged rodent was not going to find its own way out. So, I retrieved a towel from the washing basket, climbed onto the bed, and proceeded to twirl the towel around my head in an attempt to drive the bat towards the open windows, without attempting to hit it of course.

Thank goodness, it was not later. If this had been 9 am on a Sunday morning instead of 5, the pony club that passes the house at that time, may have had a bit of a shock if they had looked up to see a 40 year old beardie, fully naked, jumping up and down on the bed, twirling a bath towel around his head……..

Fortunately, after about 20 minutes or so, it worked. I managed to drive the little critter to the right height and eventually, it found the hole, the great outdoors, and, freedom!

My Family And Other Animals Part 3

Maslow’s Fall Without Grace

Much of one Friday recently was spent at the Vets with Maslow the cat. This is because, not only is Maslow crap at catching mice but he is also somewhat deficient in the "climbing" and "landing" areas of his cat repertoire. This has led us to question whether or not he is indeed a pure blood pedigree Norwegian Forest cat as previously assumed. You would think that climbing and landing would be second nature to such a breed.......

On Thursday night, as usual, I returned from London and was sorting my mail on the dining room table. Maslow's sociability and curiosity got the better of him.....it'll be the death of him, I fear. Maslow decided he would assist in the mail sorting and promptly "attempted" to leap onto the table. I am not sure whether he was still tired (I had of course woken him from a deep slumber), or, if he slipped on takeoff on the laminate flooring (which is very tasteful, genuine, look-a-like oak, Cheshire-quality laminate I hasten to add), or, if he had "probably had a seizure", which was my mom's rather non-optimistic suggestion (based upon the fact that our 21 year old family pet, Tom Jones the cat - I know, I know - suffered a stroke at the end of his 9 lives).

Whatever. I caught the moment Maslow leapt for the table in the corner of my eye. Time slowed down and Maslow appeared to move Matrix-like, in slow motion. There was a sudden realisation that he had not made it. Maslow's eyes sought mine with a look of incredulity, tinged with embarrassment, mixed with fear and confusion. To give him his due, he did his very best to rectify the situation as evidenced by the deep gouges and one claw that he left behind in the table top. My initial thought was that my wife had trained him to do this - she has been making noises about new dining room furniture for some time now.......But then he fell backwards.

Unlike the mythical felines of old, poor Maslow did not twist miraculously in the air and land on his feet. No, more like a piece of dropped toast, he fell buttered side down. He fell right on his arse. It obviously hurt him as he proceeded to speed around the house like a whirling dervish, beginning with an instance of comedy running on the spot as he sought and failed to gain purchase on said laminate before hurtling upstairs. I was worried about him so sought to catch up with him to check he was OK. But poor Maslow was merely seeking to run away from the pain - the actual pain in his arse, and, that other pain in the arse which was me trying to chase him. He hid in C's study under the chair; he hid under our bed; he hid under the bed in the spare room. Eventually he ran outside, where he got into a fight with the Beast of Bradwall, the horrible moggy called Henry that belongs to one of neighbours. He came back inside and he hid behind the sofa.

Maslow did not come out from behind the sofa until I had gone to bed and C was able to coax him out with food. C checked him over and came to bed quite distraught. Maslow's beautiful fluffy tail with which he signals pleasure and displeasure was doing a very good impression of a feather boa and a very poor impression of a tail. It was hanging limp and lifeless behind him. We feared it was broken and a fairly sleepless night ensued as we envisioned amputation or worse. Maslow did not greet me at the lounge door as usual when we got up. He stayed behind the sofa. I called the Vet and was there within minutes of opening.

Maslow came home on Friday afternoon after he had recovered from (yet another) general anaesthetic. X-rays revealed (thankfully) no breakage or dislocation of his tail or nether regions. A thorough investigation found no evidence of puncture wounds or infection. "Thorough investigation" unfortunately involved him being shaved around the base of his tail. Maslow looked not unlike a baboon. The verdict was that Maslow was suffering from a very badly bruised and swollen bum. He was also suffering from cabin fever (he had to be locked in all weekend until he recovered from the anaesthetic), sleeping sickness (a consequence of the course of pain killers), and, a real lack of cool - the shaved-arse baboon look is not the best............Unfortunately, Maslow has been left with a kink in his otherwise perfect, fluffy tail.

My Family and Other Animals Part 2

Maslow's Arrival

Now my wife, "C", and I have our own special addition to the family. We have three Godchildren – my two nephews and the daughter of one of my best mates from university. More importantly though (though I am sure that they would disagree), there is our own child substitute – the furball baby, Maslow our cat. I can remember the day he arrived almost as vividly as I expect any father does the birth of his child………….

The weekend of Maslow’s arrival was supposed to be an easy, hassle-free one - a quick dive into the Trafford Centre in Manchester to collect C's new glasses (they are Gucci don't you know, darling). While I don't know how much they cost, I do know they are probably one of the first things I will save in the event of a house fire. And, you would have thought that something so expensive and made by Gucci deserved a better name than "glasses". The shopping trip was to be followed by a Sunday of stripping yet more woodchip from our ancient walls at home in preparation for the visit from a plasterer on Wednesday (fingers crossed, and a fair wind that is – they are so bloody unreliable). I hate all forms of decorating and DIY.

Hassle-free? It didn’t quite work out that way. Why? Well the weekend began pretty much according to plan with a lie-in followed by the drive to the Trafford Centre, the recovery of the Guccis and a couple of hours following my beloved around very similar shops selling very similar things. C would circle around in some apparently random way before selecting armfuls of the said similar things and disappearing into the changing rooms for hours on end only to return empty handed as nothing had taken her fancy. And then onto the next shop for more of the same……

After a while she noticed that I had taken to not accompanying her into the similar shops and had taken refuge outside with all of the other bored husbands. She found me there sobbing ever so slightly and chewing my arm. She took pity on me and we were allowed to return home with nothing more than her Guccis and the two CDs which I had managed to acquire in about 30 seconds while her back had been turned. Men are so much more efficient at shopping than women!

Once home I had to rush to the local iron mongers (yes, we still have iron mongers....this is Cheshire!) to purchase a wallpaper steamer for the following day's task of woodchip removal and just had time enough to get showered and changed before going round for an evening of alcoholic jollity at one of the neighbours. Another of our neighbours, M, the 3 times, undisputed heavy-weight kick boxing champion of the world, (and, consequently, one of my very best buddies) was on the TV quiz show ‘Dog Eat Dog’ hosted by Ulrika Johnsson (the lucky bast*rd!). While he had been forced to go to his parents to watch it (much to the chagrin of his girlfriend, J), the rest of us neighbours gathered together to watch his five minutes of fame. And so, as M was being (unfairly) described as "all brawn and no brains" by his fellow contestants, being voted off second without the chance to take a “physical challenge”, and nailing his own coffin by getting his general knowledge question wrong and hence losing all the money, we were well into the first few of several bottles of wine. The girls were chattering on about how Ulrika's neck and breasts were looking so much better these days. The blokes were wondering when they had ever been anything other than perfect. Shopping, and judging the quality of female TV presenters breasts are clearly two thing best left to the male of the species.

Following a ridiculously large amount of a Chinese take-away banquet and far too much wine we made our weary way next-door-but-one to home at around 1 am.

At 1.10 am there was a knock at the door. It was our neighbour, clutching a tiny, pitiful, whining ball of fluff. It was a little, tiny kitten, complete with cat flu. It must have been dumped by its owner (it happens quite a lot in the countryside). It was all skin and bones, with its eyes and nose all glued up as a result of the flu. We had been nominated as foster parents - our neighbour has a dog.

So, a cat bed was hastily constructed out of a PC Monitor box, torn up newspaper - the Guardian of course - and one of C's old dressing gowns. The kitten wouldn't take milk or water but liked being held - it could sit on the palm of my hand with room to spare - and soon began to relax. But, we were not too hopeful of it getting through the night. And so, with the prospect of wallpaper stripping just a few hours away I did the decent thing and went to bed, leaving C to stay downstairs to administer to our new guest.

And there she stayed all night, without sleep, tending to the poor little mite, bathing its nose and eyes, listening to its ragged breathing, and doing deals with God in the hope that the little furball would be still with us in the morning. At 7 am she began telephoning the emergency vets and at 9.15 she came and woke me.....................

The kitten had survived the night and the kitten had acquired a name - Maslow. This is what happens when you have a Counsellor and Psychotherapist in the house - your foster child gets named after a guy who came up with the "Hierarchy of Needs". C thought it was appropriate as the little furball was clearly right at the bottom of that hierarchy, being totally dependent upon us........well that is the plastic credit card side of "us" it would seem.

And so the day began with a trip to the vet. Maslow was declared a boy, about 5 weeks old, with cat flu. He was given a couple of jabs and we were given ointment for his eyes, anorexia cat food for his belly, a couple of syringes for administering food and water, antibiotics for the flu, and another appointment with the vet for Tuesday evening. In return for this, huge mounts of dosh were now owed. And so we were packed back off home with Maslow, medical supplies and our cardboard box.

And then the search for the essentials of life began - cat litter. None of the neighbours had any so I was dispatched to Crewe to the pet supply shop. I have never been in one before. How gullible are these pet owners that they get so easily ripped off in these huge pet superstores? And so a little while later, and financially lighter, I returned home with litter tray, 20 kilos of cat litter (urine absorbing stuff – the type that clumps), matching food and water bowls, a book about how to look after your kitten (which we should, perhaps, read sometime. Much to my wife’s annoyance I am not a huge fan of instruction manuals to say the least. I hold the same view as one of our friends who recently described such things as “the last refuge of the incompetent”), and two special mats for Maslow to snuggle up on.............

Mother and child were bonding when I got back. C was sticking to her task of cleaning and cuddling and administering said medicines. I made soup for us humans and rushed around in the afternoon stripping woodchip from the bedroom walls. At least I did get the job done.

Showered and refreshed I returned downstairs to discover that not only were we the proud owners of Maslow but also of a colony of fleas! You would have thought the bloody vet would have noticed! The little horrors were getting into Maslow's icky eyes and were presumably the reason why he had worn the fur away on his front legs, trying to clean his eyes. Where on earth do you find flea stuff for kittens (it has to be less than napalm strength otherwise it can make them poorly) at 6pm on a Sunday evening in downtown Bradwall? Well the Late Shops let me down although they did furnish us with more cotton wool balls to replace our much-diminished stocks for cleaning Maslow’s eyes and nose. But, I did manage to get some anti-flea stuff that was not too harsh for such a young kitten from one of the neighbours.

Maslow perked up a lot in the evening. His cat bed had been furnished with a hot water bottle and one of C's t-shirts. We had managed to syringe a whole can of anorexia cat food into his now swollen belly. His fur had been combed and the worst bits of hedge that were stuck in it had been cut out. His fleas had diminished. His breathing had improved a little as we had bathed eyes and nose and he was now accompanied by the scent of Karvol wherever he went. He had made himself at home. Home seemed to be on the settee - he would not stay on the floor - or, his favourite, he would sit on C 's or my shoulder, purring and rubbing his head against your cheek....presumably to get rid of some of the fleas.

It did and still does feel like being a parent. In those early days, the house was a mess as various kitten accoutrements filled the space (a myriad toy mice and “jingle balls” still pervade today). Someone had to be with the little thing all day long. And he ate better than we did - he would not leave us to eat our dinner in peace. But we were strong in the evening and locked him downstairs on his own with his hot water bottle and as yet untested litter tray as we went to bed. He cried a bit. I stood the other side of the door for a while until his cries gave way to a slight sob and I went to seek some sleep.

And so Maslow arrived. He is now a permanent fixture. A fully signed up member of the family. An amusing, furry, lovable, loving, entertaining and much-spoilt fixture at that.

My Family and Other Animals Part 1

My Family And Other Animals

We have had only a few family pets in my lifetime. So far. Apparently, when I was a babe in arms there was a dog. I don’t remember the dog. I don’t even remember the dog’s name. In fact, my parents couldn't remember the dog's name when I asked them about it recently. It was a "lovely Alsatian cross" though. The dog died. I do remember being told that he had died, and, how. It may have been suicide, but that theory probably does not hold water. For a start, there was no note. Most suicides leave a note, I'm told. And, to all intents and purposes, the dog had been happy until he ran out of the shop door at the off-licence above which we used to live and of which my mom was manager (actually, she was the manageress – this was the days when gender differences existed; days before political correctness). Indeed, by all accounts the dog had been happy right up to the point that he ran under the wheels of the speeding car. After that he was mostly flat. And dead. Flat and dead.

Sometime after this mom and dad bought my sister and I new pets - two gerbils that we called Tom and Jerry. Don’t ask me why Tom and Jerry. Clearly this was something to do with the Hanna-Barbera cartoon, but, neither of Tom nor Jerry was a cat. Indeed, neither of Tom nor Jerry was a mouse. Moreover, both Tom and Jerry were lady-gerbils, I think. Whatever, they were brought home (to the off-licence) in a nice cage, complete with big wheel and water bottle. I was very young, maybe 3. We were very excited and mom and dad decided we would have a welcome party. And so, much jelly and pink blamanche (my auntie Joan’s speciality – in the shape of a rabbit sat on a bed of green grass jelly with currants for eyes) was moulded, many a sachet of Angel Delight was mixed, much meat paste was spread on white bread sandwiches, many a cheddar cube and chunk of tinned pineapple was impaled on a tooth pick, and, many a bowl was filled with crisps and KP nuts. This was the early 1970s after all. All of our friends and cousins were invited and orange squash and Corona "pop" was swilled and spilt with abundance. Fortunately, 1970s carpets, like cinema carpets of the modern era, were designed to hide the stains.

Whatever happened to "pop" by the way? In those days "pop" was a drink for kids, not music for morons. There used to be a "pop" man that would come around the streets, selling "pop" from a van, in much the same way that an ice cream van does sell ice cream. These were the days of Dandelion & Burdock, Cream Soda, and, Shandy rather than 7 Up, Pepsi, Coke and Doctor Pepper.

Of course, once the squash had kicked in - these being the days before e-numbers had been discovered or their after-effects understood (these were the days of Angel Delight rather than Sunny Delight, Nesquick and hundreds and thousands - sugar, sugar, sugar) - a hoard of over-excited, Spam-filled toddlers wanted more. Pushing sticky little salt ‘n vinegar fingers through a cage door and prodding small rodents with your Nesquick-coated drinking straw or a twiglet just wasn’t enough. Besides, the crisps had run out. The cage was full of crisps. Gerbils don't like salt n' vinegar. It was decided that it would be nice to let Tom and Jerry “run around”.

Now, my mom and dad were not stupid. They were well aware that 2 small rats and several over-excited, over-tired hobbits, is a less than safe environment (mostly for the rats). And so, we children were instructed to sit around the edge of the room with our backs to the wall. We were lectured on the need to keep still and to keep quiet. Ssshhhh! And then dad brought in the cage and opened the little wire door. Tom and Jerry nervously edged their way into the strange world outside of the cage as every toddler gave a collective “ooh” and shuffled excitedly in their terry nappies and training pants. No disposables in this decade. We were all going through that stage when our bums definitely looked big in absolutely everything.

Tom and Jerry quickly grew in confidence and began to explore. It was at this point that my dad decided to practice what he had preached and to join the many munchkins on the floor, his back to the wall. It was at this point that, in the middle of the forced collective silence, there was a small crack. Dad had sat on Tom. Dad had crushed Tom. Tom was dead. And, flat. Another mostly flat and dead pet. This was becoming a bit of a theme.

To be fair, it could have been Jerry that died that day. We never really knew. They all look the same, gerbils. It was just that after the event, once many a small child had had his or her tears dried (what is it with moms and damp handkerchiefs?), and packed off back home with a sherbet dip and a piece of home-baked cake (much more effective than any modern form of post-traumatic stress counselling), we all decided that Jerry was a much more appropriate name for the remaining gerbil. Tom was buried in the back yard. Presumably, in something like an A4 envelope, maybe a jiffy bag. He was, after all, very flat. And very dead. Flat and dead.

Jerry was always a bit nervous from this point on. Especially around my dad. And jiffy bags. Clearly, something needed to be done to cheer Jerry up. So, we got him a friend. We got him a cat, who we called Tom. To be fair, Tom found us. He had been abandoned in a sack with his fellow feline siblings at the band stand of the park opposite our off-licence in Selly Oak, Birmingham. The circus was in town and the circus master who had found the sack, brought them round and asked us if we wanted one. Tom (although un-named at this point) was the runt and cutest of the bunch. He was black with white socks and white cheeks. Cute. Cute. Cute. We had clearly got better at naming pets. Actually, we probably just lacked imagination and post-rationalised our choice on the basis that a) he was a tom cat, b) he was noisy and reminded us of Tom Jones (our family name) singing, c) having already got a mouse/gerbil called Jerry then that old Tom and Jerry thing kind of made sense this time around.

Tom and Jerry were inseparable. That is to say that Tom would sit on top of Jerry’s cage most of the time. He was constantly trying to kiss and stroke Jerry through the cage. Hmm. To be honest, I do not think this helped Jerry recover from the shock of losing the first Tom. At some level, I think the fact that we had given the kitten the same name merely sought to remind Jerry of her previous playmate. Mostly, Jerry just looked anxious. It was not long until Jerry also died. She was discovered stiff as a board at the bottom of the cage. Mom and dad tried to tell us that she had died of a broken heart, mourning Tom the gerbil. Even at the tender age of 3 or 4 though, I kind of knew the cat did it. Jerry died in a state of absolute terror. Sorry Jerry.

Tom, the cat, was with us some 18 years. He was my cat. Or at least, I thought so. He was a very forgiving cat. He forgave me when I tried to dress him up in my sister's doll's clothes. He forgave me when I picked him up. He forgave me when I dropped him. He forgave me, mostly, when I pulled his tail. He forgave me when I slipped crème de menthe into his milk. He didn’t forgive us, though, when mom agreed to take in a friend’s cairn terrier. Indeed, when Tom was first introduced to the dog, Tom leapt 6 feet into the air and clawed his way up onto mom’s shoulder, leaving deep scars, and, pis*ed himself. Mom was quite damp. Tom then spent the next few days sulking and hiding in the front room. Fortunately, the dog didn’t last long as it brought on my mom’s asthma attacks. Tom made us feel very guilty for a long time. At least the cairn terrier survived with life intact and un-flat!

Tom died from a stroke while I was away at university. This was a real shame. When I used to phone home from Oxford on a Sunday evening, Tom used to recognise my voice and jump onto mom’s lap and purr down the earpiece at me. When he had the stroke he only settled when he was wrapped in my old school blazer. It was while wrapped therein that they killed him (put him to sleep). And, wrapped in my blazer, he was buried. That blazer would have come in bloody useful at many a fancy dress/theme party since. But, Tom was a good cat. I don’t begrudge him the blazer……much.

It Rains Up North

It rains up North. It rains in Manchester. It rains a lot. It rains all of the time. Even in the summer. Both weeks.....

I remember one typical September day in the North West of England....it was raining. Despite the fact that I was working in an office with no windows to the outside world (Dilbert would feel very at home in my cubicle), I could tell it was raining by the constant drumming, machine-gunning, against the corrugated, opaque plastic of the skylights that the Company had kindly installed in the ceiling in a vain attempt at preventing the onset of cabin fever, claustrophobia, and, a bunker mentality. They seem to like their silos where I work. It rained all day. Not your soft, drizzly, damp southern-Jessie rain but your true north western, flat capped, clog-footed, wet, monsoon kind of rain.This was bloody hard rain. It is not a coincidence that the Lake District is where it is.

And so, come 5.30pm, when it was time to leave the bunker, I was feeling pretty chuffed with myself that I was parked in the multi-storey which was attached to the office and, therefore, did not need to venture outside to retrieve my car. About half of the office have to use the rented space in the multi-storey car park across the street, in the Civic Centre, in downtown Shameless (see earlier posting: "Not a Nice Place to Live"). Not only does this mean them risking life and limb from muggers, from the stray bullets of drive-by shootings between rival drug dealers, from the cross-fire from armed hold-ups of Securicor vans or the local bingo haunts, or, risk rabies from many of the stray dogs that patrol the streets, or disease ridden pigeons, or just bodily contact with some of the locals, but, it also means that when it rains you get wet. But not me. Not today.

It was dark outside. Real dark. Kind of “end-of-the-world”, “Jesus on the cross” biblical, epic kind of dark. But I did not care, me and the silver dream machine set off for home with the xenon headlights bright, the aircon set to 20 degrees C, Norah Jones on the CD player and in my head, and, the windscreen wipers on maximum. The silver dream machine was my company car - my Audi TT 156 bhp; manhood on wheels. This was my present to self upon being promoted to an "executive" managerial level which qualified for such a perk. Some would say that, apart from my George Clooney-esque salt 'n pepper hair and beard, the TT was the first visible, outward evidence of the onset of middle age. And, the TT was also my present to the Tax Man - you get taxed through the nose!

The environs of Shameless were strangely, eerily quiet. Just the odd denim miniskirt huddling in a bus stop, legs long, scrawny, pale and blue-veined. The occasional shell suit and baseball cap were sheltering under a soggy horse chestnut to keep his cigarettes dry and lit, his pit-bull straining at a studded leash, as he watched the girl at the bus stop. The weather was so bad it was even keeping the drug dealers, muggers and vandals off the streets. And so, Norah and I quietly joined the car train that wound its weary way through Styal, past the women's prison, and into the suburban Cheshire sprawl which is Wilmslow.

The puddles were joining up. The roads were quite waterlogged in places, no doubt due to the fact that we were clearly experiencing the wrong kind of water for our gutters and road drainage. But, what the hell, I amused myself a little by "accidentally" driving a little too fast through some of the puddles and splashing the occasional Yuppie on his way to or from one of the many wine bars: 5 points for Armani, 8 points for a Manchester United player (they all live here or hereabouts).......you know the kind of thing.

I stopped off at Sainsburys (this was before the arrival of Waitrose!) for essential provisions - two bottles of Argentinean Merlot - and was very glad to find that Sainsburys had staff armed with golf umbrellas to shelter weary and wary shoppers between their cars and the store. They were like a couple of punka wallahs attending to dignitaries of the Raj in the middle of a monsoon. So Cheshire!

And so, Norah and I set off from Wilmslow down the country roads on the way home. These roads are windy and uneven and there was a lot of water in a lot of places. There was lots of spray and lots of cars. Clearly most of these cars were driven by city folk that had never been to the countryside before, or they had just left a very expensive carwash, because they were driving very slowly, very carefully, and manoeuvring to avoid the biggest of the puddles. Myself, I ploughed a direct furrow. Straight on through. Had these people not heard of Quattro power distribution, four wheel drive, ABS 5.3 and electronic brake distribution?!?

It was about this time that my mobile phone rang. Of course, I was handsfree! It was my wife, sounding slightly alarmed, "DJ (a little nickname) where are you? The house is about to flood! Get home quick!" And so I did.

The closer I got to home, the heavier the rain came down , the darker the skies became, and the deeper the surface water on the roads had settled. Once home I turned into the communal car park. It was flooded. The one central drain - a mere soak-away into a neighbouring farm's field - had given up its Canute-like battle and the car park was under a good inch or so of water and rising right up to the garage doors. The neighbours had all beaten me home and had parked raggedly around the edges in an attempt to avoid the water, leaving me no choice but to park in it. And so, I clutched my computer bag, my Sainsburys carrier bag and ventured out. I paddled through the car park. It was just at this point that I discovered I had a hole in the sole of my left shoe and that the trouser bottoms on a Rochas of Paris suit act as an excellent sponge. Bugger!

I waded through the car park to find a small river where once the front drive used to be. Apparently the small drain in front of the house that also led to a soak-away in the farmer's field had also given up the ghost and the water was lapping at the small step by the front door. Which is where I found my wife, in a state of panic, declaring that she had phoned the emergency flood numbers and the local council but that they had been inundated (ha!) with calls in the last half hour and could not guarantee that they could get sandbags to us this evening and we had a good two hours of solid rain ahead and that the water had risen at least two inches in just the last half hour and what was I going to do about it.....before pausing for breath!! Welcome home.

And so I changed out of the Company uniform and into gortex and jeans. I waded back through the car park to the garage to retrieve our wellies (his and hers Hunters don't you know) and to put anything vulnerable to water above the likely plimsoll line and began to improvise.......And so, 4 bumper bags of Focus Do-It-All's best bark chippings became our sandbag defence outside the front step. The hallway was stripped bare as we rescued all furniture to higher ground. Towels, dust sheets, and, would you believe it, a futon mattress (only in Cheshire....) formed a rudimentary flood defence barrier behind the front door and at the foot of the stairs.

And so, behind our barricade we stood and watched the rain. We watched the water, rising, slowly, ever closer towards our defence of bark chippings and a pair of old curtains. We worried, and our thoughts turned to the neighbours. We phoned around to find them all safe behind their higher-than-ours front steps. Our predicament caused some amusement and so "J" (a former ex of Chris Evans), her hubby "D" (the Olympic athlete), and so-cute baby "N" came round to gloat. They were protected from the elements by head-to-foot Dry as A Bone, Burberry and a fluffy pink outfit complete with rabbit ears (that would be "N") and helped us to down the best part of the two bottles of Argentinean red I had had the foresight to purchase on the way home.

As promised, it did rain solidly for the next couple of hours. It rained long after the neighbours had retired to their own, safe, dry abode to put the baby to bed. It rained while we partook of a very nice pasta dish that my wife had rustled up. It rained all through East Enders and the new BBC drama about a serial killer. And all through this time the water rose and began to lap at the Focus bags..............and then the rain stopped.

And then, as quickly as it had come, the water level began to descend. And soon we could see the stone flags beneath the step. And soon we could see the drive where once a river had been. And soon we could see the edge of the lawn. OK, the car park still resembled a small boating pond but we were safe. We had, unlike Canute, resisted the tide. The water had gone.

And just then, the council man with the sandbags turned up............slightly miffed that he had been driving around in darkest hill-billy Cheshire in search of our house only to find a rather sheepish couple of city dwellers, the worse for a couple of bottles of red, watching TV and snug with their central heating. And so to bed.

Shameless Part 2

Refugees and Undesirables

I remember one strange weekend. We cleared out the garage on Saturday, which involved going backwards and forwards to the local dump several times. What we did not throw away was set a-side for a car boot sale (typically English phenomenon methinks). So we were up at the crack of dawn (6am) on Sunday to make our way to the car boot sale with all kinds of stuff that was just taking up space in the garage - old books, old PC games, old ornaments, old mirrors, 3 old lawn mowers (yes 3), etc, etc. You get the drift.

The sale was in a massive field in a place called Alderley Edge, which is very, very affluent. It was very popular and there were long queues on the very rich, expensive, extremely suburban street leading to the farm where the sale was being held. The local inhabitants must really have loved having those who clear their own garages (as opposed to paying someone to do it for them), and, the great unwashed, needy and desperate "parked" outside their mansions while queuing to get on the field so early on Sunday. Many a curtain was twitching, and, all security gates remained firmly shut.

We got there about 7.15 am and it was like being dropped into a refugee camp in some Asian former Soviet Republic. It looked a little like the illegal arms sale that James Bond ruffed up in Die Another Day. There were THOUSANDS of cars on this muddy field and all kinds of wares on display. As well as people having a good clear out like ourselves, there were others selling knocked-off goods or counterfeits, semi-legal and illegal traders of all kinds. But, the buyers were mostly dirt poor. They mostly consisted of the inhabitants of Shameless (see earlier posting "Not Nice Place To Live") who had bussed in (or stolen cars) looking for cheap stuff of quality. These were the unfortunate ones mixing with the dregs of society - skeletal blokes clearly stoned and hung over and the ugliest, most frightening women in the world. They had bad skin, bad hair, bad makeup and bad attitudes and had squeezed rolls of fat into all different kinds of bad clothes. They stood there with cigarettes dangling from puffy lips and bad language spilling from their mouths as they pushed their ugly, obese and badly behaved kids around in buggies. Apart from these, there were two distinct groups of asylum seekers - those from Eastern Europe (Kosovo and the like) with shaven heads (and that was the women) and earrings (the men) wearing shell-suits and other ripped off designer labels looking for cheap counterfeits. And, there were the dirt-poor Asian asylum seekers in their full regalia looking as if they had just escaped a Taleban death squad. The difference was that these people seemed to be desperate for things that they could use to work with (old tools, etc), or to better their life (an English dictionary, a toy for a child). They were polite, despite having little English, respectful, and grateful for anything you could give them. But they were SO poor - they often could not even afford to buy things for 50p that were probably worth £20 to £30. You just felt like giving the stuff away to them. And so we did.

We left at 13.15, with just a few items left, feeling very grateful for our own very different lives. The things we brought back with us probably showed the difference in our existences - who needs PC games if you don't own a PC; who needs a wine rack if you don't drink or only drink cheap cider, sherry or vodka......

Shameless Part 1

Not A Nice Place To Live

To protect my anonymity and the feelings of those poor souls who live and work in the place, I have changed the name of a particular vicinity of South Manchester (near to the Airport), replacing it with the fictitious name of "Shameless". Shamelessly, I have used the title of that great Channel 4 comedy/drama because, well, I think it is fitting...........

It was quite a shock to the system moving from working in the Strand in London to Shameless in South Manchester.

My apologies to all residents of the somewhat maligned corner of South Manchester, which is Shameless. It is nothing personal. I have nothing personal against underage single-moms, asylum seekers, immigrants (illegal or otherwise), drug addicts (recovering or otherwise), the mentally ill, the infirm, or the great unwashed. In many ways I fear Shameless is a vision of the future…….some kind of post-holocaust Bladerunner-like future. My point is only that, Covent Garden it is not.

That said, I do have something against drug dealers, thieves, muggers, and anti-social neighbours. And, Shameless has more than its fair share of those.

Shameless was a bit of a culture shock after the West End of London. Gone were the Savoy and Strand theatres. Shameless “entertainment”, other than that induced by narcotics and alcohol, comes in the form of Line Dancing classes held at the local Conservative Club (working class conservatism is apparently alive, well and the preserve of the over 60s and unemployed, social scroungers), local bingo halls, and, one-armed bandit arcades. Gone were the Savoy Hotel, Smolensky’s Balloon and the Coal Hole. In Shameless, you can breakfast at the drive through MacDonalds or local “greasy spoon”, while the very brave and foolish could always risk a drink in the local public house, renowned for having the hardest girl gang in the country (as shown on TV).

Shameless is a mess. Shameless is the worst example of social engineering. The best example of town planning gone wrong. Shameless was purpose-built in the 1960s as Europe’s largest council estate. Companies like the Co-op, Ferranti, Barclays and Shell were offered incentives to build offices in the area to provide work for the inhabitants. These companies did build their offices but failed, it would seem, in providing work for the locals. Instead, they provided employment and careers for people from the more affluent surrounding areas such as Wilmslow, Hale, Alderley Edge, Didsbury and Cheadle. Over the decades, Shameless became the white ghetto of South Manchester. The great unwashed and unemployed were dumped there with little prospect, less respect, few amenities and no hope. Over the decades, certain inhabitants of Shameless became jealous of the material wealth of their neighbours and crime in those areas rocketed.

Indeed, we were visited by the Shameless criminal fraternity when we lived in Alderley Edge. You have to know that Alderley Edge is affluent. It is a nice place to live. It is very Cheshire. It is the home of many a Manchester United and Liverpool footballer and their Wags. Posh and Becks lived here before he signed for Real Madrid. It’s many charity shops are renowned for their array of designer cast-offs. It is known “affectionately” as Bolliwood (Bollinger) because it has the highest per capita sales of champagne in the country. Alderley Edge is just 15 minutes drive and a million light years from Shameless.

At a time when my sister-in-law was living with my wife and I in Alderley Edge and I had been working away Monday to Thursday in that wonderful concrete cow of a place, Milton Keynes, I came back one Thursday night and sent the girls to bed as I “relaxed” with a large scotch and Thursday night football on the telly. Of course, I fell asleep on the sofa, only to be woken in the early hours by the sound of broken glass. I looked out of the window and saw a car parked outside the Pine Shop that was opposite. I also saw two blokes, one of whom was, rather bizarrely, sporting a jester’s three-cornered hat, complete with bells. I assumed that it was their car and that it had been broken into. I was rather tipsy. I decided to help. So, I went outside and began to cross the road towards them, in my socks.

I was greeted with a tirade of abuse, which was most unexpected, “Just f*ck off back inside!”. In my drunken haze I became quite affronted and continued to walk towards the two guys, “What’s your problem!”. The next thing I knew, my wife was at the front door in all her naked glory shouting, “Come back, I’ve called the police”. The guys got in their car and drove off, leaving me standing in the middle of the road attempting and failing to make sense of what was going on. At this point one of the neighbours came out in her nightie and rushed up to me, “You’re so brave! My husband has locked himself in the bathroom, he was so scared…..” Not so brave as stupid.

The police did arrive. Apparently these two Shameless boys were known to them. They were high on coke and had stolen the car and come to Alderley Edge looking for easy pickings. Easy pickings this night meant breaking into the Pine Shop in search of cash. Apparently my “intervention” must have scared them off. What a hero.

Anyhow, venturing into the Civic Centre at lunchtime is akin to visiting another planet. Shameless Civic Centre is a mess of cheap shops, pawn and porn brokers, and bookmakers. The local supermarket sells out-of-date cans of cheap lager even more cheaply. This is very popular with the winos that sit on the benches all day long, among the squalid pigeons and other local vermin, drinking from their rusting cans, hurling foul-mouthed abuse at passers-by and laughing hysterically at some unshared amusement or the voices in their heads.

Shameless is the only place that I know which has two "pound shops": Pound Stretcher, and, Pound City, where everything is a pound. Except when there is a sale on, of course. They stand in perfect competition directly opposite each other in the Civic Centre. Pound Stretcher has been there for a while. Pound City is a relative newcomer, possibly encouraged by the Government’s recent injection of £2.5 million to regenerate the area. £2.5 million doesn’t get you a lot these days, but it does buy you a pound shop and a few blue street signs that point you in the direction of the police station and the NHS drop-in centre…….The competitive triangle at the heart of the Civic Centre is completed by “Cash Generator”, where you can sell as well as buy. Yes, Shameless' second Pawn Brokers. Shameless is the only place I know where the shops still advertise “the tick”, HP (hire purchase), something for nothing. Shameless is not so much Neverland as the Never, Never Land…..

The Pound Shops and the Pawn Brokers are amongst the most popular shops in the area, together with the “butchers” claiming proudly to sell “Manchester’s cheapest meat”. I wouldn’t eat anything that came off that shop’s shelves. It is not meat of any kind I have seen before. Meat does not come in those colours! Animals don’t come in those shapes. There is another, better butcher further round the precinct. You can tell that this one is better because they have better security. There is a steel shutter across the entrance to this shop which is permanently pulled halfway down so as to stop thieves running in, snatching a joint (of meat) and running out. You actually see old aged pensioners (or should I more politically correctly say, senior citizens) getting down on their hands and knees to enter and leave the shop. How degrading! Every Tuesday there is a second-hand “flea” market, including the second hand underwear and swimwear stall called “Sniff and Go”. I do not joke.

Otherwise, the market is a haven for rash-inducing cosmetics, pirate DVDs and CDs (which don’t work in card stereos as I have learnt to my cost), knocked off or imitation “designer” labels (which here mean Nike, Burberry – how the mighty are fallen - or Adidas rather than Gucci or Louis Vuitton), replica football shirts, and, cheap pet food stalls. At least the local rottweilers, bulldogs and pit bulls are well cared for here. Either that, or the pensioners are eating it for themselves.

And then there are the people. You will never see any people poorer than Shameless-people on the streets of the UK. You will never see so many missing eyes, missing teeth, missing limbs, walking sticks, prosthetics, invalid carts, and Zimmer frames as on the streets of Shameless. In fact, if you care to look closely you will find that most of the local pigeon population is also disabled in some way, with broken wings, missing claws or legs and a lack of ambition prevalent even amongst this local population. Every young man seems to sport an underage girlfriend on his arm, love bites on his neck, a tattoo, a shaved head, an earring, a bulldog or similar mean-mannered critter on a lead, an attitude, and, a chip on his shoulder the size of a railway sleeper. They are often bare-chested, irrespective of the weather, and, invariably, looking for a fight. Most are stoned or drunk or both. They have come to the Civic Centre to get their dole, sign on, score drugs, or sell drugs. You give these blokes a wide berth. And the there are the girls - 14-year-old girls with too much make-up, little taste, pierced bellybuttons and thongs on display irrespective of time or season. They drag multiple small multi-coloured children behind them and push smaller multi-coloured children in buggies in front of them. It would seem that every Shameless-girl of a certain age is a mother, several times over, by the time they leave school. And, they leave school early here, if they attend at all. The lunchtime bustle of the Civic is often drowned out by the maternal cry of “Kylie, f**king leave Jason alone and get the f*ck back here you little ba*tard. Not much hope for the next generation of Shameless inmates……….
I think that you get a flavour of Shameless from one particular episode that sticks in my memory. It was Easter weekend. My wife and I were going to Habitat, which meant driving through the heart of Shameless. The council had attempted to brighten the place up by planting lots of daffodils. Shameless was teaming. Shameless was teaming with hoards of women and children armed with carving knives and decorating scissors stealing armfuls and armfuls of these daffodils. I can only assume that vases were the favourite items shop-lifted from Habitat that day…..

Planes, Trains and Automobiles Part 3

One-Armed Bandits

What is it with Rotterdam in the Netherlands and one-armed taxi drivers?

During one job with the Company I had to spend typically 3 days a week in Rotterdam. Which is a bit like spending a 3rd of your life in Stoke. Not that I have anything against Stoke in particular – it has a half decent multi-plex cinema with a popcorn design on the carpet (although I suspect that that is not deliberate but a consequence of poor cleaning and the bad manners of the local inhabitants of the Potteries) – but I wouldn’t choose to spend 3 days of my life there every week either!

And so I became a Diamond Cardholder in the local Rotterdam Hilton hotel loyalty programme. Which reminds me…….I noticed, when checking in last night, that female hotel receptionists bring out much the same reaction in me as air stewardesses. Which made me also think of a similar reaction when I was 16 or 17 and totally infatuated with the Avon lady who used to sell cosmetics to my mom at the door and flirt with me furiously. She looked great all smartly dressed and made up, and could turn this hormonal teenager into a blushing frenzy of sexual fantasy. (My dad liked her too). It is that whole uniform, make-up and sparkly smile thing. I must be spending too much time away from the missus and in the company of my own right arm! And speaking of right arms……

The Hilton is just a 10 to 15 minute walk away from the office. I always walk to the hotel when I leave the office but, because I am inherently lazy and free with the Company’s money, I always jump in a taxi outside of the hotel in the morning to go to the office. I justify this to myself that a) it gets me to work some 3 to 5 minutes earlier, b) I have luggage with me, c) I don’t want to get wet/catch cold/get sweaty while walking, and, d) I’m worth it. Actually given my lack of exercise (other than walking the length of Schiphol airport twice a week) it is probably a health and safety thing – the walk could kill me.

Invariably I get the same taxi driver. A 50 something, one-armed, ancient rocker. He looks like an escapee from a Status Quo tribute band (or Golden Earring for the Dutchies). He is not unlike Peter Stringfellow. He has long, grey flowing locks combed back so as to look wind-swept, and, to hide the bald spot on the back of his head. He listens to a Dutch radio channel that is trapped in a time warp somewhere around the beginning of the 1980s – all rock ballads and Scandinavian groups singing in bad English. And, more importantly, he has no right arm.

It actually took me quite a time to notice that he had no right arm. Well, I am not at my best first thing in the morning, especially after a typically sleepless night in a hotel. The things I have heard through hotel walls! And, oh for a hotel with a decent air conditioning system – one which actually controls the temperature without spitting, gurgling, banging, humming, and rattling all night long. Thinking about it, maybe I can just hear next door’s air conditioning through the hotel walls! No I didn’t notice his lack of limb at first because he has a poor man’s prosthetic. I say poor man’s because this is clearly nothing prescribed by the Dutch health system, which I am led to believe is quite generous with such things. This is more the kind of thing that you would expect to see on a bonfire night’s Guy. It looks as if he has stuffed his shirtsleeve with straw and attached a rubber dolls hand at the end. At first I thought he was just a bad driver – he tends to take the corners quite wide – and too surly to be bothered to help with my luggage, but then I noticed (well I work in security and am quite observant with such things) that he only ever had his left hand on the steering wheel, and, there was always a look of slight panic if his mobile phone rang while he was not on a straight bit of road.

Never mind, he has not killed me yet. Or anyone else to my knowledge.

Actually I am generally quite pleased to see him in the morning as he is one of the few drivers that accepts my request for a lift to 22 Blaak with good grace. You see, these guys often have to wait outside of the hotel for quite some time (the central railway station being within easy walking distance, even with luggage) and are rather hopeful of bigger fares, such as to the airport or to the Hague, Amsterdam, etc. My quick trip round the block is hardly worth their while. However, Mr One-Armed Rocker knows that I tip generously with the Company’s money and will get my own bags out of the boot……

Imagine my surprise, however, when I left the hotel one morning and found Mr One-Armed Rocker stood waiting with two other taxi drivers and they had just 3 arms between them? I am glad to say, however, that they did have one upper limb each (but not necessarily the same one). I think that being driven around by a guy steering with his teeth, or, Heaven forbid, his bare feet, would be too much for me in the morning.

Rotterdam must have a club for them – One-Armed Drivers R Us. Or the local council must offer special incentives to attract people with specific disabilities. Well, at least it explains why Rotterdam has traffic lights on every junction (which is bloody frustrating!) – it is to slow these guys down sufficiently so that they can never get up to killing speed when taking the next bend a little too widely!

Planes, Trains and Automobiles Part 2

Belgium is the Ireland of the Netherlands and France. That is to say that people in those countries make Belgian jokes in the same way as un-pc Brits (and I mean the “British” in the correct sense; i.e. non-Irish members of the United Kingdom) do about the Irish.

Well, I do not know if there is too much that can be read into this fact but my experience of travelling to and from Belgian has been “interesting”. Let me quote the examples of two different flights between the Netherlands and Brussels. Bear in mind that this is only a half-an-hour flight.

The first example was on a full flight from Brussels to the Netherlands. Everything had gone to plan. The plane was on time. The passengers had boarded. The multi-lingual safety announcement had been given in French, in Dutch and in English (must really pi*s you off if you are a native Spanish or Mandarin speaker!). And so, we began to taxi to the runway as normal.

Just as we began to pick up speed the guy sat in the aisle two rows in front of me must have suddenly realised that he had left his book or other reading material in his bag in the overhead locker above him. It must have been a compelling read for this gentleman decided to unbuckle his seat belt and stand up to retrieve his book.

As he stood the stewardess (or is that “cabin person”? I get very confused in these PC days. I know that that are no longer “Trolley Dollies” or “Air Hostesses” but exactly what we are supposed/allowed to call them I do not know) at the front of the plane picked up the microphone and stated politely “Sir. Please take your seat as we are about to take off.”

The man acknowledged he had heard by raising his hand but continued to rummage in his luggage. “Sir. Please sit down as we are about to take off.” The plane accelerated. The man rummaged. “Sit down now!” The plane accelerated. The plane lifted off. The plane tilted at a 45-degree angle. The man gently and, as if in slow motion, fell backwards and, as if in a cartoon, rolled the full length of the aisle until he hit the back of the plane. There was a dull thud. He stayed at the back of the plane until it levelled off and the cabin crew (“stewards” and “stewardesses”?) were able to come to his aid.

Thankfully he was OK and with nothing more than his ego bruised and paperback ruffled he retook his seat and began to read his book. There was, however, an almost audible and synchronised collective thought amongst all of the Dutch passengers: “Belgians!”

My second Belgian flight story was a little more colourful. Again I was travelling from Brussels to Amsterdam. (NB. I have since discovered the simple pleasure of the international train between these two great capital cities. Thankfully).

As ever, I was one of the first to board the plane. These days luggage space on board planes is rather tight and if you leave it too late to board then you run the risk of not having a space for your PC bag and the other piece of luggage which contains your toothbrush, razor (even beardies have to shave!), duty free (not any more unfortunately – you can stick your European Union if abolition of duty free is seen to be progress!) and your dirty smalls. If you can’t squeeze it under the seat in front of you, you run the risk that some surly member of the cabin crew will snatch it from your grasp in return for the mandatory docket and banish said baggage to the hold, with the prospect of a further loss of 45 minutes of your life as you stand next to a whining, beeping, revolving luggage carousel waiting to be reunited with said bags.

Unusually I was sat in a window seat. I usually prefer to sit in an aisle. Aisle seats have a number of advantages over other seats: 1) You are able to recover your luggage (if it has not been snatched and banished) more easily and vacate the plane more rapidly upon arrival, 2) in the event of an emergency you trample fewer fellow passengers in your blind panic of a rush to the emergency exits, 3) you can stretch your legs occasionally between trolleys and so avoid the risk of deep vein thrombosis, and 4) in the event of a pretty one, you can ogle the stewardess.

I think that most travelling men will have to admit that there is still something very sexy about a girl in uniform. This sexiness is multiplied several times by the added coincidence of 1) makeup, 2) the fact that this is an old-fashioned girl that still serves her man, and 3) rumours of stockings and suspenders, the Mile High Club and good time parties back at the crew’s stopover hotel! There is not a red-blooded male that has not travelled by air and, when blessed with a pretty one (which is increasingly rare, especially on BA domestic flights. This is because the profession is being taken over by Julian Clarey wannabes) and not hoped that the stewardess would actually simulate blowing into the top up pipe of the lifejacket during the safety demonstration. There is something very stimulating about pursed rouged lips around a pipe……

Similarly, we all know that it is a bloke that chooses the uniforms for all of the airlines. Blouses rather too tight and gaping around the nipple area. Skirts rather too short and rather too tight around the bum. High heels. In any case, the aisle is the best seat from which to watch the stewardess cross and uncross her legs during take-off and landing when she is sat at the jump seat at the front!

And so, I was a little pissed off to find myself in the window seat and soon found myself looking out of the window. Well, what else is there to do? I noticed that the plane seemed to be surrounded by armed members of the Belgian police. Hmmn, unusual…..

Eventually the plane began to fill up until there remained just two empty seats – the two next to me. Then, I espied another policeman. This one was on board. This one was making his way down the aisle towards me. This policeman was towing two reluctant passenger handcuffed together behind him. He un-cuffed his prisoners, ensured they sat down in the seats next to me, and he left.

I felt a tad uncomfortable in my window seat. The two prisoners looked like they had just escaped from a Hollywood film set. The film would have been called something like “Serial Gangster and his Bitch: Escape to Belgium”.

We did not introduce ourselves or exchange pleasantries. The bloke, who had the aisle seat looked like your typical South American drug dealer. He was tall with long dark hair tied back in a ponytail. He sported a goatee and a silver tooth. A medallion. He wore a black sleeveless shirt that showed off his not-inconsiderable muscles and his prison tattoos, and, leather pants.

His slim, gum-chewing, buxom girlfriend was dressed like a hooker, similarly dark-haired, "blinged" and tattooed. Her cleavage was impressively squeezed into a boob tube that was cut off to show her pierced midriff and six-pack. She had an impossibly tiny denim skirt which revealed a lot of thigh above high-heeled, knee length shiny black boots. I was sure that she must have her own website……and that it would be a popular one!

These pair were clearly “no-do-gooders” being extradited from Belgium to the Netherlands. Both were clearly stoned. The woman in particular was out of it and proceeded to rest her head on my shoulder and fall asleep. She dribbled. A growing damp patch soon began to fill my shirt sleeve. I did not complain. I did not move. I tried not to look at her bosom or thighs for fear that her man might be watching. So, I fixed my gaze out of the window until we landed in Amsterdam.

All the other passengers left the plane before the armed Dutch police officer came on board, re-cuffed his guests and rescued me.

This was the one and only time I have been the last to get off a plane. I prefer the aisle seat. I travel by train between Brussels and the Netherlands now!

Planes, Trains and Automobiles Part 1

Corporate Travel

Business travel is not all it is cracked up to be............as my (2nd) trip to Argentina may demonstrate.

I arrived at Buenos Aires in the middle of a horrendous electrical storm. It was 8am local time and as black as night. Thunder and lightning were exploding all around us and I have never experienced turbulence like it in a big plane like that (an Air France Airbus). After 3 aborted landing attempts we were made to circle for an hour until the storm moved away from the airport, and, presumably, to waste a little fuel in case of a failed landing attempt. Which is known as crashing in non-aviator circles!. It was quite a relief to get down in the end.

The journey by taxi into the city from the airport was also quite interesting - much of the motorway and main roads on the journey were flooded and in some places quite badly.......I got my feet wet as the water was above the level of the taxi’s wheels in certain parts. At least it was warm rain…………………

Then it was work, work, work. Early starts, long days and late finishes. In fact I did not step outside of the hotel until 21.00 on the Wednesday evening - for a dinner at a nearby restaurant - and I left on Thursday.

The 13 hour trip from Buenos Aires to Paris dragged quite a bit. This was mainly due to the fact that there was an Argentinean woman sitting two rows behind me who was travelling with two kids. One, a babe in arms, would wake up every two hours and scream the place down. The other, a toddler around two years old, would run away from his mom and chase around the business class lounge, climbing all over peoples' seats. Including my seat. Which I was sat in. It was like sitting in a busy cinema while the people behind you performed Riverdance on the back of your chair. I was forced to watch Lord of the Rings dubbed in French (it is not quite the same – it makes Aragorn seem a little effeminate) on the in-flight movie channel, otherwise I would have gone completely mad and killed the little ba*tard.

So, I was feeling quite relieved, if not refreshed, when we arrived at Paris Roissy (the French deliberately like to confuse the international traveller by having 2 names for Charles de Gaulle airport) an hour ahead of schedule on the Friday morning, at 10am. My flight to Manchester was at 13.30 so I settled into the business lounge, had yet another glass of champagne to celebrate Birmingham City's triumphant rise to the Premiership, and went to the gate at 12.45 as requested to do so by the flashing green banner on the display monitors. At the gate, there was a new message: “Delayed! Delayed! Delayed!” But no other bloody information to tell you why or for how long. And no bloody staff to help either.

So, I returned to the Business Lounge of Air France where there was a growing crowd of increasingly irate Brits. Apparently, the brand-new Air Traffic control systems recently installed in the UK (by EDS of course!) had completely failed and all flights to and from the UK were cancelled until the next morning, earliest. All hotels at the airport were already full. Aaargghh! The prospect of spending the night with a bottle of champagne and SKY Business News in the business lounge was not an attractive one. The homing instant is strong in this one and so I determined to find an alternative route home.

To make things worse, they could not find my baggage either. Of course, it had been checked straight through from Argentina to Manchester. So, I was forced to abandon it at the airport. I grabbed a taxi and crawled (it was the start of a bank holiday weekend in France) across the city to the Gare Du Nord and joined the long ticket queue for the Eurostar to London. Because of redevelopment in the station, there was no lounge at the Gare Du Nord, so I was forced to lean against a wall for an hour or so before boarding the train. I must have begun to smell pretty badly by now, so at least my personal space was preserved.

The train was absolutely packed ......and late. They had been flooded with stranded would-be plane travellers desperate to get back to the UK. It took 45 minutes to get everyone on board instead of the usual 15 minutes.

This journey was also “interesting” due to the fact that I found myself sat across from an obsessive compulisve with a drinking problem. He was probably thinking the same about me. Whenever a member of staff passed by he insisted on getting another drink of champagne. He would then go through this very, very strange ritual as part of the drinking process. This involved ensuring that the glass was dead in the centre of the table; turning it anti-clockwise 12 times; drinking it two-handed in 7 swallows; cleaning the inside of the glass with his tongue; and, then turning the glass upside down and peering into it for 5 minutes, turning it around 4 times, clockwise, to make sure that it was empty. I joke not. He was either obsessive compulsive or the couple of aspirin I had taken earlier to prevent the onset of deep vein thrombosis on the flight from Argentina were beginning to mix with my champagne and fatigue with some very strange side effects.

And so I arrived in Waterloo in London.....took a tube to Euston........stood around for a while before getting a train to Crewe.....where I arrived, on time, at 22.30 and so home...............to bed. Total travelling time 27 hours 30 minutes. My baggage travelled for an additional 36 hours, finally arriving Sunday evening!

Possibly my worst trip, however, was to the Isle of Bute in Scotland. We had arranged to spend a long weekend there, at a Landmark Trust property, with friends from London. They were flying up to Glasgow on the Friday and picking up a hire car for the short journey by road and ferry to Bute. We, however, were planning to drive up on the Friday from our home in Cheshire – an 8 hour drive. And, as we had arranged the trip we were keen to be first at the property to check it out and make it warm and welcoming for our friends. This meant that we would have to be on the road by something like 8am.

I was a little miffed (to say the least), therefore, when my boss “summoned” me to a 2 hour meeting in Rotterdam on the Thursday afternoon. This was in the days when direct flights between Manchester and Rotterdam had ceased so the journey consisted of a flight to Amsterdam and a 45 minute train journey to Rotterdam, and the same in reverse. If my meeting finished on time I was to fly out of Schiphol around 7pm and be home for 8pm UK time Thursday night.

It was not to be. I remember complaining to my driver on the way to the airport – one of my privileges of rank is that I get an executive car service between home and the airport – moaning about my summons and the fact that I would have a long drive ahead of me on the Friday morning.

My flight out was, unusually, on time. My connection with the train (they run every 30 minutes) was also on time, as was the train itself. They are very efficient these Dutchies. (Mussolini would have been proud of them). And so, I arrived in the office around 11.30 local time. I then kicked my heels for a couple of hours and tried to look busy until my meeting at 2pm.

At 2pm I went into the meeting room and greeted my colleagues. “Not flying out tonight are you?” asked one of my teammates. “Yes”, I replied. “I have a day off tomorrow and am going to Scotland.” “Not flying from Schiphol I hope?” he replied. “Yes. Why?”. “Because there has been a fire at Schiphol and the airport is closed.”

At this point I left the meeting. I left the meeting that I had not wanted to attend before it had begun. I told my boss that I had to sort my travel arrangements as I had to be back home this evening otherwise all plans for the weekend would have been ruined and my wife would be, well, less than happy.

I phoned our travel department and asked them if they could transfer me to flights leaving from Rotterdam with a connection in City Airport, London. “All flights from Rotterdam are booked, Sir. There has been a fire at Schiphol!”. I explained that I knew about the fire and that I really needed to get home that evening. I enquired how likely it was that the airport would be open by the time my flight was due to leave. “It is unlikely, Sir. It was a very serious fire.” Apparently the Burger King in the main concourse had set alight. If you have ever experienced Dutch cuisine you would understand what a terrible calamity this indeed was. So, I enquired of my other travel options…..

My way home that day involved getting from the office to Rotterdam Central train station. I accomplished this by tram with no difficulty. I then had to get the international train from Rotterdam to Brussels, being the capital of Belgium, being the neighbouring bloody country. I accomplished this with no difficulty.

At Brussels airport the nice people at British Airways took pity on me and upgraded me to business class. This meant I had access to the business lounge, free alcohol, a British newspaper, and, free snacks – sandwiches, olives, peanuts, cherry tomatoes, processed cheese, popcorn and the like. This was great as I had been booked on the 8pm flight from Brussels (which meant I should be home at 9pm UK time – just one hour later than planned) to Manchester and I had 3 hours to kill.

I used part of this time to leave voicemail messages for Cathy, my wife, who was out at work. The messages were along the lines of “You’ll never guess what has happened but don’t worry I’ll be back tonight”. I read a paper, did the crossword (this was in the days before Soduko), sipped my drinks, nibbled my nuts (!) and sent a few emails before sauntering to the gate at the prescribed time.

At the gate I found my fellow would-be passengers………and no staff. This is never a good sign. Nor did I see good signs on looking out of the window (the BA Lounge at Brussels airport has no windows). It was foggy. It was very foggy. It was so foggy that you could not see further than the windows themselves. We waited a while. As we waited the departure board began to flash “cancelled” alongside various flights with all too alarming a frequency. Eventually, a member of BA staff came to the gate and explained that the fog was set to stay and that it was likely that the airport would close. Our flight, however, had not yet been cancelled so we were not in a position to transfer to other flights with spaces that were expected to leave, nor did we qualify for free overnight stays in an airport hotel, nor could they guarantee a first flight out in the morning. Sh*t!. I felt my weekend and my marriage disappearing……

I didn’t care about money – the Company would pay. I just had to get home. So, I went to try and book an alternative flight. There were none. There were no flights going anywhere. The airport was closed. The first available flight out in the morning was not before 09.30 which meant that I would not be in time to make it to drive to Bute so my only alternative would be for Cathy to drive herself, and for me to fly to Glasgow. Cathy would not be happy. I was not bloody happy. Especially as all the airport hotels were already full! Passengers were beginning to jostle for space on benches……..

And then a glimmer of hope…….apparently our incoming flight was still circling. Apparently, our flight had a Manchester-based crew on board and they too were keen to get home tonight. They were circling in the hope that the weather would improve to enable them to land and whisk us back home to hearth and loved ones.

By 11pm the weather had not improved, the airport was closed and our plane had been diverted to Ostende. Fortunately, our plane was full of businessmen desperate to get home and sporting BA Gold Cards. I, being a KLM frequenter merely had a BA Blue Card which was next to useless. These Gold Card types were complaining vociferously and threatening all kinds of things as only pompous, self-important British businessmen can. Eventually, it was decided to send us to Ostende. Within the hour a couple of coaches were found and we began the hour or so journey by road to Ostende. I spent most of the journey making calming calls to Cathy and checking out alternatives such as the Ostende ferry….just in case.

We cleared the fog. We arrived at the airport. We could see the plane on the tarmac. We left the coaches. The coaches left. We entered the airport. The airport was empty. There was not a soul to be found. The Gold Card Customer Service desk again suffered verbal abuse until they actually made radio contact with the Captain of the plane. The Captain of the plane managed to locate some airport staff and we eventually found ourselves on board. Eventually they found someone to de-ice the plane’s wings and we were able to take off. I spent most of the journey worrying whether taxis still operated from Manchester airport at that time in the morning or would I be stranded or, worse, have to call the wife out…..as I was sure that my exec car would have been cancelled.

We landed at Manchester at 2.30 am. The airport should have been closed at this time so I hate to think what fines BA had incurred to bring us home. As I walked through the gates into arrivals I was more than a little thrilled to see Ian, my exec car driver standing there, waiting for me. I was not so thrilled to see he was chuckling, none too quietly, to himself. I mentioned nightmare journeys, airport fires, wiping grins off faces and other such expletives. He apologised and explained. What I didn’t know was that within an hour of my call to the travel department, Schiphol airport in Amsterdam had reopened. Yes, there was a backlog of flights but my original flight home only suffered an hour delay. If I had just ignored the travel department’s advice and proceeded as planned, I would have landed five and a half hours earlier !! Ian had known of my weekend away and taken pity on me. He took me home.

And so, just one tram, one train, one coach, one plane, one car and three different countries later I crawled into my bed. Just six hours later we hit the road. We got to Bute on time. Our friends were late and grumbling about the one hour delay they had suffered on route - Easyjet. Travel virgins!. We had a great time! Thanks Ian.