Strange Visitors

Does this describe you?

I seem to get some very strange visitors to my blog. These strange visitors find me through some very weird search engine searches. One of the most common seems to be a double whammy on "swingers" and "caravans". For some reason these phrases are often accompanied by the search term "cheshire" or "north wales". Well, for those of you who came via such a route, you may wish to view my entry Cheshire Swingers..........enjoy!

I am not sure why I am so surprised that swinging is so popular in Cheshire or North Wales. But I am. But, will someone please, please tell me why you do it in caravans?!?

There are other popular searches that seem to find me. Typically these would involve a "kat deeley" or a "julia roberts" or a "kylie" or "suzannah reid" and various spelling derivatives thereof. Now these are all fine looking women and I have had close contact with at least two of them (see "Sleeping With Julia Roberts" and "Planes, Trains and Automobiles Part 6" and I am sure we have all been propositioned by Sarah Lancashire!! But, you would be surprised how often these searches are accompanied by the word "porn" or "naked" or "stockings". Shame on you!

Well, I bet you can't wait until I tell you about the steamy weekend I once passed in a trailer-tent in Staffordshire with Anni-Frid and Agnetha, the babes from Abba........."Abba" is by far and away the single most commonly used search term that finds me. And, I can only remember mentioning them the once (here) but I guess I did so in an article which started with the word "porn". Enjoy.

Oh, and Happy Caravaning!

Fifteen Minutes Of Fame

Andy Warhol once declared that: "The day will come when everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes." Well, I am not sure if we are all supposed to become famous on the SAME day, or, we all have our own day in the glare of paparazzi flashes. And, clearly, there are some people like David Beckham, the Queen, Kylie, and Nicholas Parsons who have had much more than fifteen minutes. So, how does it work? If someone takes half an hour of fame does that mean that someone else has to do without? Is it like carbon emissions? Can I sell my fifteen minutes to some wannabe Big Brother contestant or someone in the auditions queue at the next X-Factor?

Actually, if I think about it, I might have already used my own fifteen minutes up. Except in my case, it is probably more a case of a quarter of an hour of infamy....

It started at an early age. In fact, at birth. I was declared to be a "Miracle Baby". No, nothing to do with a donkey, a carpenter, a manger and three stargazing hippies high on frankincense. No immaculate conception for my momma. No divine inheritance for yours truly. No, apparently, it was a miracle that I survived. I decided to come out upside down, the wrong way round, attempting to snuff myself out before I had even begun by strangling myself with my own umbilical chord. My mom lost a lot of blood.

Fortunately, however, such suicidal tendencies have largely been absent in the years that have followed - if you discount me glugging from a bottle of Domestos bleach while potty training, setting fire to the frayed landing carpet when a toddler, and, whacking Leroy Hunter around the head with a cricket bat at Junior School. He was hard. And, not just in the head.

I made it into the internal magazine at my dad's work (Fort Dunlop Tyre Factory in Birmingham) when I was about six or seven. This was because I had won an art competition by painting "My dad at work". I think I probably won because my dad's job was a little different to most who worked in the tyre factory. My dad was the company chauffeur. While others were no doubt sketching pictures of men in overalls and tyres, I was able to push out a passing representation of a man in a peaked cap holding open the door of a big posh car.

I made it into the Birmingham Saturday pink Sports Argos newspaper. Twice. Once when it was recorded that I had been sent off in a school cricket match. I know. I can't think of anyone else who was sent off at a cricket match. I was sent off because I punched the wicket keeper. I hit the wicket keeper because he was taking the p*ss. But, at least I was decent enough to drop my bat and remove my gloves before decking him. The second time in the Sports Argos was when our team photo was included when we lost (yes lost) the national schoolboys' cricket final at Edgbaston in 1982. We lost by a whisker. Five minutes in fact (it was a timed game). If only we had dawdled over our sandwiches during the tea interval......

I even made it onto the Nine O'clock News. Well, not THE 9 O'clock News. Not on the BBC. No this was the Irish version. I was filmed, together with my mates from University, coming ashore in Ballinskellig, County Kerry, Ireland. We were on a cycling and camping holiday there during our first summer holidays. It was June 23rd 1985 and we had been on a boat trip to visit the early Christian beehive monastery and the puffins on the Island of Skellig Michael.

On the way back to the mainland we found more than we had been looking for. We found ourselves amongst the floating wreckage of Air India Flight 182, which had been blown up by a terrorist bomb while en route from Canada to Heathrow. 329 people died. It was an eerie scene. Fortunately we did not see any bodies but we did find bits of wreckage floating on the surface. A galley door. A bit of wing. An unused safety vest. The boat's captain radioed ahead. Apparently we were the first people to find the wreckage and the news reporters were waiting on the beach for us when we returned.

But, it has been down hill since then on the fame front, I'm afraid. I made it into my college gossip mag "Queenie" (Queen's College) a couple of times. But, that was hardly surprising as I was the editor and I am not known for being self-effacing. And, I have made it into my company's internal magazine at least twice - once in the basket of big truck-shaped balloon (don't ask) and once when photographed with Eddie the Eagle (really, don't ask). I have even made it into Sweden's leading industry publication on plastic card production. I am not entirely sure why I was in it because I don't speak Swedish, but hopefully it was something to do with combating card fraud, as that was my job at the time.

So, I guess it is time I pulled my finger out and did something else noteworthy. Unfortunately, inspiration forsakes me at the mo..........

Celebrity Spotting Part 1

Business travel, and Sainsburys in Wilmslow have been a great source of rendezvous with minor celebrities.

Perhaps most enjoyable have been train journeys. You feel closer to the celebs in some sort of strange way. Journeys on Virgin trains between the North West and London and back have been most fruitful. On one occasion I sat opposite Sarah Lancashire, star of a “wealth” of Sunday night family viewing such as “Where the Heart Is” and, most notably “Coronation Street”. She starred as Raquel Watts, ditsy barmaid who married (and divorced) Curly Watts. She was/is a bit of a babe. Especially in the flesh, so to speak. The kind of homely, northern lass that your mom would approve of. And only two years older than I. She asked me the time. It was the was she asked. You know. The way she asked implied “do you want to come somewhere and get to know each other intimately?”. I did want to. I didn’t. I couldn’t be quite sure that I was reading the signals correctly. Another opportunity lost.

My other notable train claim, in a very different way, was Pete Waterman, of Stock, Aitkin, and Waterman fame. He who discovered Kylie. For which, I shall be eternally grateful. Pete sat opposite me on a journey from London to Crewe. He was on his way home to Stockton Heath. At first I was dead cool and did not let on that I recognised him. I surreptitiously texted C and colleagues at work who I thought would be impressed. C sent a simple text back “Don’t sing!”. Good advice. I am tone death (and I mean death!) and toneless. J, whose uncle is the keyboard and song writer in Tears for Fears replied, “My uncle says he’s a tw*t!”. Not quite the reaction I was looking for.

When I subsequently told my best mates about the encounter, they were similarly suitably underwhelmed. None of them have quite the same affinity with Kylie as I have. Most comments ranged from “Tosser”, “W*nker” (they meant Pete, not me of course), or “big deal”. But, they don’t know Pete like I do. Most likely they were trying to deflect me from one of my usual waffling, rambling stories of great adventures starring the Middle Man. They know me too well. But, they’re very forgiving.

Actually, he, Pete that is, was a thoroughly nice guy. It was vodka that broke the ice, both literally and metaphorically. Pete exclaimed: “Vladivar. Not seen that for ages!” “From Warrington”, says I. We have been best buddies ever since. I explained that my Uncle Tom used to drive the cart, and then then truck, making deliveries for Greenalls the brewery and Pete told me of the brewery’s demise. He is into real ale and was looking forward to getting home. His local village hall turns into a real ale pub for locals and members of CAMRA on a Thursday, Friday and Saturday night and he was keen to get there by 8pm for opening. I wish our village hall did the same.

We chatted quite freely for a good hour. He told me about his home in London - a disused warehouse (3500 square feet) in Borough which he bought for fifteen thousand pound in 1983 (presumably on the back of Kylie……now there’s a thought). He employed interior designers for thirty five thousand. They painted the walls white and the floors black. He has one bedroom, a dining room (Chinese red, "very warm and welcoming in winter") with a table and four chairs, a huge lounge with two fourteen foot long sofas, and a “f*ck off bathroom”. The latter was his main stipulation. He has no shower, but, apparently a palatial bathroom. He explained, “I didn’t live anywhere with a bath until I was 17.”

I asked him for Kylie’s telephone number. He declined. When I explained I only wanted to wish her the best after her recent cancer he said he would pass on my regards. So close. So far.
We talked of Pop Idol and X Factor. Allegedly, Simon Cowell’s banter is scripted and the US version of the game is fixed. But, enough of that…..let’s talk about Kylie. Sigh……

The Times They Are A-Changin Part 2

Things are changing so fast. My childhood took place before the onset of central heating. In winter, condensation would freeze on the inside of the bedroom window. You could not move under the weight of the many blankets in a winter before duvets. You would race downstairs in the morning, slippered feet, to dress hurriedly in front of the lounge bar-heater. True you could have risked the bathroom with the old circular light and heater combined, the one with the pull down switch. But, these things buzzed like a disturbed hive, threw out heat like a napalm incendiary, and smelled of smouldering dust and the polystyrene tiles which adorned the bathroom ceiling. And, the combination of electricity, condensation dripping from polystyrene tiles, and little wet hands never struck me as the safest of combinations. I never did feel safe. It was always the lounge bar-heater for me.

Whenever I meet up with my mates’ families or see my nephews, I am just reminded of how different things were when I was a child. All the kids today have mobiles. I n my day, only babies were lucky enough to have those. I was lucky if I even had change for a phone box. Phone boxes – tall, square, red, glazed and proud. You still see them sometimes in posh hotels as trendy shower cubicles, or, in architectural salvage yards. The home telephone didn’t arrive in our house until way into the 80s. It arrived at about the same time as the colour TV, Breakfast Television, and long before the central heating was installed and the front room wall was knocked down to create a through room. In my day we still had front rooms. Vistied only ever on special occasions. Indeed, my grandma’s generation still had parlours and outside loos. My family were not exactly “early adopters”. We couldn’t afford to be.

These were the years of strikes. Winters of discontent. Rubbish piled up in the street as wine lakes and butter mountains formed in Europe. Many a weekend viewing of the Black and White Minstrels, or Morecambe and Wise was ruined by a power cut, with the family huddled around the emergency candles and a pack of cards. Many a Saturday morning was spent queuing for bread or some other staple. My childhood was like modern Russia at times.

Today, my nephews’ bedrooms are like multi-media palaces. Mine was a place you slept in during the night, or where you were banished to as a punishment during the day. They have TVs, DVDs, CDs, PCs, videos, PS2s, GameBoys, IPOds, mobiles (WAP-enabled, of course) hamsters and a tropical fish tank! In my day, I didn’t even have privacy. If you even attempted to seek solace in the refuge of your own room you would be hunted down. Shouts of “what are you doing up there” would climb the stairs. The door would be knocked: “Are you feeling OK?”. No privacy. No time alone. I think they assumed that there was only one thing a teenage boy could be doing on his own in the waking hours. They were probably right! After all, I did, for a brief time, have pictures of the “Bionic Woman” (Lindsay Wagner, sigh!) and “Charlie’s’ Angels” on the wall of my bedroom – the originals with Farah Fawcett not Lucy Lui (but I could be persuaded).

By about 14 I had a top-loading cassette player. The kind that you recorded with by placing next to the radio and turning the volume up. Later I progressed to a tape-to-tape, but seeing as I only had my mom and dad’s music to tape from the choice was somewhat limited. While Abba’s Greatest Hits have become a bit more retro-chic, I doubt that James Last’s Orchestra or Klaus Wunderlicht and his amazing bontempi will ever be considered cool.

Most kids today probably have access to free porn (being far more technically astute than their parents). I had to make do with a vivid imagination. I never could work out which out of the blonde and the brunette in “Abba” I would do first. I fancied most of the assistants on “the Generation Game” and “Dr Who”, especially Sarah Jane Smith who has recently played roles in the latest versions. Of course I never fancied Bonnie Langford. She is a two-bagger (you make her wear a bag to hide her face and you wear one yourself, just in case her’s falls off). S arah Greene was on Blue Peter in those days performing the sexiest thing ever seen on TV - demonstrating how to pull on skin-tight jeans using a coat hanger. Not to be missed. Never to be forgotten.

I also tended to like the female presenters on Saturday morning kids’ TV. I still do. Sally James off “Tizwas”, Sarah Greene from “the Saturday Morning Picture Show” on the other side, Emma Forbes who cooked. Emma was the Nigella Lawson of the 1980s but even sexier and of better parentage. She is Nanette Newman’s daughter, which conjures up a whole new “mother and daughter” fantasy which we shall not go into. I was also very partial to most of the female cast of ”Dallas”, especially Victoria Principal (a truly well-put-together woman), and Charlene Tilton. These were the Kat Deely, Anthea Turner, Carol Vordeman, Carole Smiley, and Kylie of my later years. My bed sheets must have fairly crackled, if only with the amount of static electricity I was generating (polyester was a very dangerous invention). Sorry mom.

Incidentally, Kylie Mynogue is sex on a stick. I have a get-out clause in my marriage if I ever get it together with Kylie. C has a similar one involving Sting. Our worst-case scenario is if Sting and Kylie ever get it together. Unlikely I know, but, unfortunately, more likely than Kylie and myself.

The lingerie section of mom’s Great Universal mail-order catalogue was about the most pornographic material in the house other than my dad’s H&E (Health and Education) magazines. He thought he had so carefully hidden these in the brown paper bag in the ottoman on the landing. In my experience it is always wise to take a peak into any brown paper bag that you may find. Unless you know that Bonnie Langford lies beneath. Oh, and the pictures of African tribal ladies grinding flour with their baps out in some of granddad’s old encyclopaedias. How times change…….

Early Education Part 2

Initially at least (!) my mom and dad had a great desire that my sister and I should do better for ourselves, better than themselves. School and homework came first and foremost in our childhood. Homework had to be completed before any of those childish luxuries such as TV, food, or playing could be enjoyed. Parents’ Night was an annual highlight in the family calendar. School reports were scrutinised. How horrified my poor parents would have been to have discovered the number of times that I copied my maths homework on arrival at school on Monday mornings. Sorry guys. But, I am very grateful that my mom and dad pushed me to be academic.

The copying didn’t really matter in the long-run. It was mostly laziness. I was bright enough, and polite enough. I had the capacity to succeed academically. And, I was helped by a healthy dose of competitiveness towards my sister. My sister, J, is 18 actual months and only one academic year older than myself. She was the first of our family to go to university. She went to Grammar School before that. And, yes, I competed with her for academic honours. Boy, did I compete!

Books (not surprisingly), board games and quiz shows (perhaps more surprisingly) played a big part in my education. There were always books to read – history books (ancient picture books in their own right, handed down through the generations), story books, albums as stocking fillers (Beano and Dandy eventually gave way to Battle and the Fantastic Four), comics (I had a favourite uncle who had travelled the world as a Royal Marine Commando, via the Korean War, who gifted me his collection of American Marvel Comics – Daredevil, The Mighty Thor, Iron Man, The Fantastic Four, Hercules, Spiderman – they were all there), and, of course, my sister and I had our own library cards if we ever ran out of things to read. We never did. Admittedly, J’s choice of reading matter was always a little more high brow or grown up than mine. She was reading James Harriet (and always laughing out loud, which I found very, very irritating) while I would be helping Spiderman in his battles with the Green Goblin.

Incidentally, my classic collection of comics – which included a first edition of the original Batman series and must have numbered several hundred in total – failed to survive one of my mom’s tidying sprees in my early teens. They were thrown away. I imagine that they would have been worth a small fortune to a collector today. Thanks mom! Pay heed all teenage boys - tidy your own room!

Comics always did seem to get me into trouble. At the age of 11 I was caught shoplifting comics from our local paper shop by the owner. It was one of the most humiliating and devastating experiences of my early years. My mom cried. My dad cried. My grandma looked at me disapprovingly. This was further evidence, if my parents needed any, of how carefully balanced I was on that tightrope walk between a career in Middle Management and a life of crime. Nowadays, my comic is FHM (For Him Magazine). Ah, Kylie……………

Sunday Quiz shows. Sunday lunchtime meant roast meat, roast potatoes and parsnips, two veg, gravy, mint sauce for lamb, horseradish or mustard for beef, apple sauce for pork, stuffing or cranberry for poultry, all washed down with a glass of lager and lime, often home-brewed by my dad in a big yellow plastic bucket, or, in latter years, a bottle of Blue Nun or Black Tower. Sophisticated, eh? Anyhow Sunday lunchtime was interrupted by the 1.30 showing of ‘University Challenge’. The original and best ‘University Challenge’ that is, with Bamber “bouffant” Gascoigne. Sunday teatimes turned into ‘Sale of the Century’ with Nicholas Parsons. My sister and I often did better than the contestants. How different our lives could have been if kids like us had been able to take part in the actual quiz . We would now be surrounded by caravans, fondue sets, fridge freezers, drinks cabinets, juicers, stereos, and, brand new cars……………

Later, in the evening, came ‘Mastermind’. The original and best with Magnus Magnusson. Boy, were his parents imaginative when it came to choosing names or what! I enjoyed the general knowledge sections much more than the specialist topics in things such as “Outer Mongolian Floral Exhibitions of the Late Eighteenth Century.”

‘Ask The Family’, ‘Blockbusters’, ‘Blankety Blank’ (I know, I know). The 1970s and 80s were a veritable Aladdin’s Cave of quiz-show opportunity to test a developing mind such as mine. And, when they brought out ‘Trivial Pursuit’ I thought I had found absolute heaven. It has got to the point that family and friends refuse to play ‘Triv’ with me now unless it is a new edition and they are able to witness its removal from the cellophane. This is because I would spend many a happy hour in my youth, card by card, question by question, learning and memorising the answers. I am still pretty damn useful in a Pub Quiz!

Intelligence is often born of imagination. Well, I think so at least. Or, I imagine so. We had lots of opportunity to exercise our imagination as children. Unlike today, batteries were rarely a requirement on Christmas mornings in our house. We got toys that you played with and which required imagination. And, they were proper toys too, unlike today’s namby-pamby, left-wing-politically correct, toys. Girls got dolls, dressing-up things and making-up things. Boys got guns and plastic soldiers by the bucket-full, cars, and Action Man. Admittedly, Action Man often got called upon for a date or game of “Happy Families” with my sister’s Barbie or Cindy until such time as Ken arrived on the scene. But, he didn’t seem to mind quite so much as I did at the time.

And then there was the computer printer paper – the old green, striped stuff with perforations at the edges. Dad used to bring tonnes of it back with him from work as a treat. Whole evenings would be spent drawing on the stuff. Matchstick soldiers would be lined up against each other (Brits and Yanks versus Germans and Japs – very xenophobic), alongside planes, cannons and tanks. Guns would have dotted lines protruding from barrels to indicate being fired and to identify a hit on their target. A veritable Lowry's Apocalypse. My side always won.

“Connect 4”, “Mastermind”, “Battleships”, “Scrabble”, draughts, chess. Ours was a home full of toys of a sensible and educational nature. They helped to stretch a developing mind and to nurture an intelligence in its infancy. They were helped, no doubt, by oily fish in regular doses and sheep’s brains – one of the less pleasant side effects of the arrival of our first chest freezer in the 1980s and the “economic good sense” of buying a whole lamb from the butcher! As a child you just have to trust your mom about such things. Either that or grandma’s threat of serving leftovers up cold for breakfast. I was never very sympathetic towards the one about feeding the starving children of Africa for a week on my scraps from just one meal though. I would have sent my scraps to them, gladly.

And sleep. Lot’s of sleep. We were children with a regimented bed-time triggered by the end of various TV programmes – a particularly sly ploy from our parents to avoid the usual pleas of “just another 5 minutes!”. We were allowed an extra 30 minutes or an hour at weekends and during school holidays but, otherwise, it was off to bed early and “don’t you come down stairs again or there’ll be trouble!” Sleep, apparently, is an essential ingredient to nurturing intelligence. Of course there were times when I would sneak to the top of the stairs and catch glimpses of illegal TV shows through an ajar door and the bars of the stair banisters. Yes, there were summer evenings spent with my head peeking through bedroom curtains watching the world go by. But, generally, as a young child at least (when it is most important I am told), I got plenty of sleep.

Many a summer day was spent re-enacting the “Battle of Britain”. This game involved chasing my cousins around the streets of Erdington (home) or Pype Hayes Park on our bikes, or, doing a whirling figure of eight in front of the paper shop and the greengrocers. Or, many a pistol made out of two fingers was used in a game of “war” fought in a series of back gardens. As boys we were fairly proficient at mimicking the different sounds of rifles, pistols, exploding grenades and machine-gun fire: “Ra ta tat ta”, or “Brrrbrrb”, or “Ch ch ch ch”. We were the kings of onomatopoeia. My cousins lived just up the road from us and their back garden was separated from grandma and granddad’s garden by the garden of a friendly neighbour who either didn’t care or couldn’t stop us from climbing over her fence as we invaded one or the other of the families’ gardens. It was a very safe outdoor environment in which to play. That is not to say that paedophiles and child-snatchers did not exist on the streets of Birmingham back in the 1970s and 80s. We just never knew about them. There was not the same media hype or attention as today. Of course there was poor old Mad Ernie. Rumour was that Mad Ernie had suffered shell shock (whatever that was!) back in the war. Small children would chase poor Ernie down the street shouting: “The Germans are coming! The Germans are coming!”. Ernie would turn on the kids and throw stones at them. Hence the nickname. Sorry Ernie.

Even time on the toilet was spent stretching the imagination. No not as you may think (not until later at least) but as commander of a starship sat on his bridge single-handedly protecting the Federation of Planets and Mother Earth from hoards of Imperial Stormtroopers. “Star Trek”, “Star Wars”, “Battlestar Galactica”, “Buck Rogers”, “Space 2010”, “UFO”, “Captain Scarlet” – this was a sci-fi age and my imagination was filled with it. And, it gave me something to do while sat on the loo……