A Day in the Life of

A Parody of an England Football Player

2010-06-29T13:07:00.000-07:00

I am an England Football Player , burp. I get a lot of dosh don't I , you know what I mean, cos I am famous, I am idolised like, you know what I mean. I get to open fetes, stores and my picture is in all those papers and magazines as well as on all those football computer games, that I can't play. Well I have a bash, but , well they are hard arn't they, know what I mean. Well cos I am stashed with cash cos of Sky tv, and those nice marketing men, I get all the good looker birds, I got all the cars, Porsches, Ferrari's, Bemtley's, Aston Martins well you gotta spend the money somewhere aint yer. Mate of mine had a birthday party so I bought the bubbbly £10,000 and a £1,000 tip to the waiter, well why not. Its hard work being a celebrity like, I mean a footballer like me, cos you have to play every weekend, sometimes twice a week, running around for an hour and a half. Christ even worse if your mate gives you the ball, and you have to do something with it, blimey, we are worth every penny, look at the trophies we win, our fans adore me. I get mobbed going to the corner shop for a pack of fags and some lager you know, the fans worship me you know what I mean. I am a household name, famous me everyone knows who I am like, know what I mean.
Anyway I scored a blinder the other Saturday at the Bridge, no not with a tart, no from a corner. Ball came over hit me on the head as I'm standing there, wham straight in the net, what a winner, all the team jumped on top of me, did you see it, we got on on blue ray HD, you must have seen it on Match of the Day, I have the highlights recorded, my goal is on play back 5 times, the missus knows how to play the thing back so I can watch it time and again and see how great I was.
So I am often asked what it feels like to be in the Premier League and being a Premier Player, and my agent and those nice marketing men help me answer, cos they have all the GCSEs dont they, you know I just kick the ball with me right foot, thats what I am paid for, I dont get paid for kicking the ball with me left foot else I'd get double pay wouldn't I lol see funny that aint it joke, laugh then, thats a creaser aint it huh. Anyways, where was I , oh the question, what was it, tricky one , oh yeah, what was it like. Well it's great aint it, getting paid a fortune for what you did as a kid in the park after school. As long as people dont take it serious like, cos its only football. You know, its just a way of earning loads of money haha, while I can, and spend it on lots of luxuries, is that how you spell luxuries, yeah I spelt checked it on this computer ha ha, see I aint thick, like some people reckon I am.

Anyway I was asked about this World Cup in South Africa. Nice country South Africa aint been there before, nice hotels, nice food, saw some Giraffes and Elephants you know on one of those safari trips, Oh the result, well we were all tired long season you know, best league in the world, our games are televised all over the world, people know me all over the world. Yeah tired well its exhauting aint it, training 2 hours a day, then we have all the afternoon free time till dinner, Manager is strict we have to go to bed, its all tiring, then you got the game you know what I mean. Hard those games. I like it just running around looking good , you know me kit me hair, me complexion, for those photographers then doing a real nifty long pass that goes off and shouting that the player at the receiver end should have got it, burk. You know those photos get on all the packs in the supermarkets all the kids know me they idolise me, my picture is on their bedroom walls, I am a super hero to them like.
So, we lost, well its a game , we cant all be winners, anyway look at the manager and the team he selected, it werent down to me its team effort mate, and the media they always get at us, if we lose so do the supporters. Who cares we will win next game back at our clubs and be heroes again for them, They will forget about all this, just beaten by better team, you know what I mean, yeah there will always be mistakes, what about the referee. OK if thats over cos its time for me to play a round of golf with my mates and there's a new tart behind the bar at the club house. Also I gotta get me garage to pump up my back tyre. You what, oh you want an autograph yeah , where you want it luv across your boobs, only kidding, well if you insist, actually I have a bit more time than I thought......................

Lowering of the Flag

2010-06-27T09:18:00.001-07:00

My England Flag came down in my front garden at 5pm Sunday 27th June after Germany thrashed England 4-1.

Yes I know Lampard's free kick shot off the bar and the shot that crossed the goal line for everyone to see except a referee and a linesman. Yes I know Sepp Blatter wants to keep football as it was invented in the Victorian era before cameras and technolgy.

BUT BUT BUT, where was our defence, where was any player wearing 3 lions on a shirt.

England were spineless, England were a disgrace.

Fabio Capello has to resign or be sacked. His team selection is the reason he should go. For example you go 4-1 down and you take off Defoe who can score and replace him with Heskey who does not score. Englands' midfield and back four were non existant, Germany could have scored more but for David James.

England have let down their travelling fans and the nation. The defending today was schoolboy stuff on a recreation ground. England had no shape and were run ragged. They were outplayed in every single position.

There has to be an inquest.

Wright Philips was good once, not now. Heskey should be put out to pasture. Rooney has been a failure for England, a total failure.

Capello persisted with the same players each game, even when they performed badly and did not gell as a team. Big Mistake Capello, big mistake.

Fabio Fabulouso ??

2010-06-24T01:01:00.000-07:00

A rumour going around Rustenburg is that the Capello's uncanny resemblance to Postman Pat has been noticed in the supporters camps. If we don't win the World Cup there will be endless jokes about his failure to deliver.

His former Job !! :

Postman Pat, Postman Pat,
Postman Pat and his black and white cat,
Early in the morning,
Just as day is dawning,
He picks up all the post bags in his van.
Postman Pat, Postman Pat,
Postman Pat and his black and white cat,
All the birds are singing,
And the day is just beginning,
Pat feels he's a really happy man.
Everybody knows, his bright red van,
All his friends will smile as he waves to greet them,
Maybe,
You can never be sure,
They'll be knock,
Ring,
Letters through your door,
Hay hay,
Postman Pat, Postman Pat,
Postman Pat and his black and white cat,
All the birds are singing,
And the day is just beginning,
Pat feels he's a really happy man,
Pat feels he's a really happy man,
Pat feels he's a really happy man

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ-CQEF5Or4

Germany Yet Again

2010-06-23T13:35:00.000-07:00

So a much improved England got through and now The Germans loom on the next front.

"New and Improved" sounds like a washing powder, but England could have not got worse than their hitherto gutless perfomances.

Still Rooney and Lampard fail to deliver. I would put them on the bench on Sunday afternoon. Joe Cole came on and played out of position, Heskey is another passenger.

But the other 9 players were worth their place to varying degrees, we got through, it would have been more but for the Slovenian Goalkeeper.

I think the biggest contributors were the England supporters. No other nation has out matched the vuvuzelas for decibel level. Well done England and well done their loyal singing and chanting barmy army.

England World Cup Team are clueless

2010-06-18T13:55:00.000-07:00

World Cup 2010: Wayne Rooney blasts booing England fans

England striker Wayne Rooney shouts "nice to see your home fans booing" to a TV camera as he walks off the pitch after the 0-0 draw against Algeria.

Rooney has an absolute cheek. He failed. His country and those paying supporters deserved more from him and his team mates. It is Rooney who should be ashamed and apologise. Over paid hypocrit.

What do you think of it so far.....RUBBISH !!

No purpose, no belief, no endeavour.

3 lions on a shirt or are they 3 mangy cats, this England performance 0-0 against Algeria was pathetic in Cape Town.

Some of the highest paid so called professional players in the world, when they put on an England shirt they are insipid.

I am so angry at the way they let down all those supporters who travelled 6,000 miles for that inept performance. They have also let down the flag waving streets in this country.

In truth they don't deserve a word, a mention, because they were abject failures tonight. This article only serves to release my venom at them for a pathetic poor performance.

Heskey, 4 out of 10, poor, no point in trying harder , this is it from him, should not be there on the pitch.

Rooney, can't pass, can't get involved, can't deliver, drop him, yes drop Wayne Rooney for the Slovenia game.

Lampard, waste of space, another useless performance.

Johnson, poor defending.

Gerrard, not firing on all 4 cylinders.

David James safe reliable, thank god Capello did not pick Green again. Now Capello be brave. Players that don't perform, don't pick them for the MUST win Slovenia game.

Team for Wednesday should be:

David James,

Johnson, Dawson, Terry, Ashley Cole

Lennon , Gerrard, Barry, Joe Cole

Defoe, Crouch

Stick with the players that have let you down Capello and get the next flight home. Hopeless.

44 years of hurt never stopped me dreaming

2010-06-13T01:29:00.000-07:00

One of my passions is football. I played it for 40 odd years. I did not win much just the odd in house tournament I organised, well if you can't win those what can you win. I was always resolute in defence, took no prisoners if they still had the ball. I was Captain most of the time, cos I led by example. It even cost me a broken leg eventually and plaster up to my groin for 6 months, but not before I had inflicted similar in fever pitched battles. I even subjected my family to the worse breakfast service in our 2nd week holiday in Minorca, after I had brought down the Head Waiter in a cloud of dust at a local stadium where I organised the tourists versus the hotel staff England v Spain, and we won, but the Head Waiter was not a happy chappy nor a happy signor.

So playing football, watching Tottenham Hotspur and England has been an anual event of hope and despair an emotional roller coaster. Yes, you can't win them all (why not), but it is nice to win sometimes.

The trouble with football today is that since Sky TV bought the TV rights to show games and then sell them around the world with the Premier League, professional footballers have become over paid prima donnas, achieving celebrity status often without delivering the goods. after all we are talking about a job here that is 90 minutes a week if that, for kicking a round thing in between two white posts and a crossbar and you have 10 mates helping you, with a similar number opposing you. For that you can command £100,000 a game if you are any good, or even if you are rubbish some weeks and fail to perform for just 90 minutes a week. Compare that with any other job, huh !!!

But football is in my blood and without a blood transfusion will be there till I die. There are many in football that have the passion to succeed, there are many that just try to do enough to get by, like in any walk of life.

Today's blog is prompted by what happened last night in South Africa, the World Cup, where England played their first game in their league group. Not since 1966 have we won the world cup. In that final we had certain players who literally run their socks off for their country and their Manager Sir Alf Ramsey. We had brilliant players, Gordon Banks was probably the best goalkeeper in the world, Bobby Moore the best defender in the world, Alan Ball the youngest and best midfield dynamo in the world. They did not need huge sums to play, they had huge hearts. Alas the latter two are already dead. Will their surviving team mates, 3 lions on a shirt, see the new England win the same competition. I hope so, they are among the richest in the world, so maybe they should beat the world.

Last night's not so hopeful verdict:

The Green Green Grass of Home

Once again a nation expects. The flags are flying in every street. In a game we gave to the world, we now compete with the world’s best. But now we watch in hope and often despair, supporting England is a roller coaster ride every game. We used to be the best, we used to produce the best, but now the teacher cannot beat the up and coming pupil.

We used to produce the best goalkeepers the world had ever seen, Gordon Banks, Ray Clemence, Peter Shilton. Now the need and the greed necessary to survive every week in the Premier League means all our top clubs have foreign goalkeepers, and we are left to chose from relegated or near relegated clubs for that vital roll between the posts. We chose goalkeepers who week in week out are used to picking the ball out of the back of the net. Yes every goalkeeper can make a howler, and when they do it is calamitous because they are the last line of defence. Indeed England goalkeepers have made gross mistakes on the world’s stage before and cost their Manager their jobs. However, Green’s mistake last night allowing a long range hope full punt from Dempsey to give USA an equaliser was the same mistake as his name and his colour shirt. It was a schoolboy error not out of the coaching manuals. How any defender could have confidence in him thereafter is unbelievable just like his handling. Yes football is a team game, but some positions are more vital than others. It is no good saying he redeemed himself in the 2nd half with one save that after all was really saved by the woodwork to where he deflected the shot.

In the qualifiers we seemed to have a team select. Once we qualified that plan was, it seems, thrown out of the window. However on form Joe Hart should be in front of the sticks, on experience and because he can be more a hero than a clown James should be number 1. Green should get the next plane home. He has cost us 2 points, he and he alone. He should also take his West Ham colleague Upson with him, both of them got West Ham where they are today, scrapping survivors of a relegation battle.

So, like any England fanatical supporter born out of patriotism, yes I question team and squad selection and logic. Yes, take off Milner who had been ill and was having a torrid 30 minutes against the USA advancing right. But, why bring on a right sided Wright Phillips to patrol the left. Also, as hard working and grafting as Heskey is, he cannot score goals, not with his head or his feet. He is a striker who cannot score goals, so pick him for lay offs and assists, but that means one of your strikers will not score, that leaves only one other. My other player singled out for criticism is Lampard. He can do it week in week out for Chelsea, but when he puts on an England shirt, well his free kick in front of goal 2nd half was more worthy of Twickenham. The guy is just off target, that is his middle name.

Contrast Lampard’s contribution with Captain Courageous Gerrard, who was there covering every blade of grass making vital blocks in defence and scoring the early goal with a true penetrative run and class, that should have eased all our nerves and those of his team mates including Green. Stevie G led by example it’s a great pity most of his team mates could not see it, like the viewers could.

Football is a team game, USA showed us that in defence and midfield resilience and with a far superior goalkeeper from Everton. England did not have the craft or the class, world class, to unpick them again after Gerrard’s superb lift for his country.
Rooney was too short and too deep, crosses across the USA box were not met. The Crouch solution to that problem was 80 minutes too late, Capello take note.

In truth we do not have enough World Class players to win a World Class competition, only a handful of our players would feature in any world side. We are good at going forward down the flanks, especially the right, but we have no converters in the centre. Only Gerrard, Ashley Cole, Johnson and Terry can hold their heads high after that game. Lennon, Heskey, Rooney worked hard. Misses were plenty. 4 players playing really well out of 11 is not good enough and the result is a 1-1 draw against USA, not against Brazil, Argentina, Spain. No against USA.

If we are to improve and we must to succeed in this tournament for the 11th time in 44 years, Capello has to hit on a winning formula team selection, as Sir Alf Ramsey did.

He has a problem with the goalkeeper, midfield and strikers. His substitutions were dictated to him against the USA. Next time he will have to make 3 changes during the game if we cannot find the net again.

Gareth Barry if fit, should replace Lampard, and Joe Cole should be on the left. We need class on the grass. Up front Crouch should partner Rooney, with Defoe ready to come on for the last 20 minutes. Ramsey used to say to his engine room in Peters Ball and Charlton to burn themselves out and they did. We need a similar engine room. In Gerrard we have a start, Lennon needs to up the pace and confidence he had before injury for Spurs. Barry should steady midfield and it’s balance with his left foot in front of the back four. Joe Cole can wriggle his way through from the left, leaving Ashley Cole to forge down the line. Hopefully King’s knee will allow his return, and Hart should be given the job of keeping a clean sheet, because he is the form man with the non Teflon gloves.

Onward and Upward England. At least you did not lose, you could have. Let this be an eye opener Mr Copello, lessons to be learned, quickly and decisively.

as published on on BBC 606

the new adventues of Phileas Fogg

2010-05-09T20:31:00.000-07:00

A week in the life of, To Boldly Go Where I have not been Before.

Vancouver that is, British Columbia, or as I found out BC = Bring Cash, lots of it. Petrol is two thirds the price, but everything else apart from 2nd hand boats is a lot. They also add tax on to the price so you have lots of loose change and never know how much the thing will cost. But an example is a replica Canadian Ice Hockey shirt, yours for just £100, errr no thanks, I will do without. I’ll get a Red Indian t shirt instead with eagles on it.

And yes the Eagle Landed in Vancouver where my son was head hunted to work and live and raise a young family. There are lots of bald headed eagles flying around, in a very new, picturesque pacific coastline city with the snow capped Rocky Mountains as a back drop. Very clean air, and most people take a pride in their painted wooden houses and their gardens. The woodland acid soil is a paradise in May for rhododendrons, azaleas, and camellias, a splash of colours in every street. The woodlands themselves are a drive away rain forest, tall cedars that reach straight for the skies , the origin of the original nation totem poles. Oh btw it is not pc to say red Indian, it is 1st Nation, But then my life was formulated in the non politically correct era, when you called things and everyone knew that a spade was a spade.

But back to Vancouver city, less than 150 years old. And it is not busy, not masses of people in line queuing up everywhere. The sun shone, it did rain a bit overnight, it did get windy, but the sea and the mountains , well just a great view all the time. You cannot get bored with it. So this guide is not about a rough guide to a rough place. Vancouver is expensive, but nice. Most locals are friendly, but shops are not abundant, when you walk around.

Very patriotic, the Queen’s photo is up almost everywhere, there are a few pubs selling decent brews. A lot of Brits emigrate there to raise a family. I even noticed the passengers on the school bus going to the Museum of the Native Red Indians, were well behaved and their teachers spoke to them instead of screaming as they do in our educational establishments. No sign of disrupters here. There is also an aquarium where sea life is tanked up for all to see and films are shown in the Kenny Everitt Sensaround style. So when the Blue whale blows, so does the spray on your face as you sit in the auditorium ( and the seat vibrates, oooo cheeky)

But the flight is long, 5,000 miles, 10 hours, to go 8 hours time zone difference, and even longer when an Icelandic Volcano delays the flight and enforces a detour around the ash cloud. The central plains of Canada take hours to cross and has snow even in May brrrr!!

Also the Canadian Affair Thomas Cook flight, well it’s hard to sleep, the ticket is cheap so the coffee comes at £2.10 for a small cup. Screaming babies who don’t know why they are on a plane and why their ears hurt, scream as you view the movies wearing extra cost head sets, but the games and tv channels cost extra too. People going to the toilet almost non stop, some people go every hour !!! Its true, I could have been on a time and motion exercise. Then some people do their Yoga in the aisles, we picked up some weirdo’s and some objects on the gaydar !!!

This Phileas Fogg travelled solo, where, security wanted to confiscate his liquid Gaviscon, even though they did not have a stomach ache, the internet cost a pound per 10 minutes, give that a miss, and the overnight hotel internet booking meant my breakfast was a lot extra. Fortunate though as the rations were small in my aircraft seat as was my space. Not as bad as a battery hens though by all accounts.

Wish you were there, a post card from Vancouver, next stop blighty and recovering from jet lag and a travel bug !!

A day in the life of

2010-04-25T02:41:00.000-07:00

I read the news today oh boy
About a lucky man who made the grade
And though the news was rather sad
Well I just had to laugh
I saw the photograph
He blew his mind out in a car
He didn't notice that the lights had changed
A crowd of people stood and stared
They'd seen his face before
Nobody was really sure
If he was from the House of Lords.

I saw a film today oh boy
The English Army had just won the war
A crowd of people turned away
but I just had to look
Having read the book
I'd love to turn you on

Woke up, fell out of bed,
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup,
And looking up I noticed I was late.
Found my coat and grabbed my hat
Made the bus in seconds flat
Found my way upstairs and had a smoke,
and Somebody spoke and I went into a dream

I read the news today oh boy
Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.
I'd love to turn you on

England and Saint George!

2010-04-23T02:08:00.000-07:00

I am a patriot. I don't know if I could live abroad, I would get homesick, anyway there are too many foreigners abroad, they spoil their place, just like they can spoil my place of birth. Yes the PC brigade will object to telling it as it is, and it is not a sweeping generalisation. There are times when the union jack shorts abroad embarass me and my nation and there are times when I am pleasantly surprised by a person no matter what nationality.

However the English do not celebrate St Georges Day as others do notbaly the Irish and their St Patricks day. Hence today's entry. There are local parades in local towns tomorrow, tick box, and there are some pubs with the cross of St George bunting blowing in the spring breeze and against a blue blue blue sky.

But St George was not English. He was a Tribune in Palestine circa 300ad, and he was beheaded by the Emperor for his christian belief, hence his martyrdome converted pagans to christianity, hence the Crusaders adopted him and told of the myth that he slayed a pagan dragon and saved the sacrificial princess, converting even more to christianity. St George is also held saintly in other countries like Lithuania and Georgia.

But I have a statue of him on my living room window sill slaying the dreadful dragon. I have England T shirts too. So after this weekend we will not be flying the flag until the World Cup in 2 months in South Africa when we will be glued to our sets willing our team on to victory.

Which is a nice link to the Battle of Agincourt where Henry V ralied his out numbered troops against the French to win a famous victory.

Follow your spirit; and, upon this charge
Cry ‘God for Harry! England and Saint George!

And, we cant let this day pass without some music can we, so singalong with Allan:

Land of Hope and Glory

Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free,
How shall we extol thee, who are born of thee?
Wider still, and wider, shall thy bounds be set;
God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet!

Truth and Right and Freedom, each a holy gem,
Stars of solemn brightness, weave thy diadem.

Tho' thy way be darkened, still in splendour drest,
As the star that trembles o'er the liquid West.

Throned amid the billows, throned inviolate,
Thou hast reigned victorious, thou has smiled at fate.

Land of Hope and Glory, fortress of the Free,
How may we extol thee, praise thee, honour thee?

Hark, a mighty nation maketh glad reply;
Lo, our lips are thankful, lo, our hearts are high!

Hearts in hope uplifted, loyal lips that sing;
Strong in faith and freedom, we have crowned our King!

Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free,
God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet!

God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier........ yet!

and now a bit of Pomp and Circumstance by Englishmen Elgar of course

until, next time..........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moL4MkJ-aLk

Stiring stuff huh goosebumps

Sundays FA Cup Semi Final at Wembley

2010-04-12T14:02:00.000-07:00

Subject: BBC 606
Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2010 19:40:18 +0000

the legendary allansharpe just wrote;

Pomp & Circumstance

Again Tottering Hotspur fail to break down a resolute defence aided and abetted by a blue shirted referee. Just like against Hull, Stoke, Wolves, throw up a wall and Tottenham will flounder on it. Only Bale holds a key to unlock, the others are just blocked. Tottenham, you need a genius infront of goal with flare and imagination. The 4 strikers lost us that game today, not supported well enough by midfield apart from Modric.

The next fortnight does not look good , it never did, but it’s worse now.

That team just threw away the chance of a medal , a trophy, silverware for the Team and the Supporters. Booooooooooooo

In truth Spurs did not play bad, they faced 12 blue shirts including the referee Alan Wiley, who surely did not have a flutter on the side, he did disallow a perfectly good goal for Spurs which would have levelled the scores, it was the only time Crouch did not miss several chances coming his way. Even Pompey goalkeeper David James ironically smiled at the cameras at his good fortune with the referee saying he was impeded before the goal. Rubbish.

Referees, they cost teams and supporters, hope your bet was worthwhile Mr Wiley. Oh btw how many free kicks did you award to Portsmouth, and yet when Krancjar is hauled down, blind as a bat aren't you.

Power to the People

2010-04-11T13:18:00.001-07:00

Power to the People

It’s Modern History time. Back in the Conservative days of Rule Brittania, in the gloomy 80’s and 90’s, the Tory Government decided they could not afford to run industry anymore, forget nationalisation, lets privatise everything. So Margaret Thatcher and John Major, sold off our public transport and the fares went up, the service got worse and a few lucky bosses in the right place at the right time became fat cats, whilst the rest of us suffered.

And so it was, not only with Public Transport the buses and railways, you know the sort of thing the people depend on to go to work etc. No they privatised the H2O, that falls from the sky and collects in holes in the ground, they privatised all the public utilities, you know the sort of thing people rely on to turn a tap and drink, switch a kettle on and cook a meal, heat a house, light up the dark. Yes the Tories thought it a good idea to lose control of basic essentials and let fat cats profit and the population suffer.

Now one of the new breed of power companies is N Power. They provide my gas and electricity. They can’t read meters, so they estimate bills, that go up and up all the time, and are not so quick to come down when international wholesale prices fall through basic economics supply and demand.

Just recently they have sent me enough bills for me to wallpaper a wall in one of my rooms. On line I can see the reverse of my bill but not the front!! I read the meter and send them the figures, they send me another bill. But, it has no readings. So they send me another copy which is the same as before, no readings. Finally the penny drops and they send me a bill justifying their exorbitant rates. Then they send me an amended bill, which is less. So I pay their last bill the amended bill. Then they send me a letter stating I owe them more money.

So…………….. I telephoned them yesterday, and the poor girl at the end of the phone got a dreadful ear bashing from me, as she tried to explain. But, as I said to her, if you ate at a restaurant and got 6 bills, which one would you pay.

I don’t know if it’s my age, but I am sure incompetency is getting more and more contagious, and spreading. The symptoms are you don’t know your left hand from your right hand, and you just make things up as you go along and hope no one notices.

I do think N Power staff are suffering from this disease. Me, I shall be changing my supplier. After all in a free market, competition drives down prices and improves efficiency, doesn’t it…………………………………..doesn’t it.

Luckily enough I passed A level Economics.

This Easter Message from Pope Allan the 87th

2010-04-04T00:21:00.000-07:00

This Easter Remember the RESURRECTION Shuffle......doing alright...

Choose yourself a partner
From the middle of the floor.
Blow a little kiss
To the woman next door.
Step on the gas
Put your head in the air.
make a "V" sign
And you throw back your hair....doing alright yeah

a do a loo a doo lop, a do a loo a do lop

Put your hand on your hip
Now you let your back bone slip.
Put out your tongue
Put your head in the air.
Make a "V" sign
And you just don't care.
Now you feel free
You gotta loose control.
All Gods children gotta
Little bit of soul.
You don't have to think
You don't have to move a muscle
just do the brow beatin'
Heavy leather resurrection shuffle.....doing alright yeah

a do a loo a doo lop, a do a loo a do lop

Think about nothing now
You're nice and high.
You're advocating love
But you don't know why.
Now you getting vibrations
All down to your feet.
That's the brow beatin'
Heavy leather resurrection beat........doing alright now

a do a loo a doo lop, a do a loo a do lop

I was on my way to Stoke when I funny thing happened....NOT!!

2010-03-14T04:20:00.000-07:00

A Day in the Life of behind a steering wheel.

I drove a lorry to Stoke 3 times last week delivering packaging to a porcelain wash hand basin company. 3 days wages, better than nothing, job is easy enough except for the miles of road works on the M6, the inevitable crashes, the typical Police response: “0h lets close the Motorway and piss everybody off”, and the fact that the workers of Stoke don’t understand me and I don’t understand them. Maybe I should compose a Rough Guide to visiting Stoke, perhaps the previous sentence was it !!

At least as I sit behind the steering wheel listening to the latest road closures on Radio 2’s traffic reports, it gives me time to contemplate. Also gives me time to figure out avoiding the Police road blocks and go the scenic route as a diversion, an ability artificial intelligence through satellite navigation aids fails to cope with. In addition to this latest conspiracy theory of how the Police want to stop Britain working, it does amaze me how all the junctions, direction signs and even the lady on sat nav wants me to pay £10 on the M6 Toll road, which of course is empty because no one in their right mind will pay a toll. Blimey the delivery to Stoke costs £100 in diesel as it is round trip, 50 pence a mile shared between a taxing government and a profiteering oil company.

And…………….it is you the reader, the end consumer, that pays for it eventually when you unpack that everything including the kitchen sink !!!

Of course all this driving me mad and round the bend as opposed to up a toll road, has been a 3rd career blocking me from getting back to my former, better paid, more worthwhile careers. That’s what I think about behind that steering wheel, and when I will get a change in direction, and free from my career path obstacles.

Another blimey. This one aimed at recruiters. Yes I am a real person , not just a name on a piece of paper. Could you not afford me the common courtesy of acknowledgement that I exist, instead of me having to pinch myself all the time. I could get a reputation for self harm you know. It is the same when you are an agency worker: no point talking to him, he is not important, he is only here today or the odd day.

There was a time when I actually interviewed prospective employees, when I actually hired agency staff, I always chatted with them, made them feel comfortable in new surroundings, ease their obvious anxieties. I would make them a cup of coffee, tell them what was going on, what was happening, and a bit about the organisation and our own operation.

It was called politeness. It did not take long, it was an important 1st impression and I did not have a lot of time, but I made time.

Though I hate using the word “obviously” because every Wayne Rooney sentence starts with that very word “obviously”....... Obviously, I was the exception to the rule. Because most employers in this day of improved technological communications, do not consider it important to be friendly, to even know one’s name. Personnel don’t answer your applications, even as a worker in a garden centre, something that would be a labour of love for me, but not even a “f… off we did not like you anyway”. Emails, they are free, don't even have to lick a stamp and walk to the pillar box.

Lot’s of advertised jobs clearly do not exist in truth, when you hear the fumbled excuses at the other end of the telephone line, which funnily enough is a one way line of communications. It is just a ruse to get cvs on the books. Targets once again, false targets, playing the system.

I used to be a somebody and now apparently I am a nobody. And who cares? Well actually I do.

And………. I am still the same person, I am still Allan Sharpe. I must admit when the decade changed to the 2010’s my first thought was, will I live to see the end of it, I would like to see Spurs win the League again, the European Cup before I die (Harry get a move on) and I would like to see England win the World Cup again, and not miss out on penalty shoot outs. I would like to see my off spring progress for as long as I can stay around.

BUT………I have not changed, Mr Somebody has not changed, except I am older, and maybe because I believed in certain things and held onto certain principles and values, that life has and is passing me by…....now.

Of course there are exceptions, there are some friendly faces, but I have to say, and it is an indictment of middle management, that the friendlies are in the vast minority and perhaps that’s why the organisation relies heavily on agency staff, because no one else will work for them as Fagan Plc. True they might get more pay hourly rate as a temp, certainly get overtime, but the temp is not only here today somewhere else tomorrow, maybe, he/she has total insecurity and lack of control. Anyway they do a job for Fagan plc without whom that job would not be done. Yes they get paid. A thanks would be courteous too, not too much to ask for is it, yes it is, oh well.

It is not only, but also......... There is a lot of self interest, only, in the workplace, maybe even in society. It does not matter what is happening outside your front door, don’t get involved, look after number one, sod the rest. Maybe that is why society relies on authorities to clean up the mess we see regularly on 24 hour news channels, instead of looking out of their window and doing something about what is going on. Maybe they have lost faith in the authorities and we are becoming more like Mad Max and survival of the fittest.

Nostalgia is bitter sweet, and I do get bitter and twisted about changes I see all around me, and changes that have happened to me. Don’t tell me you make your own luck, because I will smack that straight back at you on the half volley.

I spent most of my life trying to make the world a better place for some. I got thousands of people millions of pounds back in just refunds, when they were David against Goliath, I took hundreds of con men to the dock and put hundreds on the tv screen, my version of the village stocks and rotten tomatoes.

One of the best things I ever did was pick up a BBC telephone on my Watchdog desk to take a call from an old age pensioner telephoning from Spain the Costa Almeria. The winter of 1988, Bert told me there were about 65 of them paying for an extended winter break to avoid the winter fuel bills at home, and the travel company had put them in a dump next to a building site. Of course I had to validate his story, and the BBC had stringers (researchers) all over the world to call on. So when the stringer phoned me back to tell me the story was true and it was horrendous, the holiday from hell, I put the wheels in motion. Mike Embley and I flew out with a Spanish speaking cameraman and film crew on the Friday and we were filming that night and Saturday morning. We decided to make a send up of the holiday brochure. Our camera had seen the mould on the walls, the newspapers used as draught excluders, the refrigerators that did not work, the green water swimming pool with floating rubbish, the closed restaurant “where there is dancing every evening”. In fact the only dancing would be by mad men on their hats in frustration because the restaurant was part demolished. So Mike read the glossy brochure and then told the reality in front of the camera and we interviewed the poor old pensioners who the travel company ignored... "me I'm sick of it, up to here me, my wife on her hands and knees cleaning this stinking place up, that's not right, it's not a holiday , it's a nightmare……….. until.

The camera always seemed to concentrate minds on problems. It was our style , my style, the doorstep kings’s style, big Al’s style, to take some of the unhappy viewers along to meet Goliath and get them an audience. So it was in the Costa Almeria, and when , with the camera rolling, we entered the local travel office, instant panic set in, a phone call to Head Office in Lancashire: “there is a BBC film crew here, from a programme called Watchdog”, “WHAT!!! What are they doing there?” “its about that block of apartments”, “GET THEM OUT OF THOSE APARTMENTS, do what it takes”.

And so it came to pass…………….. the coaches lined up within hours and what had taken 6 weeks before of ignoring the problem , suddenly became priority uno, mucho grazias. Yes and you guessed it, the pensioners were put up in the biggest 5 star hotel in town for the remainder of their holiday at no extra expense. When we filmed their champagne breakfast that Sunday morning before we flew back to blighty, I had never had my hand shaken so much. It was a wonderful moment of the power of the media to obtain justice and redress.

The film was edited that following week with Mike and I and a film editor, it was a great film, showed the Monday after BBC1 7.30pm, maybe you were watching Coronation Street, I wasn’t.

Greg Dyke used to say, there are no rules in TV, if your Mum likes it and understands it, you have done your job. We used to work on the basis of “the gosh factor” now we have an X Factor, instead. I think we pushed the infotainment boundary then by ridiculing the patently misleading and false brochure description of holiday accommodation that was uninhabitable. It still makes me smile and giggle to this day when I think about it, I guess that is the sweet part of nostalgia. Shame those days have to end my friend, shame no one else has picked up the baton and carried the torch on. Shame our priorities have changed, well for some at least and shame the accountants run things now.

It did not have to be like it was, we showed it could be done better.

Now others try their best to avoid MY winter fuel bills.

For the time I was unemployed during this recent cold spell, I have just got a letter from the Department of Works and Pensions, about my winter fuel payment benefit, circa £25 during the coldest winter for 30 years. Good old civil service.

Uno, they did not know I was unemployed, even though I was in their Job Centre Minus offices (no, I was not making myself a cuppa tea).

Dos, they have only just acknowledged my application form, now that Spring has Sprung.

Tres, they will deal with my claim in June 2010, yes midsummer.

Men for all seasons obviously (there is that word again, "obviously") I must not turn into a Wayne Rooney interview alike …………………………………….

So endeth another chapter....until we meet again………………….some sunny day

Now is the time to say goodbye.
(Goodbye)
Now is the time to yield a sigh.
(Yield it, yield it)
Now is the time to wend our way-eee
Until we meet again-eee
Some sunny day.
Goodbye, goodbye, we’re leaving you, skiddlydye.
Goodbye, we wish a fond goodbye, fa-ta-ta-ta-ta, fa-ta-ta-ta.
Goodbye, goodbye, we’re leaving you, skiddlydum.
Goodbye, we wish a fond goodbye, la-la-ta-ta-ta.
La dah da, lah la la

It’s Not only … But Also, aint it Dud, yes Pete sniff.

They dont make them like they used to

2010-03-10T23:12:00.000-08:00

They don’t make them like They used to

A bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past.

Is nostalgia more bitter than sweet?

As my suits stay in the wardrobe, I still apply for gissajobs, but as my age increases my opportunities decrease.

It seems to me that what I have achieved in the past counts for little today with prospective employers. I would like to become involved with combating climate change. Unlike Trading Standards and Consumer Protection where I hold a seemingly worthless Government Qualification, I have no pedigree in climate change, only that I have added to it along with the rest of us and I made TV programmes about it almost 20 years ago. A situation that has not changed much since, except worsened hence my desire to get involved once again. Apparently one can get a degree in climate change these days. I guess that qualifies someone to sit behind a desk top and do too little before it’s too late. If only it was never too late.

It was oh so different once. 42 is not only the answer to the universe, I think for me it was my Everest. Circa 42 I was head hunted by Science at the BBC to bring an element of Current Affairs into a new series called Life on 1. Prime Time BBC1, Thursday evenings 8pm. Science made Horizon and Tomorrow’s World, but for a new programme that addressed environment issues, I was asked to transfer from Watchdog to help produce it. My role was in charge of the film team, whilst others produced the live locations each week.

Exciting times. I had my own office in Kensington House. I had and earned the respect of a great Editor David Patterson. One day back in 1991 (those were the days still my friend) I said to him, “do you remember going back to school after the summer holidays?” He was my age, a bit older, and he always smirked when I asked him a question, I guess he did not know what was coming next. It was interesting though being unpredictable, it still is. I said when I was going to Grammar School in September 1960’s I walked through Roundwood Park Willesden (about 5 miles from Kensington House due north west). As a 12 year old I trudged through all the autumn leaves in the park, leaves that had fallen off the trees by September, Plane Trees, Horse Chestnut Trees, Oak Trees, Sycamore Trees. I said to him looking out of the window, “now the trees are in leaf till November, the seasons are changing, shifting.” He said “you are right.” Patterson was a great thinker, a very clever man, we got on well, we spoke the same language and shared the same ideals and principles. He was old guard BBC, a true programme maker, who wanted to make the viewer think.

So, he gave me a reporter, a researcher , a production assistant and said prove it. If you prove it we can base one of the series of programmes on it. So I set about my task in the days before the internet, when you had to find written articles and telephone bash the world to find experts. In addition, it was not the only concept I had to juggle with.

At the beginning of the time with Science I still played football for BBC every Saturday. One such afternoon in Tooting the normally strong resilient centre half who took no prisoners as well as the ball in the crunching tackle of the day, tried to do something completely different. As well as Mr Dependable, “they won’t get past Allan”, I liked to think I had a degree of skill when kicking the ball. At least I could kick the ball with either foot, unlike most of today’s professional prima donnas. So when the right winger came bearing down on our penalty area with the goalkeeper at his mercy, I came from his left straight across him and Franz Beckenbauer style took the ball from him with my left as I glided past, only for him to shoot at my trailing right leg, which then spun round like the whizzing hands of a clock. Down I went. I could not believe it. Even the Red Coat referees at Butlins had told me in their football competitions, take it easy these players are on holiday they don’t want to go home with a broken leg. Now after all these years and famous local newspaper back page headlines like the pitch battle of Ruislip Manor 1974, there I was on the grass with my fibula and tibia sticking through my metal shin pads and black woollen socks. “You alright Allan?” Harry said. “No my leg’s broken Harry”, “you’ll be alright, stand up and run it off”. Yes that is what we all did with knocks. “Harry my bones are sticking through my sock”, “oh blimey , yes it does look bad”.

Good old Harry , he brought 4 bottles of beer to my hospital bedside a week later just before I was due to try out crutches for the first time in my life with the physio nurse. I sailed up and down those stairs!!!

HOWEVER. A new role at the Beeb, a new girlfriend Hazel Graham, a beautiful long hair, long legged production assistant on Watchdog, and now a broken leg. So the Beeb hired me a converted Austin Allegro from Hertz in Edgware Road, Marble Arch. As I sat in the car with my right leg out straight in plaster up to my groin, I had an accelerator and brake on my right hand by the steering wheel. Of course I had to undergo the sods law initiative test, as I drove out of their alleyway a white transit van tried to write off the vehicle. But…………….. I managed to swerve and avoid the lunatic, in my first 30 seconds of disabled driving.

So, I would be there on the cliffs of Sunderland in a 70mph gale, on my 2 crutches under my armpits, directing a film crew about the pollution on the otherwise picturesque beaches there, shame about the weather. I looked like a parrot on a perch in a draught swinging backwards and forwards and trying not to go over the cliff.

Yes Life on 1 had to go on like any show and it was life as I knew it. The crutches always fell to the tarmac as I got out of the car. Young girls would run across the road to pick them up for me. Men would slam the door in front of me along corridors or at entrances. Yes equal opportunities as a sharp lesson for this Sharpe.

But, by the time I flew to Colorado and California, my plaster was cut down to size. I was still able to get caught by the Highway Patrol (Denver Branch). We had a plane to catch, it was getting there by the skin on our teeth time, once again. Fortunately the Highway Patrolman was one of those that loved our British Accents, I had 3 giggling, friendly , fluttering eyelash, BBC females in the Pontiac. He detained us no longer so we could catch the flight. I guess he finally gave up when my production assistant flung the large unfolded map (yes before sat nav) at him through her window asking for the quickest route to the airport, and he managed to catch the paper missile in the breeze and screw it up to shove back to her and wish us a nice day. Well done Linda!!

Now when I made a programme for the BBC I became a rapid mini expert in whatever subject the film was about. I had to know what I was talking about, have the facts at my fingertips, my finger on the pulse, else you guys the viewers would see there was no substance. And, substance there was. In fact that film in 1991 with interviews and computer projections from the world’s leading climatologist Professor Schneider of Colorado University predicted our weather today almost 20 years later. Extreme weather. Events that when they happen, whether the weather is hot, cold, dry or wet, it is an all time record “since records began”. Even though my brother in law, Mick, is one of the many sceptics, we have borrowed this earth for our children and our children’s children, as the Red Indians believed. Climate change is man made, the evidence is all around us, like the leaves on the trees, or on a park path in Willesden as they used to be.

20 years on. the electric cars, hydrogen cars, natural gas buses I drove then, are still to emerge in the showroom. When have you ever been in a pub with double glazing and the lights are not switched on, even on a sunny day.
I filmed these alternative fuel vehicles in California. They even converted 2nd hand Ford Fiestas in Islington London N1 by taking out the engine and fitting banks of batteries and electric motors to the front wheels 20 years ago.
But where is the infrastructure in “Great” Britain? I drive for miles these days. Yes I have seen a dump of an LPG filling depot for converted cars run by Polish Workers, one of whom speaks English. But, are the Seven Sisters preventing change while there still is oil to drill under our ocean floors? Do all governments lead or follow. California made legislation for change. They still lead the world, because their land suffered from air pollution even when the Spanish Conquistadores first discovered the angel coast line, due to climatic and geographical coincidences.

Amory Lovins was, and probably still is, a leading energy scientist. He lived 10,000 feet up in the Rockies outside Aspen. His house used electricity but even surrounded by snow, his meter tricked round, whereas ours resemble a helicopter rotor blades. He had 10 fold glazing and copper water piping circulating behind the glass and walls oh his home. He used heat extraction when cooking on his Aga, His washing water never went below 60 degrees Fahrenheit. They could have called him Mr Fahrenheit, he was travelling at the speed of light as Freddy Mercury would sing it. He grew indoor banana plants behind the window panes, 10,000 feet up in the Rockies.

Dennis Weaver, who used to be Chester in Dodge City to Gunsmoke’s Mr Dillon played by James Arness, lived in Malibu. He had a home constructed out of old rubber tyres and empty drinks cans. The rubber kept the heat in and the cold out, helped by the air contained in the aluminium cans. It was also a great use of recycling. His Duel, as in the film he stared in against a crazy lorry driver, was with Climate Change. Now he is dead, alas, like so many great names and great people of nostalgia.Little did the wooden legged Chester who run up the Dodge City Street shouting for help from "Mr Dillon, Mr Dillon" on my black and white TV set in Willesden, realise how much I was glued to his performance as a 10 year old, in the good old days.

And, when I recount these tales of yesteryear. When others ask me, how did you make a programme then, I have to explain about the days, weeks, months phone bashing, planning, organising, researching, then filming the interviews. Filming the scenes, the location, the action scenes that would be needed to voice commentary over when we got back to base and started editing the film. Putting all the best bits and clips together to make sense and compose the argument, in the time we had allocated to us. The story we were telling and the story we believed in.

Those were the days my friend, yes we thought they would never end, but end they did. Patterson and others like him left the BBC as it changed and followed the lesser, cheaper standards of ITV. I would soon leave too. Now I watch little television. Programme schedules that incorporate free talent or free reality offer little to my intellect. Entertainment they might be for some that want to emulate the couch vegetable. Infotainment they are not, and I will always hold the record viewing figures for Watchdog at over 10 million up against Coronation Street, because now we have more channels, more choice, but not better programming.
Yes generations have at first been glued to Top of the Pops then subsequently sat at the back of the room irritated and not recognising any of the so called performers. But, they don’t make them like they used to. They call it progress. Me, I beg to differ.

Until the next time, stay tuned to this channel……..after all one day even this channel will end !!!

Post Script:

Remembering Chester, I even used to hobble as a kid emulating his performance on those wooden sidewalks of Dodge City in the Wild West.

I made a Sport Video for the retail market under the Sharper Image Banner in the 90's. It featured Jimmy Greaves and Tommy Docherty with ad lib links to film clips of incidents on the fever pitch. My son Ian was working, learning, with me in those days and in the West End studio whilst I was in the gallery, and Jimmy Greaves was on the studio floor, Ian confessed to him "you were my dad's hero when he was a boy, he saw you play for Spurs every game, and when my brother and I grew up and watched Spurs with him he would tell us about the goals you scored as if he was still there".

What a confession to make huh!!

Over Qualified in lateral thinking not

2010-02-21T03:02:00.000-08:00

When you were young and your heart was an open book
You used to say live and let live
(you know you did, you know you did you know you did)
But in this ever changing world in which we live in
Makes you give in and cry
Say live and let die

Live and let DIE...................

I enquired about a job the other day, I thought it was a misprint : Wanted VNA Driver, but no it's not a Van driver they wanted , it's a qualification...a very narrow aisle driver, blimey, does that mean there is a NA driver and a VWA driver too, do they get less ££££ for driving down normal aisles or very wide aisles.

I was the first TV journalist to forecast climatic change in 1991, yes 19 years ago on a Thursday Night BBC1, and all the extreme weather predictions have come to fruition. BUT.......... can I get a job in something that is close to my heart, after all, as the Red Indians believed, we borrow this Earth for our children and their children.

No, you now need a Degree in it to sit behind a desk and do too little too late.

Standing in line marking time--
Waiting for the welfare dime
'Cause they can't buy a job
The man in the silk suit hurries by
As he catches the poor old ladies' eyes
Just for fun he says "Get a job"

That's just the way it is
Some things will never change
That's just the way it is
But don't you believe them

Maybe you need a qualification for pulling the toilet roll out of those cylindrical drums they use in the cubicles at Motorway Service Centres and Industrial Toilets. I can never find the dangly bit, toilet roll, I am referring too here. Maybe there is a guy in quality control who has glue to stick the end. Bit like the quality control officer at Durex with a pin who mutters "another bastard another bastard".

And finally............ as I drive over England's white and pleasant lands, I notice the road side signs as I leave the quaint village "Thank You for driving carefully".

Now the question: How did they know?? Why are there no further signs: "Now" "You Can "Be as Reckless as you like", "Go on drive like a mad man".

Thought provoking yes, but I don't need to be told to drive carefully, I thought we all wanted to live and not die.

Until next time.........................

Thrapston for the Winter Olympics

2010-02-21T01:04:00.000-08:00

Thrapston for the Olympics

I think gold medallist Amy Williams could have got her tea tray out on the A605 on Thursday night . She got to 90 mph in 54 seconds in lack of snow Vancouver, whereas I drove at 9mph taking 2 hours to get from Corby to my snow blocked home in Thrapston, just 12 miles.

True it was only 4 inches of rush hour blizzard snow, but those that did not keep their wheels moving, got stuck making it more hazardous for those of us that were trying to gauge the changing white road conditions.

Though Thrapston has not got the Rocky Mountains in its back yard, the local countryside is undulating and the lorries could not get up the slopes. In fact I had been driving in the snow all day through Worcestershire , Warwickshire and then Northamptonshire. I only saw Highway Agency gritters on some of the motorways, even the M45 was white and only me driving along it (in a lorry), with others following. It was as if the road was closed as I drove through the vortex of a snow blizzard.

Road signs were covered in white, and to compound the agony for motorists the M1 had been shut for most of the day due to an earlier accident. When the snow arrived the Police or jack knifed lorries closed even more roads.

So once again the snow is forecast, but the authorities are slow to respond, or in the interests of safety make it worse for all of us trying to get home. Much of my endeavours getting home from my work base in my car, which is an automatic and hates the snow, was trying to circumnavigate the road blocks, to little avail as the minor roads were nigh impassable. In fact the only way I got into Thrapston was on the wrong side of the road passed the Police cauldrons who were distracted by other events fortunately, but had made the other side of the road clear by stopping all the traffic.

Else, like I saw the following morning, I could have still been out there with the rest.

Avatar

2010-02-12T03:33:00.000-08:00

The Winter Olympics are coming, and my son lives there in Vancouver, no snow as well, except by the truck load. Great Britain has high hopes in some disciplines despite the organising association going bust, watch out for the men's curling world champions, and it ain't Canada. WE also have a young girl who comes down the ice on a breakfast tray, bit like the slope by Norwich Prison circa 1982 and a licking Labrador. Graeme being the smallest was in front on a yellow plastic sleigh bought en route in a petrol station, Ian was middle man, I was back bob sleigher, big bum steering and anchoring. Fast, Isaac Newton would have been proud, it was as if we invented the laws of gravity, yet alone were discovering them. Then on one passage, the golden Labrador decided to stand in our descent path, I just managed to bum steer round the hound, as it stuck its panting tongue out and managed to lick all three of us on our right cheeks, fortunately we missed the wagging tail!!

On my domestic front, we finally saw Avatar during the week in 3D and at Leicester Square prices though I was sure I drove down the A14 to Kettering.

Avatar: The descent of a deity to earth, and his incarnation as a man or an animal; chiefly associated with the incarnations of Vishnu.

Funny how computers have seen religion, though I have never liked a Ruby Murray myself.

Fantastic Film though, and though they were not gods descending, I did meet two Samaritans this week. WE were at B&Q having purchased some radiator cabinets. I have never liked radiators to my eye, and now that some TV 60 minute make over DIY day time programmes are showing them to Shirley Not, it is now in vogue to buy them. Some of us have our own ideas, others have to ketchup, never mind, back to the plot. The large one would not go in the Jaguar, yes I know it's a large car, I know that every time I try to park it. Unpacked the thing and still would not go in the car. Some kind soul, walked up and said I could use his Astra Van. I said of course, thats alright mate I will manage, though clearly I could not. Then he drove his Astra van up, and said he would follow me to Thrapston, 15 miles away. Which he did, and he would not take any cash for the petrol. What an amazing chappie, what what !!

Next, my car thought, well the onboard computer thought, that there was something wrong with the engine, so it kept on warning me about Failsafe Engine Mode. Now this reminds me of the time in California on the Rocky Highway, when the Automatic Chrysler stalled on the mountain incline, with rocks falling around us, during the aftermath of a hurricane August 1982. Yes an automatic stalls, five in the car, only for the on board computer voice to tell me: "your screen wash bottle was a quarter full". Later next day it incurred the wrath of my Mother's voice, when it started it's daily chorus check list "all monitored systems are functioning" only for Mother to say "Oh shut up, where were you yesterday when we needed you".

So I took the Jaguar to a little delapidated garage , well it is Thrapston, and yes we are back to the present. He scanned the computer, told it to be less negative, and more like the Man from Del Monte, and did not even charge me. What an excellent chappie what what !!

Now if only Spurs were not sheep when facing wolves huh, at least Harry agrees with my BBC critique, almost verbatum, as well as others, I got 5 stars for my comment !!!

Now the BBC have given me the title of the "legendary allansharpe", now is that the nearest thing to Avatar or what what !!!

Mission Accomplished

2010-02-06T02:28:00.000-08:00

Normal Service has resumed on the Hewlett Packard Pavillion front.

I feel quite chuffed, fanfare for the common man. Friday morning the computer said no, kept on switching itself off all the time, I think it was sent a nasty bug by an even nastier personna non grata, unknown.

Now when can you get free technical help out of warranty , answer difficult to find, if not impossible, so I resorted to my own technical assistance. I went into safe mode, and programme restore. It was like watching the grass grow, yes paint dries quicker, but 24 hours later , umpteen downloads and updates even later, I am back as a matter of fact I'm back, not for the faint hearted !!!

Metabolism

2010-02-01T23:12:00.000-08:00

Metabolism

It would have been my mum’s birthday today 2nd February. She died 19 years ago, six strokes in six months, it was merciful to her when she finally gave up, she had turned into a vegetable, so sad. Strange it does not seem like 19 years ago, long time. She was always anguished about me. When I broke my leg in football she was my first visitor. She had got to Tooting in SW London from Dereham in Norfolk via a Greenline bus changing at Victoria Bus Station. She was there before visiting time and before noon on a Sunday. I heard her voice as I lay there after the overnight operation, of course the nurses let her in, how could they resist, she would rattle on until they succumbed. It was only a broken leg, though both tibia and fibula were poking out of my right BBCTV football sock last time I had looked. But my mum showed remarkable conviction, determination and stubbornness, as well as complete bafflement to the listener, above and beyond the call of duty. She did so until the day she died, 74, RIP.

I was editing a BBCTV Watchdog programme that day, 29th of October 1991. Mum had keeled over and out of the nursing bed at 7.30 am in Norfolk, my Sister called me. By 9.30am I was in the edit suite at TV Centre, London and got an internal call from Sarah Caplin, the new editor, who everyone disliked, including me. She asked if I should be at work, she had found out my news. I answered in monotone and monosyllable. Strange how on that one occasion she showed a degree of compassion, which otherwise was never there, and the 6th floor had made her boss of a consumer programme fighting for people’s rights!!!

Memories, those were the days my friend, even though they came to an end.

I heard on the truck radio last week my song, a Russian song originally, sung by Mary Hopkins released 30 August 1968, ah yes the summer of 68…. Mini skirts and scooters, Mods and Rockers, life as we knew it, Jim, errr sorry, Allan…..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyaTIXdN5fI

Once upon a time there was a tavern
Where we used to raise a glass or two
Remember how we laughed away the hours
And dreamed of all the great things we would do

Those were the days my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we choose
We'd fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way.
La la la la...
Those were the days, oh yes those were the days

Then the busy years went rushing by us
We lost our starry notions on the way
If by chance I'd see you in the tavern
We'd smile at one another and we'd say

Those were the days my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we choose
We'd fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way.
La la la la...
Those were the days, oh yes those were the days

Just tonight I stood before the tavern
Nothing seemed the way it used to be
In the glass I saw a strange reflection
Was that lonely woman really me

Those were the days my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we choose
We'd fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way.
La la la la...
Those were the days, oh yes those were the days

Through the door there came familiar laughter
I saw your face and heard you call my name
Oh my friend we're older but no wiser
For in our hearts the dreams are still the same

Those were the days my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we choose
We'd fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way.
La la la la...
Those were the days, oh yes those were the days.

Google and You Tube today help me recall and go back in time. Of course the lonely image in the mirror is a different gender of the same species. I see Dolly Parton did a cover version and is worth a look because she is a bit of a doll and so did Bonny Tyler, who lived in Willesden too, before we both made it and moved on!!

"Those Were the Days"[1] a song is credited to Gene Raskin, who put English lyrics to the Russian gypsy song "Dorogoi dlinnoyu" ("Дорогой длинною", lit. "By the long road"), written by Boris Fomin (1900-1948) with words by the poet Konstantin Podrevskii. It deals with reminiscence upon youth and romantic idealism. The first known recording of the song was by Alexander Vertinsky in the 1920s. The song is best remembered for Mary Hopkin's 1968 recording, which was a top-ten hit in both the U.S. and the U.K.

Of course 1968 was one of my formulative years, just attained my A levels, just lost my virginity to Kim who was 8 years older than me, and just started a real job, Trainee Trading Standards Officer in the London Borough of Brent NW10.

I was young, often to be seen in a Pub, though social only, I would dance the night away, I would fight and never contemplated losing. Now it’s just mirrors.

I always hated losing.

Football, tennis, cricket, darts, Scrabble, Monopoly, Risk, Subbuteo and worse of all ….. love.

Those were the days my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we choose
We'd fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way.
La la la la...

“You can’t win them all” they used to say, just watch me, was my response. But, you do come a cropper, hence the title of this chapter, “Metabolism”, written at 04.30 hours. Why so early, did you ask, in your sleep? Well I am not like Margaret Thatcher, needing only three and a half hours sleep with electrodes in her bath…stimulating huh ??!!.

No, last week I was a Blue Arrow Flexible Employee, official, I had the hand book to prove it. Flexible as a friend, though not as a credit card, I was behind a wheel of a rather long wheelbase truck, delivering to homes who had ordered furniture from a catalogue. Incidentally about 3 out of 10 preferred other flat pack wardrobes and beds. The flat packs were heavy, but obviously not appealing to the disappointing eye out of the cardboard box when compared to the magazine image. The Beds were carried in by one person, that light, huh. Wow, even the King Size!! So collections and deliveries, but there is no money (other than for me) in collections. I was temp and not to perm, whereas the salaried guys also worked 12 hours a day in London, Hertfordshire, Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk, for no overtime, but the promise of a bonus, if all 27 calls were made, the truck did not break down, all customers were in, and no one cancelled. Tall order huh, well if you were the boss, would you want to promise a bonus or pay it?? True , the trucks were brand new, and reliable, even the radio worked for Mary Hopkins courtesy of BBC Radio2. Though they did have an electronic automatic gearbox and needed pause for thought about forward or reverse, never mind, talk amongst yourselves while you hold up the traffic, manoeuvring.

So though it’s early now and not yet dawn, like jet lag, you get your pattern of sleep and wake disturbed. Up and not quite at them at 5am each day, pitch black when you arise for the bugle call !!

5:50 AM - Assembly of Trumpeters for Reveille [First Call] . The first signal for the soldiers to rise and shine. This call was historically sounded between 4:45 AM - and 6:00 AM - depending on the season. It bears a similarity to the French Cavalry call "La Garde a Vous."

6:00 AM - Reveille
Upon the last note of this call, the flag was raised, the morning gun fired and the men all had to assemble for morning roll call. It is the same as a French call which dates from the time of the Crusades.

So Since the Crusades, we have had to endure getting up tooooooooooooo early for some and certainly me, my brain and my bodily functions, pardon the expression, but you know what I mean. Trust the French to bugger it up again for the Brits.

In addition when you are at warp factor 60 years old, you need all the help you can get with bodily functions, there are no reconditioned units, and the mileage is high, with not many careful owners and a few missing service entries in the log book.

So, that was the week that was, last week, but Friday night the goal posts or the bull’s eyes were moved at ten to five and there is a change of agency. No more archers dressed in blue, It would seem. Hence the flexibility my friend.

However…….
my mental alarm clock has not registered the imposed change still, hence this prose about my metabolism, excuse me while I go to the loo.

Natural Break…….be back soon, stay tuned to this channel……

Listen to some music while I dash off….. (better than adverts!!)

aha-yeah

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqYp1jpzKCk

I've known a few guys who thought they were pretty smart
But you've got being right down to an art
You think you're a genius, you drive me up the wall
You're a regular original, a "knowitall"

Ohwooh, you think you're special
Ohwooh, you think you're something else

Ok, so you're a rocket scientist...

That don't impress me much!
So you got the brains, but have you got the touch?
(Now) Don't get me wrong, yeah I think you're alright
But that won't keep me warm in the middle of the night
That don't impress me much!

aha-yeah

I never knew a guy who carried a mirror in his pocket
And a comb up his sleeve, just in case
And all that extra hold gel in your hair ought'a lock it
'Cause Heaven prevent, it should fall outta place

Ohwooh, you think you're special
Ohwooh, you think you're something else

Ok, so you're Brad Pitt...

That don't impress me much!
So you got the looks but have you got the touch?
(Now) Don't get me wrong, yeah I think you're alright
But that won't keep me warm in the middle of the night
That don't impress me much!

You're one of those guys who likes to shine's machine
You make me take off my shoes before you let me get in
I can't believe you kiss your car good night
C'mon baby tell me, you must be joking, right??

Ohwooh, you think you're special
Ohwooh, you think you're something else

Ok, so you got a car...

That don't impress me much!
So you got the moves, but have you got the touch?
Don't get me wrong, yeah I think you're alright
But that won't keep me warm in the middle of the night
[..]
But that won't keep me warm on the long, cold lonely night
That don't impress me much!

Ok, so what do you think... you're Elvis or something...
That don't impress me much!

Well that was a modern day Mary Hopkins. Shania Twain was a woman that made me feel like a man, amazing performer , I saw her live in Hyde Park, even though it has always been hard to impress me much.

So.....back to the plot...........

I was impressed much at first, see we all make mistakes, but then moving the archery range was not entirely their fault. I had been recruited with 19 hours of applying for a Total Job on line. "Quick huh", she said, "are you impressed at our efficiency", "well like an arrow, straight to the target" I responded, "oh you are sharp witted " she retorted.

And the week that was ? Well some of it could have made “Wheels” my sit com.

Do you know some people that have moved into brand new houses, and are therefore not on Sat Nav or in maps, do not know the main road to their residence. In fact I have known people who do not know the colour of their front door in a new build, with no street names and no numbers as yet. I guess they believe the TV commercials when washing machines are delivered from the Planet Zanussi by time warp through the ceiling….crrrrash!!

So, when they do not answer the phone or the message left on their phone, there is only one recourse. If you want to know the way ask a postman, they always know, as long as you are not far away and on another beat. But, late in the afternoon, one has to resort to asking a policeman. He doesn’t know, nor does his station, so he tries the lady again on the phone, like I had tried, this time she answers. “Is that Mrs Pretty, he asks, “this is PC 459 from Hertfordshire Constabulary, I have a few questions to ask you”, he said grinning. Now she has not got a video phone, so when I get to her house, I said “see what happens when you don’t return calls, next time you’ll get nicked!!” “Oh, scared the life out of me she said, I wondered, what I had done”.

Then there was my mate, in the cab helping me, one of the guys wishing he won the lottery, after all he had a better chance than getting his bonus. Nice man from Cameroon. But it was funny seeing him disappear up Lordship Lane looking for the house with the washing machine on his trolley, AFTER, I had parked directly opposite the house. Some mothers do have them, but I did run after him and get him back, after all my mother had me.

I do try to have a laugh with these customers. Though they probably are still thinking about was that a joke, even now. For instance, when you deliver an exercise bike or a treadmill, and they say put it by the patio doors, to which I say, “can’t do that…… this one is the 5 gear model, select over drive and you’ll go through the windows straight onto the lawn” Pause for Thought, exit stage right.

Sometimes you here them giggling as you are in 2nd gear leaving their road.

1.2.3 penny drop time.

And now I think it’s all over time, well it is now, 3 hours after I started, I think I will finish. Just for now of course…watch this space!!

Quote of the Week: admiration for Harry Redknapp Manager of “Come on you Spuuuurrrrs” after 2 nil defeat to Liverpool at Anfield - "I don't know why they disallowed Jermain's goal, I have never got anything from that Referee, Howard Webb, probably the 4 officials are still huddled together, consulting the rule book, to find a reason." Tell it as it is Harry.

The Burning Bush....well not quite!!!

2010-01-12T03:04:00.000-08:00

I saw a Sign

Have you ever been going somewhere and thought, this is not meant to be……..

Yesterday 11th of January 2010, I was proceeding in a westerly direction. Now the traffic reports said the East bound A14 was jammed because of a lorry crash. So there I am on the west bound carriageway parked in the outside lane for 35 minutes alongwith hundreds of other vehicles, in the snow with our engines switched off, no compass but I did get A level Geography.

The purpose of my journey, you ask, a reasonable question and it was to attend a grievance procedure meeting. What sort of grievance? True I have many to choose from, spoilt for choice in these later years of my life, I know, but it was with my former employers, Crouch Logistics, whose Head Office is in Rugby and I was going to tackle them about their unauthorised deductions from my hard earned wages before Christmas.

Crouch are the subcontractors for UPS the American Courier Company whose depot is in Northampton. It was in their van and depot that I spent my waking hours for 5 months before Christmas, until I walked out on pay day December the 18th as they were not going to steal my wages anymore. This the 2nd time they had done it out of 5, and they also refused to discuss their unauthorised actions. So…………that is a grievance, taking £200 out of my pay packet, meant that for the Christmas rush when demand exceeded supply, I was working 12 hours a day for £41 net.

So……….. I left this resignation letter on their notice board:

The Worse Job I have ever had…………………..

I am no longer prepared to work 60 hours a week for Crouch Logistics, and not knowing how much money I will actually take home .

The reason for Crouch’s poor performance in the eyes of their UPS contractual masters, is their fundamental and total reliance on the hard working drivers. This job cannot be done on the cheap to maximise profits.

Organisation is poor, management are not proactive, but reactive and do not have any idea in advance of the workload for their drivers each day. The attitude is “it is in your area so you do it”, whether it is a timed deliveries, standard deliveries, or collections, regardless of quantity, bulk, type of premises, in zone location, traffic and access.

All those considerations are irrelevant to management, but not to the driver who faces penalties when demand exceeds supply. Management can just pass UPS penalties for poor performance on to the drivers. Penalties which are often false, unauthorised, deducted as a fait accompli and are therefore illegal, contrary to Section 13 of the Employment Rights Act 1996. Sticks are plenty, carrots are non existent.

I challenge the management to do this job lawfully, within the hours specified in the EU working time directive and making a delivery every 5 minutes, including driving in conformity with the Road Traffic Acts, as this is what I and others have been asked to do.

Is it any wonder that more than half the 44 drivers have left this workplace in the 5 months I have been here and now its my turn to leave. I would rather have no job than this job.

Now the reaction to that public notice was instant hostility from Chris Crouch the governor and winner of the Leicestershire New Business Award for 2008. He bombarded my mobile phone, and then threatened me with court and the police, texts and even an answaphone message left on Christmas Eve. However bully boy bluff tactics do not scare me, and I am now waiting for a hearing at the employment tribunal as I have accused Crouch of 4 offences, in order to get my money back.

So, why go to a grievance procedure, when you are no longer an employee. Well the letter I got was quite conciliatory, and with hindsight was probably a standard letter, just with new dates and new names. It did state “so we can answer properly”. It transpired that they were ill prepared, said nothing apart from “well you signed the contract, which said fines for incorrect deliveries”. To which my retort has always been, “yes but you don’t know if that delivery was on my van, and also you have deducted fines for deliveries before 9am, when geographically, no Crouch driver can make them that early because of the distance we travel, and you have deducted fines for deliveries not even in my post code area.” Like always and par for the course there was no response.

So the meeting was a sham a farce, but I had to go through with it, else I could have been criticised at any employment tribunal. I guess the meeting was file “better late than never” or “too little too late” or “wasted time” or even “bizarre” as for 45 minutes I just elaborated about what they had been given to them in writing point by point rebuttal of their unauthorised deductions for 2 months This time they wrote it down and listed with painful expressions.

It does annoy me, that people who are not as bright as others, can hold down important jobs, whereas the likes of me phone up this morning again to apply for Job Seekers allowance. It’s sad but true, and I suppose that is my biggest grievance.

Gissajob, I can do that (better), maybe I should do the traffic report or the weather, both are riddled with errors, the white stuff has finally gone after 3 weeks of a mini ice age. There were days when I did not venture out as the “storm” was brewing, but, it came to nothing, it is well that these guys do not brew tea !!!

As for the A14 dual carriageway, well ironically it was a “Crouch” (not related apparently) tow truck that pulled a Sainsbury’s articulated lorry out of the rearranged and demolished central reservation. As it passed me proceeding in its easterly direction, us westerly folk, could carry on late in our journeys. HOWEVER…………. I had to come back, didn’t I, in an easterly direction, no chance, the road was now closed, (geee aren’t our Highways Agency Men so wonderful!!!)

So Via 2 sides of a triangle (see we had geography and industrial relations, now its maths (pay attention, don’t doze off, almost at the end now) I drove back via Market Harborough only to park up on the A5199, because all the other lemmings have thought of that one too. 4 hours out of the house, for no reason at all, apart from one free cup of coffee and use of their downstairs toilet. Hi Ho, but it’s not off to work I go.

Until next time………………oh by the way, why do civil servants have no sense of humour? “I am a gatherer of information, my job is not to give information” the Job Centre Minus guy said as he apologised for his slow computer, and when I said “perhaps your hamster’s exercise wheel needs some WD40”, well lead balloon time, not even a glimmer of a response, bit like Crouch management, hold on I will punch myself……ouch!!! Yes I do exist!!! Well that’s a relief (for some haha!!)

Fever Pitch

2009-12-02T12:40:00.000-08:00

David Bentley had the world of football at his feet when he transferred to Spurs for £15m. The England International could have made his place permanent at both club and international level. Instead he has been a waste of space, too interested in getting his hair messed up, and soppy ball tricks that don’t work, instead of creating and scoring.

Harry Redknapp, as good a manager as he is, the true test of his Spurs side and his management is when Spurs beat Manchester United instead of getting kicked out of cup competitions by them and selecting the woeful Bentley. Football is a team game, teams cannot carry passengers.

Sepp Blatter and FIFA. 23 years ago Maradonna cheated England out of the world cup with his so called “hand of god” goal. 23 years later we can still all see goals that should have been allowed or disallowed, all except the referee, linesman and Sepp Blatter, who should himself win a winners’ medal for having his head in the sand longer than any ostrich………………..mute applause for the above.

Come on you Spurs

2009-11-30T13:23:00.000-08:00

Ask a Wigan Athletic fan whose team actually reimbursed his expenses when visiting White Heart Lane only to see his side hammered 9 -1 ....Come on You Spurs

Don't you want me Baby, don't you want me ahahaha

2009-11-30T13:18:00.000-08:00

I started writing this blog as some kind of legacy to the next generations, about life as I know it, because I never had anyone to give me pearls of wisdom really apart from a caring elder sister.

Now, driving for UPS I feel over qualified, under utilised…………..it is so degrading sometimes ferrying cardboard boxes, and so depressing. Infuriating when idiots are behind a steering wheel and are in front of me, but at least not for long !!! Also infuriating when stores don’t answer their delivery goods in back doors, those that have bells of course, Yes believe it or not some don’t have bells and I guess they believe in divine meditation to get supplies.

And another thing…. I used to earn more for 40 hours a week rather than less for 60 hours a week of tedium.

No one ever prepared me for this aspect of life as I know it. Hence the message according to Meldew and the story line now. It’s no good saying, I am doom and gloom, could be worse. I am older and wiser, too old for a worthwhile job, and the stark reality is no one wants a man like me aged 60. That is rather soul destroying, and sadly it is true. Yes I delivered a small box to a lovely lady who answered the door in a wheel chair. She was so happy, it made me smile. She had everything to be unhappy about but she was not………….mmmmm.

Whereas me, I get so fed up. Last Friday night, eating my dinner at the dinner table, I was still mentally in the fast lane trying to get home. Some female retailer had said a few hours earlier that I looked shattered, well a few hours later she was dead right.

It is awful, wasteful and indictment on our society, that someone like me, yes I am blowing my own trumpet, well someone has too………cannot use his experience and knowledge for gainful employment for the benefit of others as well as me.

I have a chat every now and again with a young lad who works in Waterstones, the book shop. He is told when to work, most of the 7 days the shop is open, for a basic salary. He has no say on his times of the shifts, inc Saturday and Sunday and late night Thursdays. He asks me about my job, most of the shops know I work 60 hours a week verbatim. Neither of us get overtime. Was Margaret Thatcher and Rupert Murdoch right to kill the successors of the Tolpuddle Martyrs ???? I think not.

In the 70’s as a thirty something, I thought things would get easier. There would be more leisure time, a better work life balance. Wow was I wrong wrong wrong with that logical forecast. Employment sucks, this recession is a depression, less jobs and more people on the dole going for the fewer opportunities as situations are not vacant at all and slavery has manifested once again. Still we have firms going bust, the latest Bottoms Up has gone bottom up. That means those jobs are not there anymore and the staff are all looking for work, it is a constant spiral or diminishing returns.

My job with UPS has more downs than Ups, but at least it’s a job and I have some money, but no time and not enough £££ to spend on riotous living.

One final thought. For more than 6 months Shirley and I did not speak, we led separate lives apart from the odd slagging match. The house was for sale. She wanted a new life with a Yorkshire terrier. It was a sad affair.

One day she said she didn’t want anyone else to be with me.

That was rather poignant.

No one had ever said that to me before.

It is easy to demolish, takes so much longer to construct. Plants take time to flourish, buildings too to rise into the sky.

I said no one wants me. Well Shirley did, and it was not a case of surely not.
I thank her for that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3_Q96eJr1k

2009-10-11T04:09:00.000-07:00

On Friday midday after another week, only 55 hours mind you, not the usual 60, this rather beautiful, even stunning, manageress of a hairdressers I deliver to about 3 times a week in Peterbrough remarks as I come through her door “ My god you look shattered”. Well when someone as beautiful as her, shoots you down in flames, it kinda hurts, even though I have only ever seen her sitting…… in incredible dress style at her front desk, therefore I can only presume she walks as well as talks, as she has a different dress on every time. Qed.

What is it about hairdressers, and I have known a few, even slept with them, and lived with them…..mirror mirror on the wall who is stunning make up and all.

So having gone in there thinking I am still 27 mental age, crash bang wallop, well not quite past the sell by date, but the knocks are beginning to show (poetic licence).

Of course as on Tuesday when another lady remarked “are you happy in your work”, a smile helps them but also me, yet a troubled mind does not lend itself to smiling.

When I was long distance driving, I could contemplate my steering wheel and think of times gone by. Hence some of the older post entries on this blog. Making 72 deliveries and several collections, there is not much time to compile a memoirs , hence the slow down in building this insight into Allan Sharpe and what makes him tic or toc …or even rock!!!

My depot manager is intrigued. He is a nice bloke, though suffers from the headless chicken syndrome, such are the things that go wrong wrong wrong. ( 9 drivers leave in one week replaced by 7 guinea pigs to be trained, by the likes of 12 week wonder …yes me). I did make a suggestion last week how to resolve a certain problem of identification of timed deliveries, which was not rocket science, and only what other firms do. At least they said good idea, and lets do it, sort it Allan, which I did. Lets see on Monday if they don’t forget.

The Manager has asked me what I have done before, because of the way I have typed up analysis of my own observations for him. So I told him a bit, not much, just headline bullet points. He said so this is just a job then, yes I said, a port in a storm, I have done better, but such is age discrimination. Ah back to the age page.

But I don’t let this lot down, I have never let anyone down, I don’t think. I have always given my all, and communicated as and when I could.

This is now turning philosophical, but I have been let down by people moving goalposts and deceit of late. There is no need to name names when they read this they will know I am referring to them. You do all you can for someone and they take all you give and then don’t find the time of day for you, but only for others.

Its called backing the wrong horse, and it becomes a battle of heart and mind as they play computer and mind games with you via the internet.

I used to spend a lot of time playing Civilisation a strategy computer game where you start as a caveman and end up as a space man and Emperor of an Empire. Now I play all manner of games on King.com the world’s largest casual gamming site, where you can be pinball wizard, tenpin striker, scrabble champion, card maverick, snooker master. You can also chat to and make friends. You can also make enemies.

These social networking sites suck in some weirdo’s who masquerade in the anonymity of the internet. There are also a lot of lonely unhappy players, who try to relax and play games, escape their reality of life as they know it. Some say they are happily married and yet night after night , hour after hour, they are on line playing computer games and flirting.

However, just like Eastenders, King is a soap opera. Sexual perverts abound, mind game players too, players that lead you up a garden path and pretend it is a golden path. All the time they are flirting with others, and when you discover the truth, its game over player 1.

Don’t change, don’t change your mind, for I have not changed mine.
I am still the same person, but you are not, and if you were, I would not have been here with you at the start. So now it’s over and I will depart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht8JDbWUM1E

Summer came and passed away,
Hardly seemed to last a day,
But it's over,
And what can I do.

Music playin' in the air,
Silence on a darkened stair,
Cos it's over,
And what can I do.

It's over, It's over, all over,
It's over all over now,
And the way you looked
Don't even mean I'm down.
(It's over)
When you kick out the sea
And the sun says goodbye
There is nothing much to speak of.
(Getting down, down)
(It's all over)
(Getting down, down, down)
(Hurry baby, it's all over now, rose up to see)

Lookin' over sunny days,
(Searchin', searchin')
Searchin' for the righteous wave,
'Cos it's over,
All gone, what can I do
Lookin' from the distant shore,
(Distant shore)
You ain't sailin' by no more,
'Cos it's over,
(It's over)
And what can I do.

It's over, It's over, all over,
It's over all over now,
And the way you looked
Don't even mean I'm down.
It's over, over
(It's over)
When you kick out the sea
And the sun says goodbye
There is nothing much to speak of.
(Getting down, down)
(It's all over)
(Getting down, down, down)

Ha, it's over, it's over, it's over
It's all over
(And what can I do)
Ha, it's over, it's over, it's over,
It's all over
(Oh, it's over, it's over, don't shed a tear for me
it's over, don't shed a tear it's over oh no, it's over)

Devil in Disguise: Elvis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3_Q96eJr1k

that was another week that was

2009-09-11T14:17:00.001-07:00

That was the Week That was

Another week flies by from I don’t like Mondays to Thank God its Friday. BUT…..I won’t do anything this weekend apart from go down the pub and watch Spurs play Man Utd on Saturday 5:30pm on ESPN. I’ll totter around the garden, play a few computer games, clean the car, recharge my batteries then it will be Monday morning 05:45 alarmingly again!!

Harry Redknapp is Manager of the Month, Jermain Defoe is Player of the Month, so that has put a death wish on Spurs beating a team I hate with avengeance, who always seem to have the referee in a red shirt too.

“Come on you Spuuuurrrrrrrrsssssssssss”

This wishing your life away week by week is not good though, blink and you will miss it, well what was that, that was your life mate, oh, cant I have another go, no , game over player one, b,,,,,,,,,s !!

I was thinking today , behind my steering wheel, that some of this slave driving is quite fun in circumstances. I do have mission impossible days, and send an sos which gets zero response. In Peterborough City Centre , delivering all sorts to all persons, come half past five it is game over for me and them. I have hardly any residential addresses, its all shops, stores , schools, offices. But some people you meet in the whirlwind created by Mr Delivery Man , are quite pleasant, and some you can even joke with, like the man having one wheel delivered, and I say, expecting another 3 tomorrow then !! It is good to see their faces, stunned of Peterborough. Then one today “It is 6.15 late for a delivery “ says this Indian corner shop keeper, the sort that are open all hours. “I was expecting this by 12”, it was a standard delivery which means by end of day. “Well 6.15 is late I grant you , especially as I started at 7 this morning” I replied, “as for your expectations, Charles Dickens wrote a book Great Expectations, have you read it.” Shut him up.

I must admit as a Trading Standards Officer, a lot of people hate you apart from the ones you are fighting for in the justice stakes. For instance, Essex women at those singles dances would baulk when I told them my job, as they were from Chav centre, and loved fakes, or Car Dealers would curse me, saying I hope you die from some incurable lingering death, or “there is a terrible smell round here”. To be fair to them I was always professional and doing my job well, and lots of people hate authority. I developed a thick skin, Rhino Hide, not just water off a duck, but I am still human, of flesh and bloods and things. Even as a Smoke Free Officer the smokers and some publicans muttered, here comes the Gestapo. Not so, but it’s all relative isn’t it. I was never a local government pencil neck. Now I deliver to local authority officers who are clearly on a different time dimension to me, and I must seem a blur to them, whereas they are in slow motion to me.

But fellow courier drivers are friendly to me, even the competition, and some clients are too, even getting excited as to what’s in the cardboard box, “nothing “ I have said once or twice, “its just an empty box to get you all excited for nothing ha ha“ There are a few ars……es around like a 4’12” runt in the goods in of a Dept Store I deliver to, who moans about 4pm deliveries. I must admit if I worked with him, he would have ended up like his look alike Robin Fernly at school, a nasty little weasel, and he ended up at the end of my right arm by the scruff of the neck pinned against a brick wall, always worked in getting the message across I found, even if the bloke was a 5’12” irritant. Another game while I work is notching up little taxi emblems on my wings like the Spitfire pilot and his swastikas, and a bigger emblem for buses too. Well a little boy said to his Dad today walking past me, “Daddy that’s a big van”, so the emblems are easy to notch up. Peterborough Council town planners must have a scaletrics set and lego, they have bizarre one way systems and few places to unload. They channel traffic to that it snarls up and pollutes at traffic lights that are phased on warp factor -273. The shopping centre underground service area has more than half its lifts caput at any one time. Really you wonder how the people in so called charge expect the shops to sell things to shoppers.

But there are some normal people about, I spot them too, though they are a rare endangered species. They can make the job pleasant and not so monotonous. EG. the ones that banter “sign above” “My name is not above” derrrrrr, “its Harris”, a hoo hoo hoo, and there are even ones that smile at me (always the female of the species) when I appear slave driven. “Have you brought me a present?” “Well as it’s you…….. err no, but it is special delivery”, “why is it special”, because it’s delivered my me of course!!!”

A quiz I play on the computer reckons a man loses 2.8 litres of water in perspiration a day, well I have no need to phone a friend or ask the audience on that one, not even 50-50, ‘cos it takes me an hour to load the truck each morning and from then on I drink about 4 litres of water, in sunny Peterborough.

I still hate the hand held computer that scans all the incoming and outgoing. User friendly it is not, one sequence one way only it is, mistake you make is irreversible, indestructible it is, technology replaceable it should be. A computer that is not logical, now that’s an invention !!

It seems to me that we are coming out of recession now though. When I started, was it just 7 weeks ago, blimey, it was only the computer games shops and mobile phone shops that had sizeable deliveries, now I need a tin can opener to take the roof off to get everything loaded.

I still wonder how the former Deputy Editor of BBCTV Watchdog can come to this, and from earning £33k in the ‘90s now it is £20k. Especially when on the radio I hear about the fat cats of the Banks and the 4 fat cats that did very nicely thank you out of killing Rover a British Icon, and a make of car I always cherished and owned. I would have made a programme exposing them long ago, but that was then and this is now.

Those were the days my friend we thought they’d never end……………but they did, just like last week came to an end too.

It Started with a Kiss

2009-09-02T21:22:00.000-07:00

It Started with a Kiss.....Never thought it could be like this. I was kissed by someone once and it blew my socks off........except I was not wearing any !!! She made me tremble when I kissed her lips, I wanted to hold her hand and dance the night away. Had I told her lately that I loved her.............yes.

Baby I was Amazed. I could have been her Hero, I could have taken her pain and stood beside her for ever, she certainly took my breath away. But she would not listen to her heart, she was a pretty woman walking down the street, you know the kinda woman I would like to meet. She looked wonderful every night. Oh my love, my darling, I hungered for her touch, a long lonely time, but she lost that loving feeling, and it was just my imagination running away with me.

That's just the way it is I guess. There was never enough time in a bottle to do what we should have done. Everything I did, I did it for her, she was always on my mind.

Why hasn't anyone written a song about priorities, I suppose Dolly Parton did advise Relate about stand by your man.

How do I live without her, well life goes on, love was all around, but it was not here, it took 2 to Tango, one can't do it alone, love goes on the rocks, that is no big surprise. So that's what happens...alone...and till now always got by on my own. When you are the person in a relationship and you are upset and they are not, there is something fundamentally wrong.

Who is she ???????? oh just a combination of the past, memories like the corners of my mind, of the way we were.......................

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJyJwbAa1i8

Amazed by Lonestar probably the best romantic song ever recorded, it says so on the Carlsberg Label.

Every time our eyes meet
This feeling inside me
Is almost more than I can take
Baby when you touch me
I can feel how much you love me
And it just blows me away
I've never been this close to anyone or anything
I can hear your thoughts
I can see your dreams

I don't know how you do what you do
I'm so in love with you
It just keeps getting better
I want to spend the rest of my life
With you by my side
Forever and ever
Every little thing that you do
Baby, I'm amazed by you

The smell of your skin
The taste of your kiss
The way you whisper in the dark
Your hair all around me
Baby you surround me
You touch every place in my heart
Oh, it feels like the first time, every time
I want to spend the whole night in your eyes

Every little thing that you do
I'm so in love with you
It just keeps getting better
I want to spend the rest of my life
With you by my side
Forever and ever
Every little thing that you do
Baby, I'm amazed by you

SIGH !!!

Find me Somebody to Love

2009-09-02T14:26:00.001-07:00

Love Train

Now that I have a job, at least for the time being, I have now embarked on the dating agency routine again. I don’t sign up to pay sites, and I must admit I am really fussy in my selection of availability. So it’s photo first, then location, age, non smoker then scan the profile, then send a short message, witty as possible, original as I can be, complimentary chat up line, then wait.

Most get no response like the firework that when lit, nothing happens and you wait and wait then give up and walk away. In these days of equal opportunities how many women ask men to dance, and how many women can just lay there and wait for the man !!!

So, I find myself again at a cross roads. Summer has passed me by, just like Bank Holidays, I like beauty, style, poise and grace. I like sharing, what is the point of looking solo, not much. I also need to hold hands, and care about somebody.
Can anybody, find me, somebody to….. love.

When I was a school boy most kids at school had mums and dads. Yes the dad was down the pub every night, but I was the only kid at school with a single parent , my poor mum.

Now, what the American army used to connect their nuclear weapon silos against the Russians, yes the original internet before it went www, is awash with men and women from broken relationships all with their handbags and glad rags. All looking for the special one, but he got the sack from Chelsea a few seasons ago, and he was never replaced with a more special one !!

Grass Greener, well it takes 2 to tango and 1 to sabotage.

It’s a shame we can’t be more tolerant to each other, it’s a shame you can’t say to someone on the passing escalator, Christ you’re beautiful here is my phone number. We get more set in our ways as we get older and supposedly wiser, yet how our lifestyles can be so different and all the carrier bags and differing priorities.

I delivered to a house today full of Eastern Europeans, no not Eastern Promise, and cigarette smoke blowing out as the front door opened at least 5 small children there breathing in all the fumes. Then some live in squalor, mess and filth and I hold my breath until they shut the door.

I don’t know any one as clean and tidy as me, and I don’t care if she is a Pamela Anderson look a like, if she was a scruff in the home and a fag ash Lill, I would be exiting stage left pronto.

So love is all around, great expectations, hopes will be dashed, better to have loved and lost than never loved at all.

Its another roll of the dice and see where Mr Blue Sky lands, is it on the snake or the ladder, miss one go or ahead 10 spaces. I used to live next door to a man who looked much older than me but he probably wasn’t , he lived with his son. The house and garden was a tip. He stayed in all day every day, greasy hair, worse dressed man about town. I think he had given up on women and life apart from driving to the corner shop every morning to get a newspaper, yes he did not walk either. And my Mum, she had her admirers nothing long lasting, but she preferred animals to humans, she could trust them more.

As for me, I wear my heart on my sleeve, yes I put deflector shields up, but I have too much romance, passion and compassion. Some will never see it, some have abused it, maybe one day somebody will hold the key and will never let go, maybe.

So let dating commence winner takes all………..and maybe me !!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuV-Rw4H-wA

I was born under a bad sign,
Left out in the cold
I’m a lonely man who knows
Just what it means to lose control

But, I took all the heartache
And turned it to shame,
Now I’m moving, moving on,
And I ain’t taking the blame

Don’t come running to me,
I know I’ve done all I can
A hard loving woman like you
Just makes a hard loving man

So I can say it to you, babe
Ill be a fool for your loving no more,
A fool for your loving no more
I’m so tired of trying, I always end up crying,
Fool for your loving no more
Ill be a fool for your loving no more

I’m tired of hiding my feelings,
You left me lonely too long
I gave my heart, and you tore it apart,
Oh, baby, you done me wrong

Don’t come running to me,
I know I’ve done all I can
A hard loving woman like you
Just makes a hard loving man

So I can say it to you, babe
Ill be a fool for your loving no more,
A fool for your loving no more
I’m so tired of trying, I always end up crying,
Fool for your loving no more
Ill be a fool for your loving no more

Ill be a fool for your loving no more, no more, no more

So I can say it to you, babe
Ill be a fool for your loving no more,
A fool for your loving no more
I’m so tired of trying, I always end up crying,
Fool for your loving no more
A fool for your loving no more

Fool for your loving no more...

The Logic of Logistics

2009-08-22T02:41:00.000-07:00

That was the Week That was : Episode 87 -The Logic of Logistics

It was a hot humid day…………most days of last week. Driving a courier van in that weather is like driving a baking tin in an oven regulo 6.

So much so that when I delivered rolls of fabric to the Silk Centre the Indian woman said to me “have you come from Bombay?” No it was not a late delivery, my reply was “Northampton, a bit closer than Bombay” so she might have been nuts or just remarking that I looked hot and bothered.

It’s a job. On Thursday I was out of the house for 14 hours making 70 stops. The depot is half and hour from my house, the depot is an hour from Peterborough city centre, my zone. As it’s pedestrianised series of shopping areas there is a lot of walking with a set of wheels for boxes. I do like the job, don’t like the hours, but none of the drivers do. One driver keeps a photo of himself on the mantelpiece – “who’s that Mummy”, his children ask, “that’s your Daddy children, he’s at work”.

I have my own bay at the depot and the only one with my name printed out, everybody else has post codes, I have my name. I don’t think it’s ‘cos they think I am thick, I think it’s to help the depot unloaders to put my loads in the right place. I also have a bigger truck now, the other one’s were to small………………. So everyone says Good Morning Allan, and I know about 5 names, so the rest of the time I just say Hi back.

I won’t mention the names, because last time I did the agency that got me work was asked to attend a meeting with this other freight company about my day in the life of with them and a manic co driver intent on wrecking the truck and getting the sack. Though the agency had a good laugh at my observations, I need this current job, hence no names. For the curious followers of this blog go back to the week leading up to Christmas and my account of the passenger and the driver from hell.

Getting back to present day, it was Thursday that was my worse day so far , the highlight low light being this scenario:-

I drive up to the service area entrance shutters, ring the security bell, I am told the shutters are jammed shut, the computer has gone wrong. Pause for thought there. Has it come to this that we now need a computer to pull up a roller shutter, and is there no mechanical override like a chain, no health and safety can’t use the chain…cobblers.

Impossible to park as well in the streets, buses and taxis only, one way systems, road works, barriers you name it, it is there. 4 drivers have been tried and failed on this route in 2 months, I am the 5th, I am winning so far. Developers and Architects build these shopping centres but never think shops have to sell things and it is not all washing machines from the planet Zanussi beaming down through the roof.

So, the immovable shutters, no oxy acetylene torch to hand, I decide to get this small parcel to the shop in the shopping mall, like a 5 minute walk. The Manager can’t sign for it over the front counter, why not, it’s the rules, the shutter is down, no matter, the shutter is down and his lights are not on. OK I say I will walk through your shop to the back. Can’t do that he says there is no way from the front to the back. Blimey, we’ve got a right one here. So how do you get your stock from the back to the front then, tell you what don’t worry I take this box back and when the shutter is fixed in a few days you can have it then, bye.

Well Mr Jobsworth you win today’s star plonker of the day award.

I am not paid to think, just to do what I am told………………..derrrrrrrrr

Me, no lunch, nothing to eat all day, just drinking water, working time directive ??? yeah sure, no time to stop that day.

On the flip side I was asked by the depot to collect from a shop that had been closed for 3 months……………dooo doo do do !!!

And I have had 3 vans, all defective, some of the defects I fixed myself. Got stuck outside the passport office on double yellow lines and a bend, the van was dead when I got back in, but after 20 minutes I got in going again. The week before the clutch on another van, just fitted with a £500 new clutch, was burning and all the dashboard warning lights were illuminated in competition with the Blackpool Pleasure Beach Illuminations. I still got that one back too.

No overtime, just s slavery salary, just below the national average. But it’s a job. I must admit on Thursday morning waking up by alarm at 05.45 hours, it took me to 05.50 hours to figure out what day it was, and one tends to wish one’s life away, can’t wait to finish, thank god it’s Friday. But it’s a job, and Gordon Brown, our Prime Minister, and Alistair Darling, his Chancellor, have good jobs, allowances and salaries, but the rest of us fight to survive. Unlike the fat cats at the banks that have all the taxpayers money to bail them out of the mess they put us in and keep us in.

3 wheels on my wagon, but I’m still rolling along, no Cherokees after me, no flaming spears to burn my ears, and I listen to the test match as I go along, singing hippytty happytty hoppitty hi, pioneers they never say die, and we can watch our lives …… go galloping by.

Words of a Friend Indeed

2009-08-16T11:14:00.000-07:00

The words of Ken my oldest dearest friend from school:

"Since we met, all those years ago our lives have moved in quite different directions and out journeys have been different too. I have always admired your independence, determined to be your own man. I know it has brought you highs and lows, but for me it brought great memories. Glad we are still pals long may it last".

"Whenever I think of our teenage years together,,,trips to Wembley...Bank Holidays in Brighton....our scooters...your cars...our nights out at Club Druane..the motown and soul music....Geno Washington and the Ram Jam Band......a smile comes across my face as I reminisce and remember the fun times"

2009-08-16T06:22:00.001-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJyJwbAa1i8

Amazed by Lonestar if you are romantic you will be amazed

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjF1bG5LUcs

Today its your birthday ( for last week !!)

today its your birthday

2009-08-11T12:29:00.000-07:00

Today its your birthday we're gonna have a good time.... !!

How I love birthdays not. Yes I am a Leo, proud, like lazing in the sun, prowl a lot, has been known to roar and defend with pride.

Well I have asked every year for the elixir of life and Father Christmas has never brought it, nor the women in Christmas stockings, so I don’t believe in him anymore.

But this year was a milestone, that I would rather ignore, but cant avoid, its called life as we know it. I did get some nice phone calls, ecards, birthday cards, presents. I got some tender words, that meant a lot to me from close friends.

I performed karaoke to Status Quo and pretended I had a guitar . I performed the video to Amarillo by marching round the dance floor and occasionally grabbing some unsuspecting volunteers. Because on the Saturday I went to a wedding reception and on the Sunday I hosted a bbq at my sisters house. All those that attended had to listen to my classic music taste, after all it was my party and I‘ll play what I want to. Good enough for a bop, You could call me Al and Sharp dressed man. Of course Status Quo live was the highlight, and Mr Blue Sky. My Way got me sad, yes even in celebration of my birthday I can put on an act and lark about, but deep inside I was blue. I find it tough being alone, even surrounded by family and friends.

Still it’s done now, onward and upward and though not the best party the world has ever seen, we had a few laughs those that turned up, and I give them my thanks.

rainy days

2009-08-04T11:39:00.000-07:00

What a wonderful summer. When I am out in the rain my hair reverts to my toddler hairstyle tight curls and frizz....yuk yuk yuk

So you guessed it, in the new courier job 2nd week, and I got wet. Now today in the rain, I had to deliver to this dirty house, well it was a near new house near Buckingham and it made Steptoe & Son's rag and bone yard look like a Palace. 3pm and the painted sheets were covering the windows, posing as curtains, the front door had never been cleaned, the front garden grass never cut, a true blot on the landscape. He came to the door, I held my breath and looked away, minimum contact, yuk yuk yuk. I wanted a Domestos spray, kill all known germs and this dirty git dead.

Anyway it reminded me of life of others as they know it, squalor. I have delivered furniture where bras and knickers and vests and tights were on the floor, in the hall on the stairs and here comes the delivery man tread tread tread. I have been in flats inhabited by Chinese DVD pirates and their pet cockroaches all over the carpets in every room, crunch crunch crunc. The Taxidermist in Milton Keynes, 3 cabinet freezer chest of dead animals, stink stink stink. In fact his house was so bad (he dabbled in fake printer cartridges as a side line)I opened the car window and stuck my head out down the M1 after to get the stench out of the back of my throat, yuk yuk yuk.

Finally..............one of the last deliveries, it reminded me of house hunting once, the psychedelic wallpaper purple and orange, mmmmm, and the well in the garden newts and toads. Yes witches do exist and they look and dress like witches, no broomstick, no pointed hat, but a dark evil sinister mysterious aura, ugly, big nosed, painted ladies showing a lot but not a lot worth seeing.

oooooooooo creepy, exit stage left, foot down on the accelerator, veerrrooommmm

don't come back now, hear !!!

I bought a bottle of beer tonight

2009-07-27T12:00:00.000-07:00

I bought a bottle of Spitfire beer tonight at the Co-op to toast a new job £1.59. Last week in Rugby HQ interview they seemed to like me for some strange reason.

So today was a driving assessment at UPS Northampton Depot (20 miles away) in the morning and H&S safer driving dvds and presentations this afternoon. The guy in charge said lets go to the hamburger van down the road at lunchtime (I still had to cook tonight), and as we walked he casually said right you start 7;30 tomorrow. So the 1st 2 weeks is learning the ropes devices and routes until they leave me on my own as soon as I feel ready.

I am pleased to at least be employed again. The salary is about the same as my last job the smoking enforcement officer. If it works out, I just need my money to be released from these bricks and mortar and start again. I seem to always be starting again every now and then. Where ever I lay my hat thats my job. Snakes and ladders, river deep mountain high, when all I ever wanted was a plateau.

I was earning 33k during the 90's but the age discrimination gets in the way of that. Not good enough that David Groome the barrister states Allan Sharpe is the best Trading Standards officer he has ever worked with, or TV presenter Lynn Faulds Wood extolling accolades as well. No. But then again most , not all , of the interviewers were wankers anyway.

The Status Quo

2009-07-25T10:08:00.000-07:00

Da dang dang dang dang dang, Da dang dang dang dang dang, Da dang dang dang dang dang, delud dang,

Whatever you want
Whatever you like
Whatever you say
You pay your money
You take your choice
Whatever you need
Whatever you use
Whatever you win
Whatever you loose………Whatever you Want

Yes it was the Status Quo last night open air at Newmarket Race Course, and they were fantastic. The 1st half performance was seamless as with a guitar chord they were able to switch from Rick Parfitt singing to Rossi taking over and the next song. The audience was rocking all over the world, no one rolled over and laid down , not even sweet Caroline, and no one was down down just head banging to the guitar crescendos.

True musicians who have stood the test of time and no computerised rhythmic noise what some stupidly class as music today.

Parfitt and I used to drink and sail together on the Thames, though his boat was bigger than mine, as was his consumption, 2 bottles of vodka to my 2 pints of beer, so I usually ended up sailing his boat home. A real lovely fella though.

Fun

2009-07-21T09:08:00.000-07:00

A Funny thing happened to me today on the way to an interview:

I went to Rugby today, in typical British July seasonal weather conditions, yes pouring with rain.

The local council workers are very dedicated there in Rugby, they should win an award, maybe I will try to nominate them.

It was pouring down with rain when I approached this rather pleasant roundabout called the hanging baskets of Rugby roundabout, I dont think they could afford a hanging garden. Anyway I digress, there was Mr J Obsworth and his tanker truck, in his waterproof wet suit holding an elongated hose to....,,,,,,wait for it.......

water the bloody baskets in this monsoon.

Note to the Leader of the Council: errrrrrrrr dedication to duty or I am a robot, I dont think mate I do what I am told, then bugger off home.

Hero

2009-07-11T09:47:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the river flows but nothing breathes.
A train arrives but never leaves.
It's a shame.
Oh life like love that walks out of the door.
Of being rich or being poor.
Such a shame.
But it's then, then that faith arrives.
To make you feel at least alive.
And that's why you should keep on aiming high.
Just seek yourself and you will shine
You've got to search for the hero inside yourself.
Search for the secrets you hide.
Search for the hero inside yourself.
Until you find the key to your life.
In this life long and hard though it may seem
Live it as you'd live a dream.
Aim so high.
Just keep the flame of truth burning bright.
The missing treasure you must find.
Because you and only you alone.
Can build a bridge across the stream.
Weave your spell in life's rich tapestry.
Your passport to a feel supreme.

You've got to search for the hero inside yourself.
Search for the secrets you hide.
Search for the hero inside yourself.
Until you find the key to your life.

How not to Interview Someone

2009-07-11T09:44:00.000-07:00

There are 3 types of Consumer what are they?

When is an interview not a job interview but an oral test?
I passed my Government Qualification in 1971. I am not a rookie anymore, well past the sell by date. Sell be dates never existed when I was young. Nor do I appreciate being interviewed by kindergarten pencil necks either.

Short list me from my extensive knowledge and experience Curriculum Vitae resume and application, just don’t ask me daft questions, that is what exams are for. Maybe better to ask me also what I have done rather than continue on the technical question and theoretical answer sequence. I really felt like walking out. Honestly.

Hold on can I open that window and ask the audience, can I go 50/50 on that one, I say let me phone a friend.

Some interviews are solid, psychometric test, presentation then 150 minutes of discussion. However being shown round the office and introduced to would be team mates is weird because you probably won't ever see those would be team mates ever again. Nice gesture - false hopes - false smiles. Some interviews are just what do you think of its so far = rubbish and are tin pot 30 minutes and hopeless. Is that the way they select someone to work for them for the next eon of years on 30 mins question and answer, technical questions and an on line application form, I think not. Waste of money advertising and recruiting. Well I don’t want to work at what resemble Hitler’s bunker anyway. Hundreds of lemmings surrounded by metal filing cabinets no natural light, just oceans of fluorescents, how depressing being a mushroom there. WW111 could kick off but they would not have a clue.

Oh and btw, they have insufficient car park space for a job that is essential car user. They only have 80% capacity. So the barrier only lets you in to park 4 days out of 5. On the 5th day you either work from home or stay out all day, but you don’t come into the office.

Whacky Racers heehehehehehehehhehehehehe

Bright Eyes

2009-07-09T00:45:00.000-07:00

Some things in life are bad
They can really make you mad
Other things just make you swear and curse.
When you're chewing on life's gristle
Don't grumble, give a whistle
And this'll help things turn out for the best...

And...always look on the bright side of life...
Always look on the light side of life...

If life seems jolly rotten
There's something you've forgotten
And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing.
When you're feeling in the dumps
Don't be silly chumps
Just purse your lips and whistle - that's the thing.

And...always look on the bright side of life...
Always look on the light side of life...

For life is quite absurd
And death's the final word
You must always face the curtain with a bow.
Forget about your sin - give the audience a grin
Enjoy it - it's your last chance anyhow.

So always look on the bright side of death
Just before you draw your terminal breath

Life's a piece of shit
When you look at it
Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true.
You'll see it's all a show
Keep 'em laughing as you go
Just remember that the last laugh is on you.

And always look on the bright side of life...
Always look on the right side of life...
(Come on guys, cheer up!)
Always look on the bright side of life...
Always look on the bright side of life...
(Worse things happen at sea, you know.)
Always look on the bright side of life...
(I mean - what have you got to lose?)
(You know, you come from nothing - you're going back to nothing.
What have you lost? Nothing!)
Always look on the right side of life...

I drove all day ....to get to you

2009-07-07T12:10:00.000-07:00

I drove 400 miles round trip to Dorchester today for an interview. The journey took almost 8 hours, the interview lasted two and a half hours, after I had to perform a ten minute power point presentation. I had previously completed the application form of course and an on line Psychometric test. I thought the interview went well. I was honest, what you see is what you get with me. They smiled and looked at me when we shook hands and said our goodbyes. It’s when they don’t look you in the eye at the end that you know they are not interested. I also think we shared common views which is refreshing. Anyway wait and see, no news will be bad news.

I also have observations to make, some more startling than others, and the startling ones I start to write about here for a start, that is startling in itself I guess, anyway enough starting about the bush , get on with it, ok…….
Dorset, charming county, birth place of the Trade Union movement, the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Dorchester is quaint, surrounded by small villages like Piddle Hinton, Piddletrentthistle and Puddletown as well as Tolpuddle of course, and it occurred to me as I drove along the A35 passed these road signs, that there were bound to be puddles with all this piddling going on !!

Final foot note from our motoring correspondent: Are BMW drivers the worse drivers on the road?? I have a 3 litre V6 Jaguar that if I wanted to could see anything other than Jason Button off the road. The number of times today BMWs were in my rear view mirror forcing there way and guzzling expensive fuel. Now I am no slow coach. I have done taxi driving, got numerous people to airports against the clock, never failed to get people there in no time at all, wooosh it was all a blur. BUT these bad man’s wheels are pathetic, and have no concept of looking ahead driving, and yes it is a sweeping generalisation, but it was too numerous today not to tar the whole BMW range with the same chequered flag. Tomorrow I am going to Halfords to get a rear gunner fitted, dadadadadadada ………………………

I've Been driving in my car, it is just a Jaguar

2009-07-05T01:35:00.000-07:00

I've been driving in my car, it is just a Jaguar, Madness I now, but many of my thoughts come from behind a van or lorry steering wheel as I drive to survive.... wheels keep rolling, rolling down the road,them Cherokees are after me flaming spears burn my ears but I'm singing a happy song..........

The other day..............well if you are sitting comfortably......... I remembered the research trip whilst Watchdog was off air. I was in a hire XR31, it got me to Cologne in 4 hours including the ferry, woosh. Of course all the former Messerschmitt pilots were now behind a Mercedes steering wheel and more importantly behind ein Englander number plate, donna und blitzen, a new dog fight on the autobahns, and guess who won again....he he ha ha, bandits at 12 o clock tally ho , roger wilco, dadadadadadada.

I drove to Berncastle, where the Romans had started the wine industry on the banks of the Rhine. Now everyone knew, Germany exported more wine than it could grow grapes for. Everyone knew that common market subsidies were given to Germany for this. Everybody knew that the excess came over the Alps on a choo choo train from Cinzano Bianco who had too much of the dreggs to cope with. Everbody knew that the Germans did not drink this Liebfraumilch which was export only to Japan, USA and Britain, where our pallates were less educated. Do you think I could get anybody to go public on this. Wrong, Donna und Blitzen, sprekenzy nine.

And now for something completely different and a track from 1548MW Golden Oldies on the van radio............

I met her in a club
down in old Soho
where you drink champagne
and it tastes just
like cherry cola
C-O-L-A cola

She walked up to me
and she asked me to dance
I asked her her name
and in a dark brown voice
she said Lola
L-O-L-A Lola
la la la la Lola

Well I'm not the world's
most physical guy
but when she squeezed me tight
she nearly broke my spine
oh my Lola
la la la la Lola
Well I'm not dumb
but I can't understand
why she walked like a woman
and talked like a man
oh my Lola
la la la la Lola
la la la la Lola

Well we drank champagne
and danced all night
under electric candle light
she picked me up and
sat me on her knee
and said "Dear boy
won't you come home with me?"

Well I'm not the world's
most passionate guy
but when I looked in her eyes
I almost fell for my
Lola la la la la Lola
la la la la Lola
Lola la la la la Lola
la la la la Lola

I pushed her away
I walked to the door
Well I fell to the floor
I got down on my knees
then I looked at her
and she at me

Well that's the way
that I want it to stay
and I always want it
to be that wayfor my Lola
la la la la Lola

Girls will be boys
and boys will be girls
it's a mixed up
muddled up
shook up world
except for Lola
la la la la Lola

Well I left home just
a week before
and I'd never ever kissed
a woman before
but Lola smiled and
took me by the hand
and said "Dear boy
I'm gonna make you a man"

Well I'm not the world's
most masculine man
but I know what I am
and I'm glad I'm a man
and so is Lola
la la la la lola
la la la la Lola
Lola la la la la Lola
la la la la Lola

The Kinks one of my favourites, and you remember Bob Sweet course you do, one of the 4 prefects that run my school at break time, we the 4 Muskateers. Well we went at 17, it was a very good year, to a pub in cetral London, and Bob got off with this bird. Now Bob always removed his glasses in vanity, even driving up to Kilburn Grammar school for girls where Ken's child hood sweet heart was waiting with her pals on the lunch time school wall. Bob was blind as a bat without his glasses and as he grinned and squinted, we co pilots had to guide him through his final approach. In fact once he reversed the sit up and beg Ford Popular, into a tree, because he was too distracted by the mini skirted girl in the front seat to heed my warning exclamations, crunch!!

Anyway, back to the original plot, where were we, oh yes, in the pub, with a glass or seven. So Bob minus glasses is led round the back alley way by his "pull" and then he comes back 5 minutes later "come on lets drink up and scarper" "why" "that f...g bird , I put my hand up her skirt, and grabbed her balls, b....d shes a f...g bloke!!!!" Donna und Blitzen, Lol und Blitzen, exit stage left varoooom.

When I was 17 it was a very good year, it was a year of experience and life was not as it seemed, oh how people dreamed, when I was 17.

The plot thickens next time, stay tuned to this channel, where the names of the innocent have not been changed to protect the guilty !!!

The Case of the Blackpool Shed

2009-07-02T08:26:00.000-07:00

The Case of Blackpool Garden Shed

Going to all these interviews and recounting the past, cases like when the Nuns and Monks were double booked into the same hotel accommodation, yes you read that right. I always try to recount something new, else I bore myself listening to the same old song, with a different meaning since I was gone.

The other day, I forget which interview it was, 3 faces listening as they do, so I told them about the time I went to Blackpool in the late 70’s. I had a warrant, because in Britain’s premier shopping street oxford street they were selling fake Channel, Charlie and Ives St Laurent perfume. Made in London, Paris, New York, it actually was bottled in a council house via a yellow plastic funnel in Blackpool. The packaging was good, the mastermind, who also owned the plush Blackpool Country Tennis Club, had paid a proper printers in nearby Morecombe to create the almost exact packaging.

So I turned up from London. I rendezvoused with an Officer from Wrexham, who had also come across the product. Blackpool Trading Standards showed no interest other than making me a cup of tea and showing me the addresses on a map.

So when I descended on matey at the council house, he refused any co operation. I saw the garden shed, asked him what was in it and for the key. He said he had no key and did not know what was in it. So I kicked the door in and blimey,it started swaying, the whole shed, and creeking, and then in a puff of dust the walls collapsed like a house of cards, bham. not only was it empty but is was not nailed together properly and collapsed roof and all, empty absolutely empty just dust………ooopppsss.

“Don’t wreck the whole place” Matey shouts out, “It’s all in the cellar”. And lo and behold the bottling plant was their in the Cellar, so me and Mr Wrexham loaded all into my car back to London for the court case. Next time I should take a dog to scent the scent I guess, even fake not so smelly, scent.

Amazing Adventures

2009-07-02T08:23:00.000-07:00

Amazing Adventures: Episode 87

King.Com is the largest casual gaming site that I frequent escaping reality into the cyber world of virtual reality. Here I play with opponents and friends that I have made from around the www globe.

Some of the games and some of the interaction with players are the addiction, and we are all escaping from life as we know it to find solace and enjoyment in games people play, like scrabble, card games, ball games, even pinball wizard and ten pin bowling. It is amazing what computers can do.

There is a game called Amazing Adventures, and in fact it should be called I Spy, it is nothing like Indiana Jones ( I got a hat like that). I do think the Computer Games marketing sections often have a power surge of excess binary code .

However Amazing Adventures do prompt me into remembering my amazing adventures and yes I have had a few. There was the time when Helen swam out to rescue Ian my eldest , drifting out with the football, real Baywatch style. There was the time when Graeme my youngest at 9 froze at the breakfast table and started turning blue, fortunately my kiss of life eventually brought him round, and what did the doctors say “good job you were there”. Now he is 6’4”, but that was the worse moment of my life, he was dead for a few seconds.

King’s games take you to Luxor (been there Karnak Temple), the Pyramids (been there Galloped around them and the Japanese Nikon camera tourists – Hadush, Lawrence of Arabia- huh!).

I have not survived the Amazon, because I have not got that far, I have driven from Vegas to the Grand Canyon in an open top Mustang, thinking I would see John Wayne, Custer’s 7th Cavalry and Sitting Bull’s Sioux Nation, any minute on the horizon. I did later dance the eagle dance with the Navajo. Another claim to fame was seeing Whacko Jacko looking at dolls in a toy store in Vegas in the 90's. The "we love you Michael" crowd was held back, he was dressed in the heat in black coat, black hat, sunglasses and a scarf. His kids wore butterfly nets over their heads and feathered masks over their faces. He looked at the dolls for almost an hour, I could see him through the glass windows, bizarre.

Arnie was much better, more normal, his cigar in this Santa Monica restaurant was huge about 12 inches, wish I had one that big. Interesting, as California had led the way about no smoking. But I guess the would be Governor was allowed to break the law. Arnold Schwarzenegger then sitting at the next table, only 5'8" without the Alan Ladd platform shoes, so I towered above him and so did his friend a big fat lady who greeted him with an embrace that squeezed the air out of his lungs and almost ejected that huge Cuban smoking device. Literally big fat mamma succedded in raising him off his feet, like no other action enemy had done before on the screen. Conan the Barbarian, one of my favourite films, was now slotted into a reality check, as the cheque for our meal arrived. True one of his arms equalled both of mine put together, but he was as you see him, grin and laugh a minute, hahaha yeah.

I have flown a 1941 Tiger Moth bi plane at Duxford Imperial War Museum, jocks away, tally ho Roger Wilco, stop calling me Roger, Wilco..

I have also fed the elephants who get extremely randy with bananas , their trunks and their noses at the end of their trunks. Really Paris Hilton is amateur by comparison. This was in Thailand of course where Health and Safety has not gone mad and spoilt it for every one, and after riding one for about an hour, and not like at the zoo just up and down, no through the forest with Mowgli at the helm or head. Mind you even the baby elephant weighed 2 tons and could push me around like no one has pushed me around before.

Also in Thailand, I visited a little fishing village and was escorted like Livingstone to the chief’s wooden hut on stilts, with one red carpet in the middle of the solitary room. I wanted one of his men to take me in the low long boats they use to go round the Islands featured in the James Bond movie. Such friendly people, that was a real adventure, and doing what other tourists would never do, I also gave them more ££ than they asked for, it was that exhilarating.

New York, Paris, London, Venice, Rome and the rest, knocked over by the crashing Pacific waves, found my way to San Jose Dionne Warwick style, ah wo wo wo wo wo wo wo wo wo, wo. I didn’t wear flowers in my hair in San Fransisco, but I did have flowers on my scooter in the streets of London in the Hippie Mod ‘60s.

More tales when you are sitting comfortably next time.

Ken & Gerry's Its a Celebration

2009-06-14T00:45:00.000-07:00

We’re gonna party, a party tonight

As I sit here in my study the morning after, the sun is out, it’s 8am, Sunday 14th June 2009 , it’s already warm and a red kite (bird of prey with long wing span and distinctive calling sound) has just flown by my window.

And here is the News last night I went to a party hosted by Mr and Mrs New.

Last night I went to Ken & Gerry’s party in Sheffield a hundred miles north of here.
Ken is my oldest friend from Grammar School days in Willesden North West London. Funny we first met on the football games session when I was a central defender and he was a centre forward and we clashed, the teacher breaking us up. In the 6th year we became friends. Today, to me he looks no different to those days, just greying hair, but still has that infectious ear to ear grin. Yesteryear when we were Prefects in the 6th Form, we, with Bob Sweet and Clive Willy almost ran that school. All the lads were shoved out in the rain, but the pretty girls could stay in of course at break time. There was no discipline problems, any boy out of order just got looked at, and if necessary picked up by the shirt and tie and banged against the nearest wall. Instant justice.

Also there last night was Keith and Kevin, plus their wives, more Ken’s friends than mine, but again from school days, and we did go out every Saturday night for months to a country pub in Harefield, to consume 8 pints of beer. I actually asked last night why we did that and why the Cross Keys, the answer was apparently it was my idea in the 1st place, but I don’t subscribe to that hypophosis. Kathy was there again with her husband, she is friends with Kevin’s wife Chris, and she instantly recognised me from what must be 5 years ago, when she was outrageously flirting with me at a music venue in Camden, where Ken’s sons were performing.

The highlight last night were these guys:

The Soul Brothers dressed as the Blues Brothers, an 8 piece band, they really got the place rocking, I have not danced so much in a long time. In fact there have only been 2 ex girlfriends, Hazel (Irish) and Gina (Pilipino) who could out dance me stamina and style. But, last night I was on my Jack Jones, and most of the dancing to their rhythm was solo bopping. I did not stay overnight either like the rest of them, for the bbq today. So I drove back and got to my house, which is not a home, at 02.30 hrs.

Although this band were brilliant, I did feel flat, being on my own. Although Kathy wanted to dance with me and we did to the Mavericks record “Dance the Night Away” and a couple of slow records…….. when the husband is cramping your style, and everyone else was in couples, much as I wanted to dance the night away with Kathy I could not.

It was just like when my youngest son got married in Cambridge 3 years back, then it was even more poignant. Though on that occasion my new daughter in law’s sister danced the night away with me, but her husband was hovering too.

I also found it hard to bid farewell, again because I am like a spare piece of anatomy at a wedding, and keep a brave face. Highs and lows, and when we reminisced why is it me with the reputation? “Oh Allan on that scooter in the Mods and Rockers late 60’s he was mad, Allan was always a trouble maker”. Even Gerry said 42 years after the event, “you were a bad influence on Ken, I turned up at the Oldfield with my friends on a hen night and Ken was there with you dancing with the girls, and he should not have been there”………….oooopppps……….maybe that is why she has often given me the cold shoulder and I was not invited to their wedding. Kevin was Ken’s best man and also mine. I have never been best man, well in some people’s eyes, not mine.

Life as we know it..........the computer age

2009-06-10T09:57:00.000-07:00

LIFE BEFORE THE INTERNET ----------------------------------
Memory was something you lost with age. An application was for employment. A program was a tv show. A curser used profanity.
A keyboard was a piano! A web was a spider's home. A virus was the flu! A CD was a bank account.
A hard drive was a long trip on the road. A mouse was a rodent that ate cheese. A mouse mat was where a mouse lived and wiped his feet. And if you had a 3 1/2 inch floppy ...you just hoped nobody found out!

Fast food was fish and chips, computers occupied a building, phones were used to talk on, petrol was 6/8d a gallon, a pint of beer was 1/10d. the internet linked nuclear missile silos…….. those were the days my friend we thought they'd never end xxx

Dear Mr Postman look and see, if there's, a leter a letter for me

2009-06-08T10:49:00.000-07:00

Life as We Know it, a job opportunity from Heaven

I came home from a job interview in Oxford, to find a letter from the postman, for another interview, and I had to read it 3 times, because I swear I never applied for this job!!!

Now the job in Oxford that I was qualified for, even though they wanted an unqualified officer, and it was a job, the duties of which I had done time and time again…..well I did not get that job. So rather than spiffing, more like spitting .

At first I thought I could not possibly go for this 2nd interview in 2 weeks……..wooooooooo. As I said I had no recollection of applying, never heard of the company and the interview was in Her Majesty’s Pleasure yes a local prison (just visiting!!). Then I thought well this might be a job from the hand of god, like Maradonna’s hand ball goal in the World Cup against Peter Shilton, except my postman was the divine messenger.

I even asked for the person specification and the job advert, pretending I could not find it on their web site, when I emailed them my interview attendance confirmation. Still I cant remember applying, it’s like my name and address has been jumbled up with someone else’s.

Anyway the job is about rehabilitation of offenders. Hey I can’t get a job, so the job to go for is to try to get offenders not to re offend and get them a job. Very worthy actually. Now I have convinced myself to go for it, even though I don’t have an Information Advice & Guidance qualification, but I have got life’s years of experience and common sense. We will see.

However, though I can’t remember the cause for this chapter it did cause the thought process about how a lot of criminals are very clever, if only they devoted their brains to moral and legal practices. There are many I have come across, importing fake mobile phones, creating fake artwork, logistics , distribution, manufacture of fake designer clothing, overseas business trips, contacts. They were improper entrepreneurs.

For instance in the good old late 70’s when I was in Westminster, I was chasing a gang for 6 months. In that scenario you do try to get inside their minds in order to outwit them and therefore catch them. Their modus operandi was to go North twice a week to car auctions, buy a number of cheap unroadworthy second hand cars. Then they would give them a shampoo and set and sell them through newspaper advertisements as private individuals from varying addresses. They did not pay for the advertising and it seemed they were always on the move , week by week. New phone numbers, new addresses and the Evening Standard married up advertisements for flats to let with the cars to sell. The gang also had links with an estate agent , so the flat would be given the once over as well as the cars for sale outside in the street. None of the advertising was paid for. Also the gang leader used 10 different names and 10 different bank accounts.

Now, really, I quietly admired this guy. How on earth did he remember who he was in certain situations and with certain people, and what happened if the permutation changed and he was faced with a group who knew him by different names, the mind boggles. But, his mind did not, and for 6 months I was chasing shadows. Soon as I found out where he was, he and the gang had just exited stage left.

The mistake he made, and they all make mistakes, is he started using stolen MOT’s for the dangerous unroadworthy cars. One young couple with a child actually drove home after buying the car. As they rounded the North Circular Road a front wheel came off as they were driving, no exaggeration. So he had to use stolen MOTs, no expense was spared in selling the “excellent condition” jalopies.

Now I got Notting Hill CID interested and we hit a few past addresses. We found a rubber stamp that led us to a lock up garage workshop in Lots Road Chelsea, early in a dawn raid. This Detective Sergeant and I scaled the blue metal chained gates, and jumped over, and in true Tom & Jerry cartoon style, tried in vain to tread in mid air back up again as 2 Dobermans crept up below our airborne feet with their snarling jaws open. Ooooppps, clambering back up, the radio did not work in the Q car, so our intrepid plain clothes police officers had to wait at the end of the road to flag down a passing police car. No mobile phones in those days. Then Crocodile Dundee’s version of the Metropolitan Dog Handling Team turned up grinning with their lassoes and, guess what, the dog problem was no more.

Surprise surprise when the workers turned up , not to get the car shampoo and buckets out, but instead to be handcuffed and carted off in the black maria. So after 6 months in 72 hours the gang was being apprehended. One address remained in Maida Vale. The Territorial Support Group Police ( official name for Neanderthal officers) covered the back alleyway. The front door, no one answered and the police could not force it open. So I said I would drop kick it, and in true kung fu tradition I sailed horizontal straight through the door which remained locked with my legs in the house and my head, arms and torso in the street,,,,,,,,,,,derrrr. I get pulled out of splintered remnants of a black Victorian Front Door. Then the door was kicked off the lock and there was a chain. I go next door for a hack saw, we saw through the chain. Now as you can imagine 7am and all this door carpentry took quite a while and was not exactly quiet. The door finally bangs open and down the stairs comes Paul Walsh the gang leader in his dressing gown, asking “who is it”, to which a burly Police Sergeant’s reply was, “who is it” who the f***g hell you think it is, your nicked”

2009-06-04T08:11:00.000-07:00

Now for something not so completely different . Another look at life from the outside in. More Madness this time closer to home in the recent past.

Have you ever lived with someone that was not normal. I am no angel, but I live by logic and by common sense, well I try, but not everyone is the same.

I remember Bill Barr. He was an Inspector at Brent, and we went to his nice big house in Wembley one sunny day in the 70’s. All the windows were open as you would expect, and he was rushing down the driveway, then he shouted at his mother in law who was house sitting. The central heating was on , yes it was a sunny summer’s day. He told me that she put so much electricity on one day, the tar insulation on the underground main cables to the meter was melting.

Now I have known loopy Lou like that. How come a prospective live in partner is on her best behaviour, then resorts to selfish madness after a year, when you have moved in together. Open the windows in the winter with the heating on, close the windows and doors in the summer, and switch on electronic air fresheners, instead of allowing natural fresh air in through the windows. Energy conservation, what is that, a £400 utility bill to boot. Mind you recycling was not her pet subject either, food always came out of a packet and her way was to landfill all the rubbish, as well as waste energy resources and warm up the whole planet. What a wanker. BTW apart from watching murders on TV Ms Gordina Blue loves to watch cooking programmes...................WHY...............when it obviously comes in packets and tins !!!!!

Oh one more thing, the bathroom window which opened sideways, she would keep that open when the house was vacant, but at least she did not put a sign out saying “dear burglar, no one is in, use a ladder and help yourself.”

So your country does not need more lerts, no need to be alert, what we need is complete and utter imbeciles to populate our planet earth.
To me they are in the ascendancy.

how to not park and ride

2009-06-04T08:10:00.000-07:00

I went for an interview yesterday with Oxfordshire County Council. The job is one I could do, have done with my eyes blind folded. But they had 7 to interview including 2 internal candidates, so normally these jobs go internally and they only advertise to keep the Unions happy. After all they know the internal candidate. The job was about doorstep crime and protecting the old infirmed and vulnerable against the cruel and unscrupulous. Like these roofers that knock on an old dear’s house and say she has a loose roof tile and to fix it will cost £50, then they charge her £1,000 or even more, and there was nothing wrong with the roof anyway. Sometimes these parasites actually take the petrified old dear down to the Post Office in their dirty van to cash the giro. They put further fear into them saying if the work is not done there and then and the loose tile falls on someone walking past, they would be liable.

So the job was to prevent and cure, to educate and enforce, to be on David’s side versus Goliath.

Now I left in plenty of time to drive 66 miles to Oxford, and of course when I get to the M40, the Police have closed it in both directions (multiple pile up – fatal collision). So I still have time, but time is ticking on, and my car is only ticking over, yes gridlock, for thousands of us. So I telephoned, the recruitment department, I was in Oxfordshire, I was 17 miles away. They unhelpfully said follow the diversion signs, when I asked them for an alternative route, derrrrrrrrr, if there were diversion signs would I be on the phone asking them. Wait for it, it gets better. I saw one Policeman on my road the A43, because all the action was on the closed motorway. So I drive out of the queue to get some vague direction signs, and then get back into the queue. By now I am late, still talking to the interviewing panel by mobile phone.

Oxford is park & ride, the town council hates the motorist. I only know this through life experience, there was no details given to me when I was asked to attend an interview. So I head for the park and ride signs, get on this bus, ask the driver do I need a ticket, “no”, he says. ”Ok it’s just step on”, “yes” , says another passenger. “Do you go to New Road” I ask the driver, “don’t know” is the answer, ok we have a live one here, or do we. “Do you go to County Hall”, “yes”, well this is progress, “can you tell me when we get there”, “if I remember”, more helpful information from this public service provider, don’t you just love public transport. “You want single or return”, he says, “why you said I don’t need a ticket”, “single or return”, “well my car is here its park and ride so why on earth would I need a single ticket”, “£2.20” he says, “you said I didn’t need a ticket”, by now the queue is like 10 miles, long , 10 people actually I exaggerate. I know it’s been 40 years since I was on a bus, but when my mum used to claim half fare for me and tell me to shrink in the seat, we had conductors and it was never this complicated.

Next, I am now finally sitting on the bus having given up talking to the moron behind the steering wheel. I then phoned the council again, telling them I am now on one of their buses heading (hopefully) in their direction, but asking them for a landmark so I would know when to get off, as the driver had been so helpful. Guess what, no one in the council could tell me if the bus I was on would get there. I was even given another telephone number to call, but it was the wrong number (of course).

BUT, help was at hand a fellow female passenger obviously took pity on the blind talking to the blind and leading nowhere fast. She basically said hold my hand you’re a stranger in Oxford (paradise), and I did, noting that I had just spent £7 on phone calls for no help whatsoever.

The interview was nice , relaxed as an interview could be. I talked a lot, but as any reader would read I have a lot to say sometimes. But then I was told the wrong bus stop for the return trip to wherever I had left the car, no maps, no “you are here” signs, the kind of obvious helpful information you may think for a well established park and ride system, well established meaning years not quality.

So when the bus turns up and the bus driver sees me ready to board of course he puts the accelerator down and like a Mr Bean sketch as I run in hot pursuit in my new suit (give a little whistle & flute) and briefcase he parks at the stop I should have been at, sees me in his mirrors and pulls away in true bus driver trained fashion.

Obviously I got a bus eventually, else I could not write the tale, but why are we surrounded by incompetency. Gissa job I could do that. Actually I could not, I could not be as incompetent as those that cost me £7 and £2.20.

10 years ahead of his time.

2009-05-11T07:23:00.000-07:00

Sir Alf Ramsey, former Tottenham Hotspur right back and England Manager when we won the World Cup in 1966, once said of Martin Peters he was a footballer 10 years ahead of his time. Peters was a midfield player who ghosted in to score a lot of goals. The sort of player fairly common now in 2009, but in the 70's he was the sort of player defenders failed to pick up, hence the goals. Peters also played for Tottenham, the club I have supported all my life of course.

I have often thought I was 10 years ahead of my time. I think most people do enough to get by. Nothing wrong in that, it is what the world expects. If you are riskier, then you take chances, breaking new ground. You are not safe, and lots of employers will not like that. Safe is the better option, nobody notices safe, people notice risk takers.

I remember my first case, the first day I went out as a Trading Standards qualified Inspector. The boss had sent me out with Bill Johnson a trainee to test weighbridges, big road scales for weighing lorries. At lunch time we were in Harrow, and I wandered around the biggest department store we had in the area. I always had a copy of Shaw's Price Guide in my pocket, and just checked a few prices of the toiletries as there was a Sale on. I noticed none of the products, like deodorants, shampoos, soap, were reduced in price, despite the signs stating 33% off. So the rookie Inspector asked to see the Manager. Bill was saying Allan forget it we are on weighbridge duties. No, I said, and we spent the next 4 hours confiscating products and signs as examples and as evidence, because Sopers of Harrow, part of Debenhams were holding a bogus sale, a sale that never was. We arrived back late with a van load of evidence, men's wear, ladies wear, toiletries, much to the complete astonishment of my boss.

That was the 1st day they sent me out. I was always best left to my own devices. Self motivation, bringing in the results. Interfere with me doing the job and I was not happy.

The same happened 20 years later when it took me 3 days to find Alistair Leslie Woods, after Waltham Forest Trading Standards and the Police had been looking for him for 6 months. Woods ran a Good Restaurant Guide scam. He had every Thomson's telephone directory across the UK. He wrote to every cafe and restaurant listed and told them "our inspectors have visited your establishment, unbeknown to you. They found the quality of service was 94%, the quality of food 97%. As such your details will be published in our forthcoming guide. You can have a certificate for £19 to display on your premises". Every restaurant got the same letter. There were no inspectors. Woods printed off a cheap standard certificate template off his computer and made half a million pounds in 6 months. He was South African. But all crooks need to bank the cheques, and I found out his address not to where the Royal Mail delivered the cheques to. That was an accommodation address run by another crook he despised authority and society. No I found out where the Bank sent Woods his statements, and when I knocked on the door posing as the electoral register official, a man with a South African accent opened the window pretending he was a plumber fixing the shower. By the way there was no plumber's van in the road !!!
So Woods little venture came to a halt and his 7 printers would print no more.

At last the dilatory authorities got some good headlines. The Boss at Waltham Forest even got some bridge rolls and orange squash in plastic cups, to shake my hand infront of the new staff.

But, I tell these stories because they were perceived as risk taking. Going above and beyond, showing initiative. I just called it doing my job, earning my salary as opposed to turning up to work having a chat and a giggle and getting a salary.

At the end of the nineties I had my own company Sharper Image. I had Ian, my graduate son, working for me then, he was learning how to make TV programmes. We were on out way to Camden in my car to sign a contract for a series on Discovery Channel regarding Inventions.

Today there are a few programmes informing us about Whittle's jet engine and Baird's early TV set. We know about light bulbs and the telephone. But we don't learn this at school. I never did in science at Grammar School anyway. Biro, was Hungarian . He dies a pauper before the 2nd world war. His patented invention was not taken up till the war when the American army needed a pen that would write in all weathers in the Pacific theatre against Japan. Chester Carlton invented the dry paper copier Xerox, in Greek. The Californian draftsman in the 1920's was fed up drawing and redrawing the same thing over and over again. It took him 28 years to find a company to take up his machine. Again he died a pauper. Fascinating human interest stories behind every day appliances we use.

I had spent 6 months researching for the series proposal, but they reneged on the deal, over ruled by HQ in Washington that they were to run repeats instead. That was a nail in my coffin, one too many.

That was the price to pay for being 10 years ahead of your time, being inventive about inventions, showing initiative, showing a risk. The repeat was the safe option.
Well Sharper Image could not exist against that sort of competition in the market place.

thats all for now folks.........................

Knowing Me Knowing You ha ha

2009-05-11T02:41:00.000-07:00

Mr Personality:
I am a Leo, proud, and mild, unless my tail is trod on or my territory is invaded. So I can react if provoked. But I prefer to laze in the sun and be content. I also need a lioness by my side that I can be proud of. Sometimes in life that has happened, other times it has not, and I can be a vacuum without love and affection. I am industrious too, turn my hand to anything and have achieved much in work rest and play.
But, I have also met my Ides of March probably on 5 occasions, 3 at work, 2 at home. I don't suffer fools gladly and I cannot countenance betrayal. Having said that I like beauty, style, poise and grace in all things. I like travel, history, wining & dining and dancing. I can be romantic and charming, even funny at times, but also serious. I am creative and innovative. I have led from the front and by example. I did not get where I am today without the courage of my convictions, to boldly go onward and upward, it's called survival. I would like the elixire of life, but Father Christmas has never answered my wish list.

People ask me how did you do it

2009-04-27T10:58:00.000-07:00

From the Cradle to the Grave; 2 examples from over 600 courts cases and 250 films.

1. Derrick James Davies:

Christmas time 1998, I take a telephone call from Leyton Police CID. They have information that a local warehouse is holding counterfeit products like videos. It was new ground to them and the DC wanted to know what I, as Team Leader in Trading Standards could do. The first thing I did was to discretely drive around the address a unit in a large industrial estate, and I did not wear a suit.

I then applied for a search warrant at the local magistrates court with reason to believe offences were being committed . In other instances further surveillance is possible, but there is always the danger of spooking the target or being spotted by friendly neighbours. So surveillance has to be timed for maximum impact minimal use. Even so with the best intelligence gathering, it is more or less impossible to know what is behind that door, if the public at large do not have access and one cannot pose as a mystery shopper agent provocateur to see the lay out.

Every raid is mounted at dawn or a time when the target will be busy. There can be no guarantees the target will be there. Vehicles can be identified parked outside , but if luck is not on the side of law enforcement, the target could be having a cup of tea round the corner or going to the dentist etc etc. The best laid plans………….

Also these raids are multi-agency. Police and Trading Standards combined. Police have the power to arrest, Trading Standards the expertise in this instance. So field teams have to be briefed as to the building, their stations, individual responsibilities and what we anticipate. Also there is a question of logistics and manpower.

At 11 am 8th December 1998, two teams approached the warehouse, one to the back door down an alleyway and one to the front entrance. I led the front door charge with a video camera recording and holding the warrant. I had 3 officers, the Police had 5 plain clothes detectives.

As I opened the front door there were the inevitable shouts from the occupants, as I announced our identities and our mission. The scene we met were we totally unprepared for. We had stumbled on the biggest production of counterfeit designer wear this country had known. There were computerised sewing machines embroidering 52 brands onto garments. Any name you could imagine, Addidas, Nike, Versace, Hugo Boss, the list was endless. So was the stock. Hundreds of thousands of garments in production and in store. Downstairs was the showroom, shelves bedecked with counterfeit goods, even perfume and champagne. Upstairs were the women at the machines and conveyor belts. Who was in charge, well no body of course. All the staff remained silent. All were arrested and taken to Leyton Police Station in a conveyor belt of white Transit vans. That occupied all the cells at that Police Station. Most importantly Derrick was arrested running out the back door as we came in the front. Derrick was the most aggressive swearing individual I have ever met. Subsequent enquiries revealed his family were connected to the Kray Twins. Derrick professed to being just the delivery driver he delivered boxes , just boxes. But in his haste Derrick left vital clues. An address book full of contacts for “badges”, “tshirts”, “booze”, “buttons”. He also left handwriting, notes, calculations, an iou book. This was to prove his downfall later in court as forensic hand writing analysis proved that his documents in his name, were written by the same person as these business documents.

Derrick when interviewed would have none of it. All the official records of renting the warehouse were in false names and addresses, as was the telephone. 150,000 garments and 10 machines were confiscated and vans had to be hired and another warehouse to store and sort this vast amount of stock for analysis by the true brand owners. Derrick was also a cash merchant, so he left no trace there either. Any credit cards he took out, he would use for short periods either to withdraw cash balances and then not repay , or on trips to Las Vegas or Harrods on Valentines Day.

The Crown Court Case lasted 2 weeks. Derrick was charged with the Common Law offence of conspiracy, to defraud brand owners. I spent 4 days in the witness box, 3 of them under cross examination. However that was not until Derrick had skipped bail from the first court date and took the first Easy Jet flight from Luton Airport to his Villa in Majorca. I then had to liaise with Interpol to ask the Spanish Police to extradite him. But Derrick was on the run and 2 years after his initial arrest he was arrested again by Regional Crime Squad in a sting operation for importation of drugs. So Derrick was now in custody. Interestingly enough he got off the drugs case, saying he was just the driver !

In 2003 he was given the longest sentence for any brand counterfeiter 5 years. Though Derrick spent his money on a champagne life style, he lost his Mansion in Essex, cars & vans and aVilla in Spain, as assets in proceeds of crime. They were sold for the benefit of the State. Derrick also got divorced to try to keep his bricks and mortar and put everything in the wife’s name, but that was not accepted by the court.

The happy ending to this story is that there are charities that take these seized garments and machinery after the court case. They de logo the offending marks and are able to clothe the needy.

2. Johnny Morris:

In 1991 Thermastor, was Britain’s’ 2nd largest double glazing company. Margaret Thatcher was on TV being shown the Peterborough factory by one of her captain’s of industry Johnny Morris. Then in the late spring at my BBCTV Watchdog desk I read a small paragraph in the financial pages stating they had gone bust for £21m. It smelt dodgy to me, and I started making telephone calls. I met the receivers, who chose to come clean and announce their concerns.

I also chatted to the 2 ex members of staff who were left manning the telephone at the old factory. They gave me the keys to Johnny Morris’s office. His filing cabinet was like an Aladdin’s cave full of incriminating evidence.

Morris had written to all his customers asking for the balances on installation to be paid up front even up to and including the day he went into liquidation. That’s is fraudulent trading. He also had no hope of making the windows as his suppliers had not been paid and had foreclosed on delivering materials. He had also used company funds to add to the splendour of his Oxshott mansion. He also had paperwork for a phoenix company to arise from the ashes of Thermastor to carry on, even a cold calling telephone script to contact potential customers in the new business name. .

It was easy to find and film interview countless customers who had lost their life savings, double glazing does not come cheap. There were also a queue of supplier creditors including the printing firm that had worked on the new phoenix company paperwork. These unpaid suppliers were now in danger of going to the wall too, after the collapse of Thermastor for £21m.

Morris was doorstepped by me and a film crew, with a group of his customers as he arrived for the creditor’s meeting. In the interests of balance, he was given ample opportunity to state his case, and he did try to bluff his way out of it on camera.

After the half hour expose, on peak time BBC1, the files were handed over to the Serious Fraud Office, for his conviction. However the money had all gone.

BBC1 but this is 2

2009-04-27T10:56:00.000-07:00

This is the BBC.

the story continues.........still BBC1 not BBC2 although this is number 2 following number 1, confused you will be……..

I got into the BBC because I had contacts as a former Trading Standards Officer and Investigative techniques. BBC does not really employ investigators so I was a unique animal. The change from having a team of officers to being on my jack jones took some getting used to. Also I no longer had a warrant card or statutory powers. But I soon learned that people would tell me things anyway. Sometimes it was in a brown paper envelope, other times they would be interviewed, even on camera. Of course everything had to be substantiated, else on the balance of probabilities I and Aunty Beeb could get sued for libel. But we had to show balance and did not have to prove beyond all reasonable doubt. Some stories came direct from the victim, others through the authorities who had drawn a blank. When you are in law enforcement, some things are wrong but not illegal, but the public don’t understand. When you are in TV the wrong things that are not illegal should be and hence the story.

One story I did about BSM was put on hold for a week after the BBC lawyers said I had to talk to more than 25 ex instructors. The following week we met and they asked me how many, I said 600 is that enough. They grinned. Those were the days my friend, BSM were very hostile, refused an interview, and were taking full page ads in the Telegraph, Times and Guardian about me and the Beeb saying it was all lies lies and more damn lies. The Editor David Lloyd and I went to stage our own Press conferences to counter the BSM propaganda. Lloydy was very happy, he had never had such a high profile. The ex public school boy with the same haircut was full or pomp and circumstance.

I even made his cricket team, that was the Beeb in those days, cucumber sandwiches, Pimms and Cricket, though they could not get me out, and I had to retire to let someone else bat, that was not cricket old chap to stay in for hours !!! It’s not the winning it’s the taking part, sod that for a game of soldiers even cricketers. When we fielded once the Deputy Editor hit me for six once, so next ball I charged down and put every ounce of effort in the delivery, and caught and bowled him to me great obvious delight. Now now Allan.

I remember a summer party at Frank Bough's house, we had a proper cricket match on his garden, yes it was that big on the banks of the river Thames. And when the cricket was over Sue Nix and I sat by the river, I always called her Sue no Knicks, she was beautiful.

What had BSM done I here you bib and sound your horn. Well the law allows driving instructors to learn their trade while they teach their pupils to drive. But they have to be supervised by qualified tutors. BSM in the mid eighties were masters at deception. They fooled Dept of Transport Inspectors into thinking dead instructors were still alive and not only kicking but driving.... out on a lesson, also instructors who had emigrated to Canada were still on the books and conducting lessons in Chiswick London W4 according to BSM. Well I have heard of commuting and getting on yer bike for a job, but really transatlantic flights for a one hour lesson, I don’t think so, never mind the jet lag sitting behind the dashboard of a Metro.

So for the 3 days before transmission I worked 22 hours a day, then the 6th Floor came to view the film that was making all, the headlines before it had been seen. The 6th Floor were the big BBC bosses and we all had to stand to attention. So the programme went out, and so did Jacobs the Chairman , who was also treasurer of the Liberal Party, whose Peers had blocked new legislation that BSM did not like. So BSM now closed down branches and became a franchise, and, oh the laws they were blocking got passed.

Pooped , yes I was, but adrenaline keeps you going.

Too pooped to party though, but the BBC did have some wonderful memorable parties where we would all sing Hey Jude for the final 30 minutes at some exotic location. I normally did the music which helped, as far as I was concerned, but these events were tremendous for loyalty, morale and camaraderie.

A film was always made for the Christmas party. These days I spend Christmas parties on my own with left hand pulling the cracker with my right hand. But at the Beeb, one film I made was about the Editor Nick Hayes on Watchdog. He was still a hippy in the 80s, curly hair that had not seen a brush since he was born and he was now 30 something. Beard too, floppy jumper and corduroy trousers and trainers.
So for the film I donned a wig a floppy jumper trainers and corduroys. I became Nick Hayes his double.

Now Nick had justgot his driving licence, late in life and to everyone’s astonishment he bought his first car and what was it…………..
that’s right a Porsche !! We went to Scarborough once, not for a fair but a conference. I felt every cat’s eye on the Motorway as passenger in the Porsche on its maiden voyage, bought with the proceeds from the divorce settlement. Not as bad as Sarah Spiller driving though, the wipers would be on double speed, and the SUN WAS SHINING. Lovely Sarah she used to put the wipers on to demist the windscreen, she didn’t realise they WERE ON THE OUTSIDE !!! You can see why I normally drove now can’t you. Another Spiller story she parks the hire car overnight in an NCP car park in Birmingham. Next morning at the hotel, “where is the car Sarah”. “Oh it’s at the NCP car park”, “Which one”, the multi-story one”, “they are all multi-story”. So for the next hour we wander around Birmingham City centre looking for a car park with a “twirly bit to get in”, then “what floor” “errrrrrr”, so 6 floors later we find it. Now you know why I generally drove !!!

So back to the plot………..Christmas time filming for the party premiere , the Nick double at the bus stop hand request goes out bus zooms passed, as they do.
But the funniest thing was we took his keys one day, drove his light blue Porsche with 87 learners plates stuck all over it, and in one scene Nick is watching this film at the party completely oblivious to what the film was about, and he sees a car like his, going through frame backwards then forwards, then backwards again, then kangaroo style, hazard lights on then indicating right and turning left. It was sooooooooooooo funny seeing his face , smiling at first then he saw the number plate, and he realised IT WAS HIS CAR, he he ha ha.

2 years later I still had my job, and he made me Deputy Editor, he he ha ha………..party time.

To be continued stay tuned to this channel,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

This is the BBC

2009-04-23T09:12:00.000-07:00

I said before my happiest days were at the BBC. I felt I could influence things. In Trading Standards as an officer you dealt with local and national issues. Sometimes they made the newspapers, but often no one else knew what was going on and court cases took ages. True I gave the press a lot of stories, I appeared on TV as a Trading Standards Officer in the middle of things, even filmed during a "discussion" with a "don't point that camera at me sonny, I'll shove it down your throat" video pirate in Harrow Road Paddington. Yes nice chap not exactly membership potential for the round table. It was stories I could tell to journalist that helped sell their papers, and in the end I jumped the Trading Standards ship for investigative journalism.

Why, because it was obvious to me that naming and shaming had more impact than the courts of the land. I sad indictment, but true,

So life at Lime Grove Shepherds Bush in the mid 80's in the days of Breakfast TV and Thats Life. Room 601 right at the top, overcrowded but what harmony amongst a team all wanting to do well, all wanting Watchdog to be a success. A fantastic camaraderie, Watchdog had been a slot in Nationwide and when I joined it was beginning a life on its own, a programme in it's own right against the wishes of Esther Ranzen on That's Life, consumer competition.

I remember Kevin Sutcliffe joining. Nick Hayes. the editor, used to ask me to look after the new recruits. So Kevein was under my wing for a while. Lovely lad, from Blackpool so he spoke funny, and always dressed as a rocker, but had no motorbike and no crash helmet, so was past the sell by date by 20 years for no real reason of transport, he used the bus and the tube.

Kevin walked with me to a bakers in Goldhawk Road Shepherds Bush one lunch time, and asked the lady behind the counter for barn cakes, do what she said, I was in hysterics as Kevin tried to explain, so I acted as translator for my colleague, excuse him luv I said, he's from Blackpool. On the way back munching his jam doughnut I explained to Kevin that barn cakes in London meant you were mad. loopy, as opposed to a kind of oat biscuit. A nation divided by a common language. But Kev took it well. We were soon driving up to Manchester to make some enquiries about a story and as we passed Watford Gap Services on the M1 Kev said to me "Right from now on I do the talking, 'cos they won't bloody understand you".

Which is not untrue. I remember Steve Rose coming up to a Birmingham Pub once where I had tracked down some roofers who preyed on the elderly. You know the sort that drive round, look for a house that has all the signs of an old person living in. Then knocking on the door and frightening the old folk into parting with £150 to fix a loose roof tile which was not loose in the first place. Of course the old trusted the con artist and had to take his word for it, and could not see for themselves. "Better get it fixed luv quick , if it falls and hits someone you will be liable, and it is leaking now, haven't you noticed it". Some of these cowboy builders would even rin the old dear down to the Post Office to cash the giro.

Anyway on the basis of 3 letters of a number plate I found a roofers van matching a description parked in a Pub Car Park. So I then traced where the driver lived and the film crew would turn up the next morning to doorstep the Roofer and his boss. But during our observations in the pub, surveillance and blending in with the customers, some young girl came up to Steve and said "I know you , you're from the Cup Shop", Steve's face contorted as he could not understand a word she was saying, and again I was in hysterics, knowing that the girl thought the pub was going to be raided for under age drinking by the force from the cop shop.

The doorstep, well after a night in the Holiday Inn, no expense spared on these productions, it was snowing. So I said to Lynn Faulds Wood, put a scarf on to hide her hair knock on the roofer's front door and pretend she was new in the neighbourhood, but the snow has caused a collapse of a section of her roof. Meanwhile the film crew and I hid behind a hedge in some one's front garden. Why people don't come out and say oi amazes me, must be everyday they have a film crew squatting in their front garden. So matey buys hook line and sinker the damsel in distress story and as he and Lynn walk past the garden, up pops a cameraman and a sound man like a jack in a box and Lynn whips off her scarf to confront the rogue.

Wow, we used to laugh. We were the good guys and when you saw the eyes of the bad guys and their jaw hit the deck, well that was justice and comeback for their misdeeds. It gave me a real buzz. I had 3 priorities, we had to capture on camera the villains face, if he spoke that was better, if he engaged in an interview even better. But numero uno was his face on camera. The tricks we used to get up to to get them out of their houses or lay in wait at their offices. Of course the viewer never saw what the camera crew were up to laying in wait to turn the tables on the villain. All they saw was a street interview confrontation and the villain legging it slip sliding in the snow. Nor could we laugh until it was all over, so it was bite the lip, but it still makes me burst out laughing today when I think of what we did. The film crews loved it, they knew all the background work had been done, that a plan had been made and that justice was on their side. Those were the days my friend we thought they'd never end, we did sing and dance for ever and a day.

John form Kingston was a freelance stills cameraman that I often employed, for these tricky confrontations, he could take stills as back up for the moving camera. We did a lot together, even a couple of car chases in East London and up the M11. He was there when the customers of a cheap furniture retailer went bust, a group of them came up to me and said get your cameras rolling and watch this..... and they stormed the stage at the creditors meeting and beat up the delinquent directors.

But the best one was when we asked a road sweeper to borrow his donkey jacket and his road sweeping lorry in exchange for a cup of tea and egg on toast in the corner cafe. The plan then was for John with LB of Hounslow Donkey Jacket to knock on the door and say "Is that your car mate, we are doing road sweeping, with a mechanical road sweeper, can you move your car for a minute. Of course the crook comes out to move the brand new black Mercedes and hey presto guess whose on the road sweeping machine, its the BBC film crew, by jove, and you sir are a crook and a swindler.

Scuffles there were, mainly the cameraman got the attention 1st. Part of my Producer Director job was to protect him and the rest of the crew. hence I got the nick name Big Al. There was one job, a Mock Auction, where I asked for volunteers to film the event. I took a late call that this auction was happening that evening. It's illegal, but it's the sort of sale where the auctioneer shows something really good, they have stooges in the audience who pretend to but it. Everyone else ums and ars and wants a slice of the action and of course they get boxed and wrapped up tatty junk for their money. I was in the auction using a hidden camera and sound equipment and on my cue the film crew and Sarah the reporter were to come into the hall to confront the gang. So at the end of the sale I spoke into my microphone and in came the crew and suddenly their was a pitched battle. I had bullet proof Stevens as the cameraman, he had filmed in Vietnam hence the nickname and he was a big lad. 26 seconds he had hold of his camera, before it went airborne all filmed on my hidden camera in a bag, which I had to hand over to another crew member, so as I could wade into the gang attacking my crew, meanwhile Sarah who for vanity reasons never wore her glasses when filming, walked up to the auctioneer in bliss full ignorance of all hell letting loose in her wake. So the commentary went as such "The man in the black leather jacket squaring up and engaging in fisty cuffs with the gang is in fact our producer protecting the crew, and he uses himself as a barrier to stop the gang from shutting the doors as he shouts out and calls to me, so I can run and make my escape before the doors slam shut...bang".

It does bring a whole new meaning to "as seen on television". Those were the days and nights my friend, we thought they would never end.

Most of the time the crooks who were caught out let off steam, rant and swear, just occasionally it got really nasty. Lynn got 5 yards away from me once. We were at Ron Aylwards Cheshire mansion. He was the home improvement entrepreneur, whose Sunday Times Magazine glossy advertisements offered much, solar panels, the answer to flat roof leaks, a new prestigious driveway, luxurious central heating. Trouble was with Ron Aylward the only home he improved was his own. Every time the game was up, he would fold the latest venture and a phoenix operation would rise from the ashes fo the last. For instance his central heating was a series of electric fires plugged into a hole made in partition walls. Anyway Lynn got 5 yards away from me and Mrs Aylward lashed out with a dog chain right round Lynn's face as the camera rolled.

Another time 28 stone Mick was a transport manager of dangerous muck away lorries near the Blackwall Tunnel. I drove the Transit up to his portacabin door and from the van's side door the crew and Lynn could walk straight into his office. By the time I got in, the sound man was flying round the room as Mick grabbed the camera after throwing a pint of milk then a cup of tea at the cameraman, who now looked like the android in Aliens, covered in white milk. The sound man was still connected to the camera by the umbilical cord hence revolving around the room like a scene from the Exorcist. So I extracted the £25,000 camera from the guiness enhanced gut of the transport manager and gave it back to the besodden cameraman with the red recording light still illuminated. Mick then locked us IN his office as he waddled down the yard to get his drivers. Discretion now being the better part of valour, I kicked the door out and we all jumped into the Transit only for 2 lorries to bear down on us. Fortunately I can drive, fast and nippy. In fact I drove all the time because we always had to get somewhere in no time at all. Like Inverness airport 40 miles away in 40 minutes to catch the plane... and we did. So foot down I headed straight for the oncoming truck just as the one from the side missed us by inches in my acceleration, then at the last second I swung the transit hard left and then hard right and swerved round the oncoming truck, like a warship evades an Exocet missile, phew. So while the others stayed in a corner cafe, the cameraman came in my car and stood through the sunshine roof as we returned to the yard in a hired XR3i, a bit nippier to deal with any nasty lorry drivers, just to get some more footage and Mick shaking his fist through his office window. Those were the days my friend, they don't make them like they used to you know, when it was trouble up mill and tough at the bottom.

Last but not least for this chapter, I must narrate something slightly different but its not time for something completely different you will be glad to know.

Mike Embley was the reporter, the vegetarian that kept 450 passengers including me waiting on a Boston Runway in a 747 because he could not find any plums to eat for the flight. On the Wednesday I took a call in the Watchdog Office from an elderly man on holiday in Spain. He was complaining of the dreadful accommodation Airtours had put him and a lot of other old age pensioners during a winter break. That Friday we were on the way to the Costa Almeria and started filming that night. The pensioners had been put into a dump of an accommodation self catering block of apartments, next to a building site. So their walls were covered in mould, the swimming pool was green and dirty. The restaurant and dance hall had been demolished. All this we filmed, but we also decided to film a send up of the Airtours glossy brochure, including the facilities, with Mike reading from the brochure like a kitchen space for entertaining which in fact was not a kitchen but a cupboard with a fridge that did not work. Then Mike danced amongst the rubble of the former restaurant and dance hall, it was a real hoot. The next morning we doorstepped the local Airtours Office that had ignored the complaints for the last 3 weeks. The poor girl in charge telephoned Lancashire Head Quarters to tell them there was a BBC Watchdog film crew in their office and some disgruntled holiday makers and what should she do. You should have heard the gasp from the other end of the telephone line, I thought they guy had taken his last breath..."you got Watchdog, there, in your office, expletive deletive !!!!" "Get those people out of those apartments, just do it now whatever it takes do it now". And that is what happened,a happy ending. I got the Power, those poor people ignored for all that time, suddenly they have to pack their suit cases and board the coach to take them to the best 5* hotel in town at No extra charge. Next morning as we say our farewells we film their champagne breakfast, my hand nearly fell off it was shaken in gratitude by so many. I got the Power.....

I've got the power
He could break my heart
He could break my heaa-aa--art
He could break my heart
He could break my heaa-aa--art
He's got the power oh-oh-oh-oh

My Way

2009-03-21T02:01:00.000-07:00

Ive lived a life thats full.
Ive traveled each and every highway;
And more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

Regrets, Ive had a quite few;
But then again, too many to mention.
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption.

I tried planningd each charted course;
Each big step along the byway,
But more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

Yes, there were times, Im sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew.
But through it all, when there was doubt,
I ate it up and spit it out.
I faced it all and I stood tall;
And did it my way.

Ive loved, Ive laughed and cried.
Ive had my fill; my share of losing.
And now, as tears subside,
I find it all not so amusing.

To think I did all that;
And may I say - not in a shy way,
No, oh no not me,
I did it my way.

For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught.
To say the things he truly feels;
And not the words of one who kneels.
The record shows I took the blows -
And did it MY WAY

The Way We Were

2009-03-17T01:40:00.000-07:00

If I come back in the next life, I want a bottle of the elixir of life and a double ration of hindsight the wonderful thing. Not that I believe there is an after life of souls, else it would be rather top heavy with all those Cavemen, Gladiators, Vikings and the Bosch up there in Valhalla. Maybe we recycle though and I was a shot down Spitfire pilot and a Centurion on Hadrian's Wall in former lives as we knew it. Like a full moon they both have some kind of strange influential mind pull on me.

No I am not a werewolf, but full moons influence the tides so why not my body, mind you these days its a case of I believe in miracles, where're you from you sexy thing.

So this chapter is about the downfall of mankind, including me, yes I did not get where I am today without women. In fact the rise and fall of Allan Sharpe is due to Allan Sharpe, snakes and ladders, river deep mountain high, and the dice he threw. He always got on better with females than males. With men he could talk about football, sport and women, but lots of men were seemingly jealous. Never being one to prop up a bar, but rather spending an elegant decadent time with a glass of dry white wine. Pinot Grigio was always at an affordable price, though the pricier Sancere did not touch the sides. Not that he did not like pubs, he just did not like the riff raff in them, yes he could be an arrogant snob, but he could also engage in banter, in conversation with any one, any class, any sex. He also liked a pint of real ale, though at age 18, the 8 pints each of us 3 of 4 (Ken, Keith, Kevin with a Consul Mk I parked outside) consumed in a Harefield PH is a distant memory. Where did we put the equivalent of a gallon of Duckhams 20/50 in our bodies, though truly most of it was dispensed of on porcelain walls and trees on the way back to Willesden.

Did I tell you I got banned from 3 dance halls in 3 weeks age 19, reason girls girls girls and their, unbeknown to me, boys boys boys who thought their name tag was round the girls neck, or finger.

So I could always chat and chat up. I always admired beauty, style, poise and grace, that hit my eyes not only across a crowded room, but could be in my face or could even be a sculptured piece of architecture, not only the Aphrodite female form.

But there are scattered pictures of the smiles I left behind, smiles we gave to one another, for the way we were. I learned as a 12 year old that demolition was easy, construction and reconstruction took much longer. In my love life, after learning to kiss, then eventually learning to please as opposed to being pleased, nod's as good as a wink to a blind man, I discovered to my cost that it took two to tango, but one to detonate and pull the plug. My mum said "fuck em and leave em" I don't think she got that from the Relate Manuals. My biological father was worse than me, at least I tried before giving up. My brother in law thought it was better they loved you, taking the easy route 66 to get his kicks. I guess my sister Pat has held that marriage together since the early sixties and Mick sat back in the armchair and watched TV.

That's what I always wanted, like Ken, like JT they married their child hood sweethearts and journeyed to the plateau of stability. Me, I was white water rafting.
I remember, Bill Butterfield at Westminster, coming in one day to work and saying over a lunch time pint, that his wife came into the room last night, he was watching TV feet on the coffee table and a can of lager in his hand. She said ok I am off then. He glanced down and saw there was a suitcase on the carpet. Where, he exclaimed in amazement. She said, the kids have grown up, I am not needed here anymore, I am off to get a life of my own, and woosh she was gone ....... blimey!!! Listening to that story was Chris Rogers, who had decided to shit on his own doorstep and have an affair with a gorgeous artist from ....next door ......blimey!!!

When my mum was a single parent society did not accept that situation. Women would be house wives and child minders. Hardly any married women worked outside the home and got paid for it. Husbands would drown their brains down the pub and come back for sex and fall asleep on the job. Sweeping generalisations are sometimes true, especially for a lad growing up in Willesden London NW10. Not that I was privy to the bedroom scenes of course, but it was generally known, that's what happened in Willesden life of the 50's. In the 60's that all changed, the mini was built, Britain's best selling car and the mini skirt arrived. Hail the permissive society, well in truth it was just more public rather than staying private. So girls would build up all that passion in boys which converted like potential energy into kinetic lust energy, only to discover that the mini was accompanied by the other new invention - tights, the ultimate passion killer, so near yet so far. E = mc2.

Some girls showed their bum as they walked along, but mind you that other great invention, the thong or gstring had not been invented as yet. On a Lambretta TV 175 with all the mirrors, chrome panels and front and rear racks, pulling was easy, pulling up by the law was also an habitual experience.

Dana was in the 4th year I was a prefect, she was too young for me, she was petite & stunning though, a pelmet for a skirt, as she sat pillion, her thighs wrapped around me, oh those were the days my friends, we thought they would never end.

I suppose I was always captivated, I went weak in the presence of beauty. Hilary Scarr was my 1st love, as I said before, she had an hour glass figure, trouble is all the boys could see what I saw. But its better to love than never loved at all, its just what becomes of the broken hearted, who had loved and now they were parted. Sometimes there are winners and losers. I would like to find these ex's now through the internet, but it is not easy. Only for curiosity reason, You spend time 24/7 with them, then time takes them away for ever, it is weird. They are out there somewhere just like life on Mars.

Helen Parry was my love after divorce, I should not have got married, but if I had not, Ian & Graeme would not be here and I am really glad they are. But Helen in truth could not cope with the young boys, even though she was not a surrogate mother and had no desire to be. She resented my time with them and holidays she had to share me with them. Sad that we drifted apart, both changed careers, both spent time at work and left notes on the fridge for each other, Compounded by my abject misery on the Sunday night drive home from dropping the boys back with their Mum.

BBCTV casting couch stories are true too. Sex was rampant. Girls chatted up boys now. Hold on I thought it was the caveman's role to stand around the edge of the dance floor and for girls to wiggle & giggle around their handbags in the centre of the dance floor. No, that was history, keep up with the changing times Allan, else you will end up like the manikins in a Co-Op shop window.

Monique, wow what a name, and a name that befitted what my eyes took in. I am sitting in the BBC Bar after the show with a few of the production team. Monique wiggles her way, target destination 3" from my left side. "Hello. you are Allan Sharpe, you are the Deputy Editor of Watchdog aren't you, I am Monique, I want to go to bed with you".

Now, believe it or not, this kind of every male fantasy and script for a lager TV commercial, was word for word fact. And as you all by now want to know......... we did spend a weekend in my bed. Unfortunately she was married, lived in Hemel Hempstead, to make matters worse he was an Arsenal supporter, and she could not get no satisfaction, so she thought, career status was an aphrodisiac and she would have the Deputy Editor of Watchdog. Fabulous dancer we had one special song "a real gone kid" by Deacon Blue. Just like Jesus and Mary Convent the BBC was a never ending production line of girl friends. In truth I was wanting longevity, in truth they were wanting fun, sometimes the two combined in more ways than one, but it was a roller coaster ride, short, expensive and not really value for credit card. They were all stunning, they all, Hazel, Arlene etc made me feel 10 feet tall with them on my arm. Richmond lifestyle was one of decadence, wining, dining, dancing, even eating in in front of the log fire and holidays abroad. Those were the days my friend we thought they would never end. But they did. I was trying to build a nest, they were there for their timeshare self allocated weeks, months even years but nothing lasts for ever. I also wonder why no relationships can never be 50 - 50. Some of mine have been 90 - 10, or even if it is 51- 49 and that goes on 24/7/365 it is not good enough for me, and its time to get Steve McQueen's motor bike out for the Great Escape. Despite the cost in human tragedy, in human resources and wallets. I have started again and again and rebuilt. They are lots of houses in West London that are still decorated the way I left them. I said to Ian once in the car, if I was Hugh Grant at a wedding reception, I would need more than a table for my ex's I would need the whole hall.

Both Natalia and Hazel walked out behind my back and stabbed me through the heart in doing so. Not enough just to stab me in the back. Yes I am no angel, but I do believe in negotiation, even compromise as I see it - all relative. Hazel left to see her parents on Boxing Day, we kissed at the airport, only for her never to return..................blimey !!!
Natalia did her trick in recent years while I was at work.................... words fail me !!!

A room is a still a room, even when there's nothin' there but gloom
But a room is not a house and a house is not a home
When the two of us are far apart
And one of us has a broken heart

Both renounced the home, support and love I had given them, and that was the way they paid me back..............not in continued love but in deceit, treason and treachery. How can someone make love to another only to leave and never see again a few hours later, it is cruel, callous and cowardly.

Women do like successful men, it is an aphrodisiac. But when you are at the top or even near the top there is only one way...........staying there is not a route, it is maintenance of the status quo. The only route is down, and then the rats leave the sinking ship. However, this memoirs is testimony that the Titanic has been raised, so has HMS Hood, still guns blazing to the last, we will never surrender.

to be contd..................

Betrayal

2009-03-16T01:46:00.000-07:00

All good stories have their essential ingredients to ensure the reader is on the edge of their seat and not sitting comfortably. Those ingredients include:- wit, intrigue, romance and betrayal.

People often view Allan Sharpe as a hard nosed, thick skinned character, who can mix it with the best of them. To a certain extent that is true, like the planet I stand on, I have an outer crust that can take abuse hurled at it. However I also have a liquid centre and an Achilles heel. Not many are allowed to see the inner sanctum, because of that vulnerability, deflector shields on maximum.

I was at Next Step again last week. I make her laugh with my life as I have known it. Like the compliment I got from Mohammad at Waltham Forest in about 2003, who said "Allan, you are the most politically incorrect person I have ever met".

I guess politics is the ultimate betrayal game. I always supported my staff, my team , often to consequences as the guns were re aimed at me as a result. Like when the Evil Woman, Nick Ross's wife, Sarah Caplan became editor of Watchdog and made the young girl reseachers cry if things went wrong...."its your finger pointing fault". But one has to do what's right. I am no angel, but as I have said before, I try to support good against evil. Another laugh from Mrs Next Step, was when I told her what the Doctor heard when he asked me about a prescription and was I allergic to anything, my retort was "yes incompetent management".

I have known the Ides of March at least 3 times at work, and at rest & play. So much for the theory of Rhino hide and off the duck's back. I didn't get where I am today by arse licking. In fact I can count on one hand people I have worked for that commanded my respect. The rest were ok, if they left me alone, did not interfere with their inadequate assessment of the situation and left me to get on with it and get results.

http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/search/254965.Fine_for_jailed_Del_Boy/

Like my brother in law who wanted to create a garage business so that his son's Neil and Barry could take it on in later years, and it never quite made it,I have regrets. Some like my brother in law. I created Sharper Image TV & Video Productions Ltd. In 1994 My back was still healing after the knives attack at BBCTV, and I thought I could start an acorn for my sons Ian & Graeme. Alas it lasted just 4 years. Really a one man band, it did start Ian in a career though, but I had thrown in the towel before I could help Graeme make a start. In its hay day Sharper Image had a No 2 in the charts only to be pipped on the shelves by Walt Disney. But in truth that said it all. Sharper Image could not compete globally with multinationals, who remembers 2nd, only me (and Ian).

The biggest act of betrayal, getting back to the plot of this chapter, was in September 2004. LB of Waltham Forest was a poor area. Poor people are less well educated in general. I was poor as a kid, and well educated, so there are exceptions. However Walthamstow & Chingford and Leyton were depressing areas to work in, yet alone live in, which I did not have to fortunately. However I did have to serve the community and make their life better and fairer. The Council was one of the worse performers too, a fact named and shamed by the Audit Commission. Managers like the Environmental Health Officer Garry Seal, sat in his Arsenal festooned memorabilia, sat in front of his computer on his big fat arse. He knew little of what was going on in the streets outside his window. He only came out of his closed door office to go home, go to a meeting, go for a wee, go for a cup of coffee. One day in the kitchen I sellotaped a pound coin to his Arsenal mug, and said "that was the closest his team would going to get to win a trophy" haha said the Spurs supporter. His ugly face was a picture, even redder like their shirts, than when later I was to call him a "wanker" in front of the rest of the staff who cheered. All he cared about was his saving his big fat arse. I lost 50% of my staff over the 6 years I was there trying to do the reverse of what management did. All that time we had more statutes to enforce, and more demands from the public. Garry Nero Seal rose up the ranks of incompetency , I mean Peter's principle of management, and I had to suffer the Billy Bunter look a like for 10 months. He was aided and abetted by Linda Wacey, as Head of the Department. A people hater, spinster, poodle lover, and plastic smile perfectionist. Both were not on the planet High St Walthamstow. They were on the planet, budgets and saving bacon. Everyone else could get stuffed as far as they were concerned.

Now silly naive me thought I had a Liberal Democrat Councillor Allie in Barry Smith. But as with Dame Shirley Porter in Westminster 1982, I became a political pawn, and there are no winners, just losers and I lost. The build up was Seal's interference. He even pulled the plug on a crown court case, that had taken me 2 years to investigate. We were in Snaresbrook when he said we can no longer afford to proceed. So this business that had lost half a million pounds to some fraudulent ex members of staff, were left hung out to dry. The directors actually spoke to the slimmy Seal, actually that was their description, and later complained to the inefffectual Ombudsman. However worse was to follow. I used to say it was hard enough catching con men outside the office, but the worse thing was trying to undo the knots the inside office management tied me up in.

Our Price windows had a customer non service since computer records began in 1992. I had represented complainants at the small claims court. I and they had won. Still no redress often about poor workmanship, it was their track record, along with phoenix companies rising from the ashes and receptionists made into directors as the bosses were banned by the Department of Trade & Industry. Yes really good to do business with huh !!! Not the sort of thing you admit to on your newspaper advertising.

When I turned Trading Standards Officer into Investigative Journalist in 1982, I had realised before, that the best consumer champion was not the courts but the media. So my old friend Lynn Faulds Wood was trying to resurrect a consumer slot on GMTV. I telephoned all the outstanding Our Price Window complainants to give them Lynn's telephone number. There was a successfull programme. The bosses were shown up on camera, they paid up people that had been in dispute for over 5 years.

The Labour Leader of the council wanted to know why Trading Standards was NOT mentioned and was Allan Sharpe behind all this. Got it in one, he was, that's why there was no mention. Waltham Forest council were scared of the press, they had every reason to be, they were inept, incompetent, and thay had all that and more to hide. A success story like this was not down to them to feature in any glory, it was a success story despite them. They had long disciplined me for talking to the media and tried to shut me up. Funny thing was in the summer of 1998, my first job was to track down the Good Restaurant Guide. I was temping and I got the job because the previous management hoped I could catch a guy that had been at it for 6 months. He had every Thompsons telephone directory in the country and wrote a letter to every restaurant listed. "Congratulations, our inspectors have visited you site as customers and you got 94% for service and quality of food" "Please pay £19 for a certificate, your name will be published in our guide in 3 months". He made £500,000. Alistair Leslie Woods was the Good Restaurant guide. The Police and Trading Standards had searched for him for 6 months. In the mean time he was busy. There were no inspectors or inspections. The restuarants who fell for the scam, got a worthless computer print out certificate that resembled my 100 yards breast stroke certificate that I never got at school. So I found ALW in 3 days, yes not 182 and a half days , 3 days. ALW was arrested all his directories , letters printers computers seized. The Newspapers ran the story. The boss congratulated me in front of the assembled staff for a glass of water and a turned up at the edges sarny, very nice. I worked with the Press Office and my team would feature regularly on local and national news. It was good for morale, and showed the community that something was being done, it is called banging the drum.

The new mangement were jealous, their testicals had no ego, they tried to put a lid on me. Eventually in September 2004 at the 3rd attempt, they sacked me, after all those people finally got their rights from the crooked Our Price Windows.

I did take the Council to the Employment Bureau. But employment law is not on the side of an employee who is just good at his job, rather it is on the side of employers who are not good at their job, but make the rules up as they go along, move goal posts and hold all the computer recorded evidence. At least it took a week the trial, at least I cost them £10,000 employing a barrister. At least I had 8 witnesses who supported my stand, they had 3 trumped up establishment. At least Terry Brady my old mate from Westminster turned up and gave evidence, and we went to the pub after, came home on the train and had a good laugh at old times. Those were the days.........ah yes, Life on Mars.

David lost to Goliath that day, since then he has been sent into exile, branded as a maverick , a trouble maker. Maybe one day he will return, like Dirty Harry.... yesterday is history, today is a gift, tomorrow.......well that is just a mystery..........to be contd.

Gissa Job 21st Century

2009-03-10T02:24:00.000-07:00

Most of my working life was spent trying to get fairness and justice for others. Ordinary people who were in a David and Goliath struggle. In these last few years it is now me in that David sling shot position.

I tried to right wrongs, and today in England's green and not so pleasant land, there are a lot of things wrong, like litter, energy waste, a tardiness to incorporate alternative energy sources, and a great waste of experience and education by this country. Strong stuff, but it is no wonder people just rely on the state and drift along. Why should they bother when the country, government and society does not bother about it's citizens. The Government pump billions of pounds into a black hole of banking institutions and watch from the balcony playing a fiddle as countless companies go bankrupt with no support from government or the banks. So the unemployed swell in numbers me included.

Today I go to Job Centre Minus to sign on again. £73 a week. They will say have you worked - No, are you looking for work - yes, I will say have you got any jobs , they will say no. I have argued 3 times about sending me on a Career Development Course which places the individual in a job at the end, by fine tuning skills that are transferable. All this funded by EU grants. I am waiting to hear, after trying all manner of routes to by pass Job Centre Minus who are an obstacle to progression. I even wrote to my MP, but that was a waste of time too. At the Government's Job Centre Minus they fail to put people back to work, as I sit there my bum hardly makes an impression in the seat, my question and answer period with an officer laughingly called an advisor, last for about 60 seconds. This is what is has come to after a couple of yearss working through private employment agancies as a lorry driver, apart from the year I worked fixed term to introduce the smoking controls in public places. So to resort to being a Job Centre Minus statistic is a true last resort.

I have sort advice from other non government organisations like Next Step and Jobsmaites. They have warned me about age discimination, so on my CV 30 years plus of dealing with the public, is not a selling point - delete 30 years. So sad.

It is a far cry from when I left school. I was still working at my Friday night Saturday job in Woolworths Harlesden on the delicatessen counter. I had a Lambretta TV175, £££, no tax as a student, and a job which was a source of girlfreinds too. I was ok. BUT, the Youth Employment Bureau thought otherwise. They told me off in their Pound Lane Offices. I told them I looked in the newspapers and applied for jobs, I had 3 A levels and 11 O levels. Not good enough. Go for these 6 jobs. OK.
Well the highest paid was in what was to become Trading Standards but in those days was still Weights & Measures, working for a local council but run by the Board of Trade. £19 a week, trainee assistant, checking up on factories and shops, sounded good to me.

It was a mile and a half to work. I started by going on the bus. I even made a girlfriend at the bus stop, a hairdresser, very pretty, lasted a week.

I had to drive a van when we checked petrol forecourts and factories, One inspector 2 assistants. Sometimes I drove the inspectors cars when just 2 went to check retailers. I still lived with Mum in Essex Road, but we worked in Ealing, Brent and Harrow, so we travelled to the edge of London and the countryside like Elstree and Stanmore. It was interetsing stuff. One of the best jobs was acting like a customer. I would go into a shop and buy something, then we would check it for correct weight and price back at the car parked round the corner. I often caught the shops. I had some knack of pretence innocence. So much so that Harry Stanton said once " Bloody hell, every time you go into a shop I get another case". Good old red faced, grey haired Harry, he never got promoted. He looked like an old Colonel Blimp, a Knight of St Columbus, got drunk every lunch time, so to keep death off the roads the assistant would drive in the afternoon. Else if he drove we would be swerving in a silver grey Singer Vogue Estate with the rotund Harry clutching the steering wheel but leaning on the curves with the wheel, TT Isle of Man style, pass the roseary beads Harry !!!

We had ex Kenya inspectors too. They were ex British Colonials, fluent in Swahili which came in handy in Southall, as the African Asians were being booted out of Africa to land at Heathrow Airport.

The Trade Descriptions Act November 14th 1968 changed the job overnight. Lots of people telephoned to complain for the first time. The car had broken down, the artist impression hotel in the holiday brochure had not been built in time, the special offers were over priced. The Harold Wilson Labour Government tried to protect the consumer, whereas today it is left to Brussels. We had counter inflation measures to stop traders making instant profit as they did in 1971 with decimalisation. Then a pint of Watneys Red Barrel went up overnight from one shilling and ten pence to twelve and a half p = to 2 shillings and sixpence in old money. Old Money that had served the anglo saxons well, so it was an excuse to profit and inflate prices. Lessons were learned and I was so good at getting prices down, I took over all the counter inflation complaints in 1973. One extremely camp gay ladies hairdresser in Ealing said to me after I had taken the red pen to his price list on the introduction of VAT.......... *Oooooooooo you are ruthless, you have taken me to the cleaners".

I was qualified by now, it took 4 years to pass a Government Professional series of exams on law and technology. I used to get lots of stories that I could dine out on. Only because I seemed to have a knack of finding trouble. My jealous counterparts would say I was a trouble maker, a maverick, a loose canon. I would counter and say I knew exactly where I was aiming. I did not need artificial targets. I did not want to tick boxes. My self motivation was about deterrence, and making the place fairer for all, a level playing field , where cheats did not prosper. Hard sometimes when you are in your early twenties and the only thing younger than you is a Page 3 girl in the Sun.

Coal men were always on the fiddle. We would roam the streets in residential areas in a specially equipped van with a big sliding scale in the back. Sacks of coal would be weighed and often they were well short of the cwt. So the lorry would be escorted back to the yard it had come from and the whole load reweighed.

One day in Northolt, I was still a trainee with John Taylor who had just passed. We used to go to day release college together. He had married his child hood sweet heart. He went on to be the Chief Officer in later years, never working outside Brent. We got on professionally, but I cannnot say we liked each other. So one day Mr Burns the coal man is in Carr Road Northolt delivering, his bags turn out to be light. Taylor tells him to go back to Charringtons in Neasden by that bridge I walked over after my tonsils were removed 17 years before. Burns tries to make a run for it, he drives a huge detour up through Harrow, even Stanmore, with me in a Comma Van at the wheel pinned behind him, even when he goes through red lights, even crossing the North Circular. Then in the yard after this chase, he stops on the weighbridge, goes into revers and before I can select reverse he has rammed us. The whole front of the cab is now in bits all around me. The steering column saved me, Taylor had leeped over the passenger seat into the back. The van was a write off, no windsreen, no doors, no grill. Burns sped off, the engine was still running on the Comma because the passengers sat on it, so I sped off after him, Sweaney eat your heart out. Bits of metal and glass fell off as I drove with the wind in my face. Burns jumped up on the back of his lorry tipping the sacks destroying the evidence. I drove back to the offices to get Masters the manager, he sat in the remnants of a passenger seat, and barked at Burns that he was fired Alan Sugar style.

In truth cases like this were unusual but the outcome was always the same, crime paid, the offender walked away from court laughing, the do gooder Magistrates were hopelessly out of touch. It was also safe not risk. If the first offender was fined £25 then the rest, all that day were fined the same, regardless of what they did.

For those sort of reasons, when I found myself on the front pages or the TV screen because of my job, I generally told it as it was, popular with some but deeply and jealously unpopular with others. Later I would make the transition and become an investigative journalist and the outcome would be more significant than the law of our land. Public shame would achieve more than judicial sentencing, alas.

Cynical yes, the life made you like it. I would catch all the west end hotels for short measure drinks and overcharging. I would catch all the petrol attendants in the west end for fraud. In certain trades conning the customer was trade practice. Management never wondered why their lowly paid staff would turn up for work in a brand new sports car !!!

One Fine Fare manager in Northwood Hills, had the old prices on the shelves and the special offers in the window and in the Daily Mirror advertisement. The result, the sales till staff overcharged everyone. He was petrified when I turned up, sometimes the job had that effect when they had something more to hide than their brown underwear. I think I got 3 cases that day on just routine visits, no complaints from the unknowing public that I was duty bound to protect. I got out of the van with Dave Smith and thought those punnets of strawberries were never 8 ozs. Guess what they weren't. One Greengrocer Case. Next Fine Fare, where the manager later had a heart attack (3 weeks later) and died. The Supermarket bosses were cruel to their staff if Trading Standards caught them out. Next a car dealer turning the mileage and therefore the history of the vehicle back on the odometer. One Christmas time, a Butcher's turkeys in the window were all £2 over priced. Because of the scale of the problem, a queue developed of his customers even queuing down the road. One customer mouthed off at me, saying leave the butcher alone, he had been a customer for 25 years it was the butcher down the road I should be checking up on. I could not tell this guy the truth. The Butcher, under caution, his excuse was "trade practice".

That was the day in the life of...........not every day, but not an untypical day. It was rare to find no trouble to deal with, not to make , but to deal with.

Of course all the troubles had to be written up. At least we had typists in those days to write up our reports, at least we had a team to go out with and do the job. Nowadays like most jobs its one man bands, no help, no corroboration. In fact if I knew at 18, what I know now, I would have never joined the service. Since the Thatcher years it has been decimated. More statutes given by Parliament to police and less manpower and financial budgets. Consumer protection these days is caveat emptor, buyer beware, and self assistance for the majority of the time. That is ok as quality of the product has improved, but the standard of service and the desire to make a fast buck remains the same as it always was. Other things like education and social work takes presidence, and the consumer has to watch out for himself more and more, but still pay his taxes.

to be cont'd ......................

Once in a Lifetime

2009-01-15T06:28:00.000-08:00

Once in a Lifetime

I have always been interested in history, where we came from, what was the origin of my surroundings and how did I get here.

Getting a distinction at O level in History, I thought things happened and took time to change………..wrong!!

Margaret Thatcher changed our society in 10 years, we are no longer caring for others just walk on people to get to the top…….not my style.

Also I wonder if my mum or her ancestors saw so much change in their lifetime, maybe since the Victorians we have. People do not like change, like me they appreciate Status Quo.

I remember walking round Church Road Willesden with a shopping bag. Susie the dog would help herself to greens on the greengrocers stall as we passed with one swoop, yes a veggie dog!!! There were butchers, no supermarkets, grocers, fish monger, newsagents toy shops, cycle shops, pie and mash shop. There were off licences too, alcohol sales were limited and controlled, so much for free enterprise.

Now the Supermarket created by Tesco in the 70’s has killed off the smaller shops. Now we don’t have High Roads, we have shopping malls and cars queuing into car parks 7 days a week. Is that progress or greed?

The town landscape has changed, not for the better. I am now in sleepy Thrapston, a place I never heard of 2 years ago, and I dare say many still have not. But at least here there is still England’s pastures green, it has a small high street empty on a Saturday afternoon. We too have charity shops that have filled the vacancies left after Supermarket suffocation. But we have a quaint tea shoppe, and those are from a by gone era.

School friends houses are now underpasses, so is the Cambridge Pub where Jimmy Greaves Pat Jennings and the rest of the Spurs team would drink after the match. Some pubs have even transformed into McDonalds and fast food outlets instead of fish and chips or pie and mash. As I drive around, I can’t say things are better because they are newer. Some planners and architects should be put against a badly designed wall and fired. Like the scilly isles roundabouts in Hemel Hempstead, perhaps they had shares in car insurance. I do remember being in my 20’s, yes I can still, and not liking antiques but modern furniture and how my tastes have changed. I have visited Ikea once, yuk, rubbish, not for me. I like things properly made.

So bigger is not better, its like a dinosaur, and reaction times are not knee jerk, communications get lost on the way too. Sharper Image came and went. That was small , just like the small shopkeepers, it could not compete with multi nationals, but that was not to say it was crap. Number 2 in the video charts once, 2nd only to Walt Disney, see 2nd again.

Also shop names come and go . 99 years for FW Woolworths. My first job while still at school apart from that newspaper round. MFI furniture, well there is no loss. Dewhurst the butchers chain went a long time ago. I used to get cases against them.

Cars are more reliable today but all our makes have gone bar 2 that struggle to survive, When I was a kid we made for the world and gave to the world, now look at us eating McDonalds hamburgers.

Even my old school was demolished…………..bastards.

Its not all doom and gloom, but I have no time for this political correctness, say it as it is, I believe, call a spade a spade, at least it’s honest.

To be contd

And so this is Chistmas Volume 87

2008-12-24T03:26:00.000-08:00

And so this is Christmas Volume 87

The Edited Highlights and low lights of years gone by………………….

In no particular order the nominees are:

Ian as a circa 5 year old dancing with me to Manuel and the Music of the Mountains Guitar concerto though the thru lounge at Torbay Road Harrow, when I came home at night.

2 year old Graeme waving goodbye with his nose pressed against the bay window at the same former matrimonial home, after the marriage collapse. (Not a highlight)

Graeme as a teenager playing at Wembley, yes Wembley Stadium in an England Schools Cup Final, video recorded by some bloke who worked on Watchdog and was Deputy Dog.

At about 9, Graeme having a spasm attack, lucky you were around Dad, said the hospital doctor, great………….good job I went on the 1st aid course…………worse moment of my life.

In Wales pulling a younger Graeme out of the way of an oncoming nutter on a bicycle.

Ian as a toddler tripping and hitting the furniture causing old faithful out of his forehead and a mad dash to Northwick Park A&E by a wet red shirted father.

Helen swimming out to rescue Ian when the ball got further and further out to sea.
Blimey these incidents come thick and fast. Eat your heart out Baywatch.

Ian and Graeme Graduating at University…………that’s better.

Ian & Graeme getting married…………poignant stuff.

2 Grand daughters soooooooooo cute.

Fun times at the Ponderosa with my only sister and her off spring, the comedy store.

Falling in love, conversely falling out of love, highs and lows, action replays of the former not the latter.

Spurs winning anything ………………glory glory hallelujah.

A Man for all Seasons

2008-12-24T01:47:00.000-08:00

The Complaints Department is open 365 days a year, for those that want me to change, but I learned a long time ago, you can't change people, they are what they are and you live or let die.

And it is all the theory of relativity. On the Sports Personality of the Year programme recently some poor bloke got an award on his retirement as a broadcaster cos he had Motor Neurone disease, This guy had been a captain for his England at Cricket and Rugby in his former glory, and his speech was all about gratitude for what he had achieved in his life, not what life had cursed him with now. I thought that was truly commendable. True there are people worse off all over the world including Ethiopia.

I was Deputy Editor of BBCTV Watchdog for 3 years, that was me age 40 something. At least I got that high up the ladder, yes 2nd again. I have done a lot, I only wish I had opportunities to do more of the same now.

It does make me grumpy, but not in my mind a miserable old git, just someone who takes a look at life all around him and makes comments. Now the Sharpe name has its origins in medieval England and was given to people with the characteristic of cunning and wit. So there you go, that's me, well I think so anyway, even if I grump it's with a sense of humour, and if the listener has not got humour on their wave length, then they miss the joke, miss the boat and miss the opportunity.

C'est la vie.

and so this is Chrsitmas Volume II

2008-12-24T01:14:00.000-08:00

And so this is Christmas Volume II

The Ghosts of Christmas past, where are they now, it must have been love but it’s over now…………..

Memries (memries), good days (good days), bad days (bad days)
Theyll be (theyll be), with me (with me) always (always)
In these old familiar rooms children would play
Now theres only emptiness, nothing to say

No more carefree laughter
Silence ever after
Walking through an empty house, tears in my eyes
Here is where the story ends, this is goodbye

Knowing me, knowing you (ah-haa)
There is nothing we can do
Knowing me, knowing you (ah-haa)
We just have to face it, this time were through
(this time were through, this time were through
This time were through, were really through)
Breaking up is never easy, I know but I have to go
(I have to go this time
I have to go, this time I know)
Knowing me, knowing you
Its the best I can do

I can be romantic , even charming, it is not an act, not even in a former life, but it has to be inspired, and we are all different with different people around us. Perception is a wonderful key. Though I normally assess a person in 5 seconds, obviously I don’t always get it right, just most of the time. A job as a law enforcement officer does make you cynical and a human lie detector. I suppose I display a hard crust under which is really a soft core. I always wanted to do good to mankind in general, change things for the better and I do think there have been and still are wasted opportunities. I learned at the age of 12 that demolition was easy, but it took far longer to build and create. That was the age I embarked on DIY as my mum could not employ somebody to Do it All. So with relationships. You spend time with someone and then it is all destroyed just like HMS Hood , blown out of the water with few survivors. There are no winners in those situations.

At this time of year we get on TV those that have passed away during the preceding months, I hope I die before I get old, hold on I am as old as I feel.
I think of Christmas past and what might have been.

Sally Price was my 1st girlfriend, age 13. We sat in my bedroom, yes sat in the bay window on a sofa and kissed every Sunday afternoon, she was at my Grammar School the year below.

Pat Kelly was at Jesus and Mary School. Most of the girls worked at Woolworths in Harlesden , where I worked on the Delicatessen Counter Friday nights and Saturdays. Sad to see 99 years of a high st name demise at this time Pat came round every Sunday night age 16, without her strict Catholic Mum and Dad knowing.

Lynn Hoyte. She was my first steady girlfriend, lived on the North Circ in Neasden. I had to park the scooter at the back and disrobe, so her Mum & Dad did not know.

I finally lost my virginity at age 17 to Kim, a 25 year old, who walked past my home every evening. I would rush out at 5.30pm to polish the scooter and stare. Then one day she invited me to her flat, and that lasted for 6 months before I wanted a change. Kim was really the reason why I never got to university. She affected my revision pattern, which was read, digest, memorise. Even Mr Major, a small rotund lovely history teacher who every one mocked except me, could not believe my history grade at A level, when I had got a distinction at O level. I think my papers were marked incorrectly, but by then I was fed up with exams, and just took what I had, I was joint 2nd in the school, see 2nd again, story of my life. The school had appealed before when only four of us passed Economics O level, me included, so I think there were marking scams then as there are today, why change the habit of a lifetime.

Anyway I digress education standards from sex education (Seventeen) ( yes the film is based on truth) .

The first girl I did not recognise when I woke up in the morning was Carol. But that was because she wore so much make up at night that she looked “and now for something completely different” in the morning.

By now I had generated to four wheels and a 105e Ford Anglia. Then my first holiday abroad, amazingly it was a week with my biological father and a new woman in his life that wanted an extended family, right person to go to then!!

Magalluf Majorca opened my eyes, to feminity international. Eve was from Norway, daughter of a Vauxhall Dealership Manager in Oslo. She spoke no English, my Norweigan was as today……………zilch, the chemistry was like lightning striking at the same spot all the time. It was hard to say goodbye. Bad enough when hundreds, thousands of miles apart to carry on. Especially when every Thursday night I was down the Oldfield dance hall in Greenford and weekends down the Boat House (now demolished) at Kew and the Castle (now Henrys Bar - Meat Market) in Richmond.

I had met Suzanne in Boulogne age thirteen and three quarters, on a school trip, where every one except me and Derek Johnson were green faced and sea sick (form a queue over the side, toilets are blocked !!) She spoke no English, I spoke un peu. We had a blissful afternoon, fond farewells, au revoir ma cheri. Merci to Miss O Kane who paid for me, ‘cos Mum could not afford it. She was good looking too, Miss O’Kane. She taught us French in French for 3 weeks and left me froid and the rest of the 33 class except 3 girls. So then she reverted back to Anglais, tres magnifique !!

There was also Claire, she was Jesus and Mary too, say 3 hail Maries and 42 holy fathers. Poor Claire, she would be sitting there with my Mum , waiting for me to come in at about 11pm. She was so pretty with electric blue eyes, but had no figure at all.

At 6th form in the coffee bar queue with Clive Willey , Bob Sweet and Ken New the 4 Musketeers, Prefects who run the school with tyranny and favours ha ha. We were all gawping with dribble on the floor as well as our lower jaws at Carol the blonde busty beauty of the entire school. She was wow wow wow as she moved and didn’t she know it. Ask her out was the dare. Bob couldn’t cos he had his glasses on and if he took them off he could ask the wrong person………. Clive was too small he would only come up to her boobs, oh thats a handy height then.... . Ken was “attached”, so it was down to me, no chance……no no chance, no way, she well never say yes, never ever.............The Lady from Del Monte.........…she said yes…………….. trouble is after a week I found out I was second in line, 2 timed, so that was that.

Hilary Scarr was my first love, as opposed to lust. She had an hour glass figure, trouble is all the males agreed. She was bubbly effervescent.There was no phone at Essex Road Willesden, so I had to walk round to the Post Office to use a pay phone, or use the phone at work which was awkward ‘cos I had just started there as a trainee, 249 Willesden Lane Brent Weights & Measures.

One night Hilary said she was washing her hair. I got to hear that excuse many more times over the years. Also, another tip of the trade - never go out with a hairdresser, they like the mirror more than anything or anybody. I drove passed her house. I now had a Sunbeam Rapier, loved that car. I saw a red Triumph convertible Vitesse outside her Mum and Dads house in Kingsbury. It was the same car as some dick head that worked in her office Cibie in Dollis Hill. So I went and knocked on the door, you should have seen her face, amazed you will be, astonished oh my. The Mum and Dad did not like me, they wanted better for her daughter. I was learning fast, etiquette. I had not ever visited a restaurant till 18 and I started work, went into a Chinese in Wembley at lunch time. I had to ask my colleagues to order for me, sweet and sour pork and rice. I also have a confession to make. Not that I am Roman Catholic like the Jesus and Mary girls, I am Church of England lapsed. However I never liked my voice, nor my hair, nor my face, and especially my nose, which I got from my Mum. If I had my nose given to me as a present I would have got my money back. However there are those that say I look like Neil Diamond, even in a New York Café, which goes to prove the prognosis on my proboscis.

Anyway uncouth of Willesden was on the doorstep, and swathe, older slimeball came to the door behind Hilary to see what was going on. So in the red mist, I moved Hilary aside and one punch in the face laid slimeball out onto the carpet, Mum and Dad said get out, don’t worry I am going…………….knowing me knowing you ah haaa. It must have been love, but its over now.

At 19 I was banned from 3 dance halls in 3 weeks. Normal scenario, dance with girl, boyfriend turns up, she is my f’’’g fiancé not yours, fiancé ?? I exclaim, and let battle commence, bouncers storm in with blue peace keeping berets missing, and out into the car park I go. There was a funny car chase once, where with the 2 girls in my car I eluded 4 chasing cars full of Neanderthals by feigning at speed on the Western Avenue dual carriage way to go right at a slip road, and then using a passing lorry to block their view and go left across the carriageways instead………..Steve Mcqueen eat your heart out or even your Bullitt out.

That’s all for now folks, stayed tuned to this channel for further adventures of Tin Tin sorry I mean Me…………………….

I wish it could be Christmas every day

2008-12-23T08:18:00.000-08:00

And so this is Christmas

Time the 4^th Dimension is a curious thing. Whatever I did today won’t happen again, there is no fast rewind or post edit in life. I will not type the same thing here again in this moment of time, by the time I have typed these words the time has gone.

I was day dreaming behind the wheel today, but I won’t miss my turning again not today anyway.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, so is the elixir of life, but despite letters to some old geezer with a white beard and a funny red costume, I never got either for Christmas.

I think he is fake.

At Christmas time I tend to reflect on the year past and the past Christmases.

What might have been in a parallel universe. How you can be with someone 24/7 for many Christmases then poof all gone, and there is not even a ghost of Christmas past apart from the memories. It’s as if it happened to someone else and I just heard it or read about it.

Christmas is a family time and that does not change, except we all get older and run out of ideas for gifts to give. It’s those that were invited for Christmas and life as we know it, who change, who are just visiting, except it was not made clear at the time that a parking meter was ticking.

Christmas is also for kids. Once I started getting clothes and not scaletrix, I did not wake up at 3am to rip open the paper. That was only last year of course…….. I jest….

But seriously, as you have kids and grand kids at least the sparkle of Christmas comes alive again in their eyes and faces. Personally I always wanted to be on a beach, not Margate, but a few thousand miles further in the sun, then have Christmas dinner served up in a hotel. Bah humbug some people would say, but it is stress free and many people have a stresstive Christmas, cooking and feeding the 5,000 with loaves and turkeys.

Of course there are other parts of Christmas. No work, yes, well the economy has extended that benefit in 2008. Batteries not included, was another favourite pastime. Now I rip open the packaging in the shop to check the merchandise. As a kid, I always had to fix the toys after their 5 minutes of statutory working too. As a father, no not father Christmas, he is fake remember, I had to fix the toy boats, trains, planes and automobiles, else Ian & Graeme would not be smiling, and their Dad would be cross, money for nothing a dire strait indeed. Charades, well yes, let’s pretend all those toys do work and we don’t have to play with the wrapping paper or the boxes instead. No they are not more interesting than something that cost 2 arms and one leg.

I saw a video the other day. My first grand daughter is in Vancouver and she woke to find a Christmas tree in her home, she waddled over to it, it was so cute, she is one and a half almost, kissed a dangly angel twice, then pulled the tinsel off to wrap round her neck, much better, I suppose.

I dare say I had seen similar before, but today we have the technology to record all these events for posterity or to be saved in cyber space.

Being divorced when Ian & Graeme were still young also meant that every other Christmas Day I missed them, until I collected them days later from their mum. So those alternate Christmases were emptier for me personally.

It’s nice getting presents though, well done Prince Albert, and it’s nice to gather as an occasion. Commercially, I think the High St over extends it, but the decorations and lights are pleasing to the eye, However, although Thrapston, the town I live in now, has pretty street lights it has failed to figure out why the Christmas tree erected these last 2 years is in a black out…………Ho ho ho. Afterall it is the season to be jolly, tra la la la la la la la la. Would be better having a white Christmas rather than a grey cloud overcast SAD one, but never mind we can light up and warm the globe instead, as well as making Energy Executive Fat Cats fatter.

There used to be good films on TV, not any more, not even Zulu or the Great Escape, video and dvd has put paid to that. No more Eric Morecombe and Ernie Wise. Time changes everything.

And so this is Christmas, and what have you done, another year over and a new one just begun.

Read all about it

2008-12-22T00:36:00.000-08:00

I just read an email from Ken, my old school friend, he said he can't believe we are 60 next year, and yes it still seems in my head that we are still 17. The days of the Mods and Rockers, Carnaby Street, Parkas and my TV175 Lambretta, I was a mod. Certainly the successive decades have been eye openers, if only I knew it would be like this, river deep mountain high, do I love you my oh my.

4 times I nearly killed myself coming off that scooter. One time I overtook 4 cars in the fast lane of the North Circ...... on my bum ...........my scooter following me. The wind in your hair, no crash helmets in those days, chrome side panels all the mirrors and racks, talking about my generation, why don't you all fade away to Itchicoo Park. Transport meant I could escape from Willesden. Hitherto it had just been a bus ride with Mum, or cycling with the Essex Road Gang to Box Hill Surrey every summer. Scooters meant girlfriends too..............but thats another chapter.

The first recollection of Ken was he was a Norman, I was a Saxon at Grammar School. I liked being a Saxon, but we were green, hate green. Norman's were red. Anyway Saxons always beat the Normans, unlike poor Harold at Hastings. In a football match we squared up against each other, I was a defender he was a forward. In the 6th year we clicked for some reason. He still looks the same these days except the hair is grey not black. He has not changed, same old grin and chuckle. WE ruled that school in the 6th 2 year as prefects. Anyone good looking and female got favours, ugly and fat or male you had no chance................

Best days were dinner queue monitoring and order on a Friday...............fish chips and cannon ball peas. Once we had to restore order during a pea slinging riot and entered the dining hall as a phalanx with dustbin lids as protection against the hail of cannon ball peas. Eat your heart out Maximus !!!

To Do is to Dare, live long and prosper, strength and honour.

curriculum vitae

2008-12-21T23:41:00.000-08:00

  PROFESSIONAL OVERVIEW:  

Over 30 years experienced Consumer & Health Protection Consultant with a proven track record of success in the private and public market sectors, specialising in investigations, law enforcement and factual television programme making.

A strong pro-active leader, empowering staff to take ownership, providing coaching, training and mentoring to build cohesive teams working together to achieve individual targets and company objectives.

Results oriented and customer focused, with excellent relationship management skills.

Experienced in consumer protection, legal procedures and advice, crime investigation, risk assessment management and locating people, tobacco control, alcohol abuses, factual TV film making.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION:

· 2007 Accredited Smoking Cessation Advisor

· ACG Award 1999

· Former Lead Officer and Spokesman on anti counterfeiting for Professional Institute.

· Consumer Journalist Award 1984 for the expose of you won’t go further with Shell at the petrol pumps.

· Covert recording of mobile phone unblockers led to new legislation.

EXPERIENCE:

Smoking Cessation

Was one of the 1^st to use April Age progression software, in reducing smoking prevalence in the next generation.

Consumer Advice and Enforcement (includes the following highlights) :

· Secured extra funding for Consumer Support Network to revamp delivery of community advice

· Secured the longest conviction in the UK for counterfeiter

· Pioneered Extradition and Proceeds of Crime Investigations

· Ensured compliance with the Health Act 2006 and reduction in the prevalence of smoking

· Worked with Multi Agency Task Force working on Fear of Crime & Anti Social Behaviour projects

· Revamped the entire legal proceedings and evidence gathering procedures

· Played a vital role in closing down the crime ridden Hackney Market

· Sank DVD Pirates operating various bank accounts and aliases

· Closed down “Bodge the Builder” now a guest in HMP

Trading Standards in the West End

· Head of the investigations Team from 1977 to 1982

· Apprehended 44 fraudulent petrol stations in 7 years

· Apprehended almost all West End Hotels for short measure drinks

· Closed down a Blackpool fake perfume gang

Investigative Journalism / TV Productions

· Hooligans: The definitive analysis of Football Hooliganism (Rising to number 2 in the retail charts within 2 weeks of release)

· The Decline and Fall of Virginia Bottomley as Minister for the NHS for Channel 2

· White Witches and Black Magic for BBC2

· The Hitman is really an Undercover Cop for Channel 4

· Norman Conquest BBC2 expose of the corrupt world of Mr Fixit in British Athletics

· Ron Aylward, Master of Phoenix from the Ashes to cheat and con again in home improvements

· Airtours and the Old Age Pensioners with involvement of Watchdog, gaining them a fair deal

· Recycling – live outside broadcast from Meadowhall Shopping Centre

CAREER HISTORY:

Currently HGV driving for agencies @ TNT, Night Freight, Generation Scaffoldiing, Bedfordshire Bathrooms, Anglia Hire, etc residential and commercial destinations.

2007 to 2008: Smoke Free Officer: East Northamptonshire Council (Fixed Term Contract)

2005 to 2006: STY Agent: Sainsburys and Agency HGV Driver Parkhouse Recruitment

2005: Consumer TV Consultant

1998 to 2004: Team Leader – Consumer Advice and Enforcement: LB of Waltham Forest

1994 to 1998: Director of Own Company: Sharper Image TV Productions

1985 to 1993: Producer Director / Deputy Editor of Watchdog: BBC TV

1982 to 1985: Investigative Journalist: TVAM

1975 to 1982: Head of Investigations: Westminster Consortium Trading Standards

1974: Trading Standards Officer: LB of Hillingdon , obtained DCA

1968: Trading Standards Officer: LB of Brent (qualified after 4 years)

KEY SKILLS & EXPERIENCE SUMMARY:

· Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Explorer)

EDUCATION:

· Accredited Smoking Cessation Advisor

· Department of Trade and Industry Professional Qualification 1972

· Diploma in Consumer Affairs 1975

` 11 O levels, 3 A levels : Latin, French, Eng Lan, Eng Lit, History, Economics, Geography, Physics, Chemisty, Biology, Maths

2nd Prize

2008-12-21T23:11:00.000-08:00

You will see that even a video I made got to number 2 in the charts, not number one. Sharper Image could not compete as a one man band, even though I had Ian , my son, working and learning with me later. Little old me, never saying no to a job offer when the phone went, even though I was already doing something. No holidays, girl freind work widows. You could not say no, else the phone would not go again. But competing with Walt Disney and the likes............no way.

Final blow was when Discovery said they would take my series idea for inventions. 1997, there was nothing on inventions for the everyday appliances we take for granted and each held a fascinating human interest story. We don't learn it at school, there was nothing on the TV about such items....then, there is now. I was either 10 years ahead of my time Martin Peters style (quote from Alf Ramsey), or else someone nicked the idea. Cos I did not get the commission, over ruled by Washington.

I remember Roger Cook, Cetrl TV, nicking my idea about car theft in 1994. I had an XR3i stolen from a BBC Manchester car park. I could not believe it, late on a Friday night with me living in west London. I phoned the car (car phone) and some punk answered. I even traced their whereabouts and told the police. 6 weeks later I got the wrecked car back. No thanks to the police.

My idea for a story was told to Cook at an interview, use a tracker, set up a car and wait, follow the thieves, confront them. I did not get the job. 8 weeks later I am sitting in front of the box and my exact storyline is broadcast before my eyes................copyright bastards.

Hall of Fame

2008-12-21T22:58:00.000-08:00

Allan Sharpe’s Hall of Fame;

some of over 250 films, and 600 court cases that made the headlines

Court Cases

1972. The first was the largest department store in the area, Debenhams Harrow, and a lunch time stroll revealed all sorts of price discrepancies in their Sale, when I spoke to the manager he could not justify them. I had just qualified, the week before, the boss had sent me out on weighbridge inspections, I came back late with a van full of promotion signs, products and a case that made front page headline news.

1998. Derrick James Davies made £1m benefit from the manufacture of counterfeit clothing – 52 brands – he also sold fake champagne, perfume and cigarettes. DJD got 4+ years and lost his mansion in Essex, Villa in Spain and several cars. He had jumped bail and was extradited from Spain and working with FIU his assets were confiscated. It was the longest sentence handed out.

1999. Johnnie Green was a very similar operation, smaller scale he got 18 months.

2004. Dino Simm and Sid Austin got 4 years each in 2004 and had to repay £2m in forfeiture of assets for conspiracy. They had imported pirate DVDs from Malaysia, and in all over 100,000 were seized.

2004.China Industrial Group, 25,000 counterfeit mobile phone accessories and components seized, major importers from China. £500,00 assets forfeiture.

2004. Nadia Traders, another large fake mobile phone importer. 2 years prison, £1m asset forfeiture.

2002. Steven Levy major importer from Thailand of Louis Vuitton fakes - 6 months.

1976. Charring Cross. Chef & Brewer, on a routine inspection noticed the price tags on the bar equipment were 3p more than on price list. Phoned office so that test purchases could be made while I stayed testing the 6 fl oz unjust beer meters. In all 63 charges.

1975 – 1982. Petrol Fraud in the West End , 44 garages caught in 7 years.

1975 – 1982. Short measure drinks in exclusive West End hotels, even the Savoy!

Plus car clocking, unroadworthy cars, cut & shuts. Kate Frost and her £4000 Fiesta for her daughter , which was really a write off making a comeback as an unroadworthy 2^nd hand vehicle. It took 18 months to get her compensation through the courts as the traders absconded, and I tracked them down.

2004. Danny Clelland, t/a Imperial Construction, charged with Theft of £21,000 from 4 families. Danny was a con man better at destruction than construction.

1999. Plumbfast and director Steven Baker £21,000 fines for systematic overcharging of their customers.

TV Programmes

1995. Channel 4 half hour expose of Virginia Bottomley’s handling of NHS which led to her removal from office.

1993. BBC2 half hour Expose of Andy Norman, corrupt king of British Athletics who fixed races and drug tests. Norman, an ex Police Officer, resigned after broadcast.

1996.Channel 4 expose of how the police dupe sposes into thinking they hired hit men to kill their other half in orderto secure convictions and how the entrapment was flawed, rough justice.

1991. BBC TV Life on 1, live broadcast of environmental series from Sheffield about recycling are we doing enough – answer no. One of the Best.

1985 BBC TV Watchdog Ron Aylward the Northern entrepreneur in home improvements whose only home improved was his own.

1983. TVAM Shell and short measure petrol memo to pump maintenance. Winner of Consumer Journalist Award.

1986. BBCTV Watchdog: Priceslasher and Thermastore, both huge companies that folded leaving customers and creditors high and dry. TV exposure resulted in evidence handed over to Serious Fraud Office for conviction of directors. 1992. Johnnie Morris of Thermastore was one of Margaret Thatcher’s Captains of Industry who tried to run off with £21m.

1988. BBC TV Half hour Holiday Nightmare Special, including the relocation of 67 OAPs in Spain from grim and disastrous to 5* luxury courtesy of Airtours with a little arm twisting from Watchdog . The film that got me the Deputy Editor job.

Pollution, first TV programme to address traffic pollution and cures, also dirty beaches, dirty skies, dirty river, climate change first forecasted 1991………

1991.Petrol Pricing…………..led to the 7 Sisters coming into line with Supermarket prices.

1985.BSM: conned the Dept of Transport to get away with unqualified driving instructors.

1994.Hooligans- why football? why violence? Margaret Thatcher’s greatest export, Video got to number 2 in the charts, beaten by Walt Disney’s Snow White release.

What have you done today to make you feel proud. I have always been a proud person, some say arrogant, some say obstinate, I say determined, principled. I was always proud of my achievements, even scoring a goal from the half way line for Brent at the Welsh Harp, or the winner for BBC against British Gas, a curler free kick from 25 yards out and Andy jumping on my back shouting "What a f......g goal Allan"

I have always been proud of my 2 sons Ian & Graeme too and their ability, intelligence and progess. Just like my Mum worried about me till her death, so I worry about them, and when bad times come their way it hits me too as if it has happened to me. Parental responsibility I guess.

I can do that

2008-12-21T22:53:00.000-08:00

I Can do That

I always came 2^nd. I should have known it from an early age. I was at Willesden Grammar School for 7 years. In that time we sat 14 exam sessions. In Geography I came 2^nd 14 times, always beat by someone different. Amazed you will be, as I was, or is it frustration.

I was 2^nd in command at work too, the highest run on the career ladder in the snakes and ladders of ambition.

I did throw some double sixes of the dice, I did not always go down the snakes. I could bite my lip for a period, but then got to a collision course, well there is only so much you can take and why should the buggers get you down, better that they go down.

One of my earliest imprints on my mind was HMS Hood in 1941. The pride of the British Navy. The Battleship was off Iceland with the Prince of Wales and engaged Bismarck, Germany’s largest Battleship. 1415 sailors perished as it was blown out of the water taking a direct hit into the magazine, only 3 crew survived. It was a great loss to Churchill and the nation…………….BUT, as it took the fatal blow it fired its last salvo and crippled the steering on the Bismarck, which enabled our fleet to pursue and eventually sink the Nazi menace to Atlantic convoys.

I read all about this when I was about 7, and my motto ever since was if you go down go down with all guns blazing, and take as many of the buggers down with you.

So………………..

I have probably worked for 3 men that I can say I respected. David Taylor, David Patterson and Nick Hayes, all BBC former Editors. One woman….. Lynn Faulds Wood, who has a great husband and a great bloke John Stappleton.

My happiest days were at the Beeb, current affairs, Lime Grove Shepherd’s Bush London W12. I always wanted to make a mark, leave a legacy, champion David against Goliath, change things for the better. In Trading Standards I could do that in a local community. When I got into TV it was more powerful and influential, than even the courts and it was national even international.

I have always had compassion for the populace at large, though its true to say I have not won many friends, the membership of the Allan Sharpe appreciation society is limited – no riff raff – but I do get irritated by a lack of vision and incompetence by people who should know better. There is a tick box mentality, and there should not be. There is a do what I have to do to get by and no more attitude.

That has never been me, I always went above and beyond the call of duty. I always wanted to dine out on my stories.

But where does it get you………………huh, and who is right, them or me?

Gissa Job

2008-12-21T22:08:00.000-08:00

Gissa Job

42 is the answer to the universe, and was also my peak of career.

Before then I thought of promotion, moving on up, being in charge.

After that I thought of survival, not descending, trying to plateau out.

If there are lessons in life in the workplace:

A job or career is not for life;
Loyalty is 2 way employer - employee;
Experience and knowledge counts for little, bullshit counts for more;
Getting Older does not help;
Arse licking does help;
Managers cover their’s – arses;
Managers stab you in a part of the body above your arse, yes the back;
Managers see employees as a threat to their own existence;
Incompetence reigns supreme, some earn their crust others just get a salary;
Wankers Win.

As you may probably guess, as I have won and lost and at this stage in my life, I feel I am losing, yes I did have the plot thank you. I am an expert in some areas of life. I worked out once when I had nothing else to do, that I was case officer in about 600 court cases. I only lost 2, both on points of law not the facts. Funnily enough 30 years later the Government , because of Brussels, closed those loop holes. I also made 250 factual TV programmes for broadcast. I hold the record viewing figures for BBCTV Watchdog – 10m. I hold the record sentence for bringing to book a counterfeiter – four and a half years and his assets confiscated.

My point being that there must be a lot of wasted talent, experience and knowledge out there, including MOI !

If I was Prime Minister it would be the first thing I would do. Yes, we need new generations, but mistakes are made every day by employees who are not adequately trained and who do not have guidance from older heads.

I have had 2 main careers in TV journalism and in consumer protection law enforcement and advice.

This may read like a CV, but it would not be politically correct to say what I think in a CV or at work, but why should it not be. The Sweeney was a great TV series, where they said it as it is. Now I drive lorries for various firms, different ones each week. The worse recession (2008) I can remember does not help on the job front. True I have cocked up on that front in the past. Calling some interfering idiot a wanker was one example. He got more money than me and thought he was superior because of that and his elevation in the team structure. Yes a so called line manager, Garry Seal of Waltham Forest and Harlow. Fat, ugly, pompous, environmental health officer, and also a wanker because he was clueless and would not listen. This Arsenal supporter covered his arse, big as it was. He thought he knew it all but knew nothing about my job and still interfered, eg pulling the plug on a crown court case that I had spent 2 years investigating. He was Mr Negative, lets do nothing just pretend, lets tick boxes, what Community, all he could see was a computer screen in his office decorated with Arsenal memorabilia.

I will elude more in separate chapters on the Beeb and Trading Standards, the good times the bad times. These are my memoirs and I compile them when time permits and I feel the flow as opposed to feeling the force, but at least I can hold my head up high and say I did not get where I am today by being a wanker, unlike some.

May the Force be with you.

All monitored systems are functioning

2008-12-13T01:02:00.000-08:00

The Medical:

There is enough material for a conference.

A customer offered us a cup of tea and use of her toilet the other day delivering. I gracefully declined. But she said she knew what it was like driving, cos her brother used to drive the buses. Weak bladder, yes I have, but these last 3 days I have gone 9 hours without a leak, blimey. Well there is no where to go. I prefer driving solo, ‘cos then you can go to McDonalds, but with misery guts it was not easy, so mind over matter.

I was told once by a GP that I had to change my lifestyle, eat better, take tablets and slow down. I said I could do one of those, which one he said, I said take the tablets.

Never mind I don’t get the excruciating spasm attacks of pain any more after the gall bladder removal, keyhole surgery in and out in 22 hours. They wake you up every hour cos the heart rate is so low they think you are dead, then they kick you out, “we need the bed” “oh thanks I’ll sit on the wall for a few hours convalescence and wait for a lift” cheers…………….NHS New Labour !!!. Broomfield Hospital Chelmsford 22/08/2001.

Oh and don't have cameras put down your throat, bad idea, it takes 7 nurses to hold down a strapped down male under anaesthetic, who is choking, after which he says to the sister next time I water the garden with the garden hose I will remember you.

More diet hot tips: As well as can't eat fat, and cheese has lots of fat and I like cheese rolls. When I was at BBCTV one survived on coffee all day, long days. Moral of the story for future generations of Sharpe’s…………… eat and drink properly, it pays to look after your body. Don’t do what I did. If you don’t use it you lose it. And things can drop off in the night………….nasty.

And another NHS story 1991 under the Tories……… St Georges Tooting. After my last competitive football match 1991 when the game BBC v local Tooting side of hackers was abandoned after the centre half’s right leg went round like the hands on a clock after a tackle.

Yes I was carried off, not by an ambulance, they were on strike. Even the St Johns Ambulance Brigade made no show, but a green goddess with 2 bandsmen soldiers and a fabric stretcher. Being the injured party and being the only person on the muddy pitch that had done 1^st aid (good old local government), I told the others what to do and strap my good leg to my busted leg. Harry had said, all right Allan, get up your ok…. “ Harry its broken look my bones are sticking out of my sock” “ Oh yes it is bad isn’t it he replied”. Good old Harry, our right winger, he brought 4 bottles of beer visiting time, just before the physio was to teach me crutches the use of. Ably assisted by my team mates kind thoughts, I sailed up and down the stairs, hic!!

Anyway I leap on, difficult with one leg, but how did I know they were bandsmen?? Well French horn emblems on sleeves are a clue. “Does this thing have a siren” the patient asked as we were stuck in a traffic jam that Saturday afternoon, “no, it has a bell”, “then can you ring it please before one of us dies”.

Surgery time …………….count backwards from ten, as you get to three, the anaesthetist says “what leg did he say it was”… “funneeeeeeeeee! Wake up to the Irish version of an angelic soothing calm voice of Florence Nightingale, who tells you who and where you are, it’s handy to know.

Then feeding time. A big fat mama with a trolley and a silver salver. Oh I could get used to this, uh uh, the lift comes off to reveal a pile of french beans, next day a pile of mash. Ok Miss how has this happened, well you ordered it, no, Mr Harris ordered it, Mr Harris has a sense of humour. Now read the name at the end of the bed, does SHARPE spell Harris………answer no, well what do you want then, well what have you got then, corned beef and chips, that will do, book it. Book em Danno Murder one.

Lastly, when nurse thinks its more important to have her cuppa than answer your bell call, don’t press the red button. The cardiac arrest team turns up and then Matron , who tells you off……………bossy boots slapped wrist, oh cant I have the spanked botty punishment Matron, no just behave………….spoil sport.

I,m H A P P Y, I am H A P P Y, I know I am I’m sure I am, I’m H A P P Y.

A history of Sharper Image

2008-12-13T00:13:00.000-08:00

Chapter 87:

Time changes every thing, where are they now??, Come on you Spurs, music was my first love, he who dares wins (and loses), I hate losing, it’s not the taking part, better to have loved and lost than never loved at all, gissa job, I can do that, do we really have a choice?

I intend to fill this with the memoirs eventually. So I've started just need to finish.

formulative years

2008-12-12T23:37:00.000-08:00

Memories like the Corners of my Mind

One of the earliest memories I have is walking across an iron bridge back from Neasden Hospital with a squeaky voice. I had just spent about a week there having my tonsils out as a circa 4 year old. On reflection, and as Neasden Hospital, now a housing estate, was near the North Circular Road, the Iron Bridge was the North Circular road near Neasden Lane and opposite where Ikea stands now.

Willesden was a nice place then , early 1950’s. Immigration transformed the area in the 70’s and 80’s. Brent Council formed in 1965 on the break up of the London County Council, demolished a lot of it. The white population changed to multicultural black population. I hate going through there now a days. It is so depressing. Poverty exudes, black people hanging and sitting around outside in the street. Pubs closed, the White Horse on the corner of Church Road and Roundwood Road no longer. The White Hart where my sister Pat and her new husband Mick held their Wedding reception in 1962, gone. They used to have Go Go dancers there lunch times in the 70’s. The 2 churches are still there. One dates back to Norman times. I always marvelled at it as a kid walking past. As a kid that’s what you did…….walk. I walked to school. I walked to the shops. There were few cars on the road. Those that were parked sporadically were distinctive designs, like the angled Mayflower and the Austin Cambridge. The Wolsey, the Riley, The Humber Super Snipe. The list of old names goes on. My first car was the Ford 105e Anglia. The one with the inverted rear screen. Cars had rear fins and wing mirrors. They also had defective engines. Quality was poor by comparison with today’s cars. But they were distinctive, and recognisable by shape, not name badge.

I went to Oldfield Road Junior School, after Essex Road Nursery. I lived in Essex Road (49 in 49), I had been born in the front room. My biological father had left apparently when I was one, after saying to my Mum previously, I will be a footballer. Well I never had a male role model. Not till Mick met Pat , my only sister, at the Locarno dance hall in the Strand. The Locarno is a theatre these, days venue for the Lion King. Mick and Pat are still married, a remarkable achievement. My Mum worked at Essex Road Nursery as a cook. I don’t know how she was ever a cook, before Jamie Oliver’s time obviously. One of my favourite past times as a child was to pull Christmas tree pine needles out of my custard at Easter time! Hair out of the gravy all the time. Poor Mum, she had bad eye sight, she only saw what she wanted to see. Our home was a total mess, made worse by dogs we had, who did not like being left alone all day. Any carpet we had was always scratched and chewed up. I do not exaggerate. The living room was always a disaster zone. I was ashamed to bring any school friends in. We also had an outside toilet in a yard, another embarrassment. We lived downstairs in a private rented ground floor flat. I don’t know why we did not live in a council flat. I think Mum was too proud and also ignorant of the welfare state. I remember always being dragged round to the county court in St Marys Road Harlesden. I would sit on the seat in the clerk’s room, there was a big counter. My Mum would ask for a court order to get my Dad to court to pay the alimony. He never did. When he turned up I never saw him. He only turned up on a warrant. Apparently he told the court I was not his child. He had walked out before on my Mum after when my only sister Pat was about 4. She is 8 years older than me, a Gemini born in 1941. Whereas I am a Leo. But as for astrological characteristics my father is a Leo too, so endeth any parallels, I hope, though I am not so sure. Certainly I am proud, and any stubbornness I put down to principles, principles I set myself at my formulative years.

Anyway we were poor. I remember passing the 11+. I did not even know I was sitting it. I got a bike from Fudges next to the White Horse. Blue straight handle bars. I eventually rode it after my Mum ran behind holding the saddle, for days. Yes, embarrassment crept in at a tender age. I walked to Willesden County Grammar School in Doyle Gardens Harlesden. I used to walk through the cemetery in Roundwood Road and then through the adjoining Roundwood Park. It was about 30 minute pleasant walk. I remember traipsing through the fallen leaves at the start of a new year. Yes, in those days we had an autumn and the leaves were down in early September. I knew the names of most of the trees, not Harry or Fred, I mean species, my favourite was the Horse Chestnut tree, and its conkers. I suppose all kids like them. I used to study the names on the graves too and how old were they and when they died. I used to try to find the grave that had been there the longest time. I used to look at the cars as I walked to school too. Something I learned only recently was that my father’s parents were buried there in 1962. I did not know that even though I knew them and I walked past them almost 6ft under every day. Something else my sister told me recently ad nauseum was that she left me outside the post office in a pram, and only remembered when Mum asked where I was. So life could have been different. Throw a double six and land on another square and have another roll of the dice.

At Oldfield Junior I can remember our class teacher Miss Bassleigh. She must have been 50 odd. I respected her. I remember hating spelling, but surprised myself, when I had to stand up and spell out loud words like MEAN, and I got it right, much to every one’s astonishment around me, including my own. But a nice smile from the teacher. I used to like doing IQ tests, I think I had a quotient of 153. Miss Basslieigh used to write on my reports every year that I needed to come out of my shell. On reflection, I was a loner. I used to watch TV and read factual books. I did not go to a library, I don’t think Willesden had one. Mum used to buy me the Knowledge. A weekly supplement in colour that built up to encyclopaedia in folders. I would spend my days reading that and Football annuals. I would watch Boycott and Edrich open the batting for England on the TV. My favourite was Ted Dexter, the captain, he played for Sussex too. He would always score fast runs, then get out in the 70’s. I hated it when he got out. But good old Boycott would be there 2 days running, they never got him out. These were the days of Fiery Fred Trueman (Yorkshire fast bowler) and Derek Statham his Lancashire counterpart. England ruled the world in those days. We must have lost sometimes, but I don’t remember.

Getting back to Oldfield Rd School……………my road Essex Road was next to Curzon Crescent, a massive council estate built in the 30’s. It was horrible and dangerous. People would aim milk bottles at you from their balconies. Yes we had milk man deliveries in electric milk floats. We also had electric trolley buses on overhead cables and tram lines too. Billy Elliot was from Curzon Crescent. He was the school bully. Bigger than everyone else helped. He never did anything himself, he did not need to, all he had to do was look. But, he did have henchmen like Danny Jones. He was smaller and weedier, but really nasty. One day after morning playtime, I was climbing back up the concrete stairs lined by brown and cream tiled walls. Danny Jones started wrestling me from the back. Why I don’t know. By the time I got to the top of the stairs and with a teacher onlooking only, I let go with a right hook as I turned to fend him off me. I connected. Amazed, truly my first ever punch. Danny Jones went all the way down the stairs and never got up. He was taken to hospital, and did not come to school for about 6 months. I was about 10 in the 4^th year, it was autumn. The upshot was I never got into trouble, I guess they viewed it as self defence. Billy Elliot paraded me around the school yard as his new number 2, huge arm around me. He was about 5’6” and fat I was 5’ and a skinny 5 stone. I was in awe, and so was every other kid. It was all white at my school, there were a few Irish families in the locality. Now they have renamed Oldfield as Leopold. That was the name of the secondary school my sister went to.

I also remember standing on the corner at lunch time one day outside Oldfield school waiting for my sister. She used to work at Boots the chemist in Harlesden by now, having left secondary school at 15. Some bigger older kid from another school, came up to me and started hitting me with a towel, I guess he had been swimming. After a few minutes the 7^th Cavalry arrived round the bend. I heard a screech of brakes and my sister yelling out, “get off my little brother” and as her bike sped past, she launched herself from the saddle on the back of the unsuspecting bully, game over player one! It was just like John Wayne and Geronimo on the Saturday morning flix, at the Granada next to the White Hart. The cowboys were always cheered and them pesky redskins were always booed, with great laughter and merriment. The 1^st film I saw at the Dambusters in Clacton, on our yearly weekly B&B holiday. It was all b&w in those days. Our 1^st TV was b&w and we would all sit on the floor looking at ballet. That was all there was. We had to switch it off before the epilogue and the national anthem. Mum would insist. Then the screen would go pin to a shrinking white dot. Later on my mum would be seen asleep every night slumped in front of the TV. She did 3 jobs at one stage morning, day and evening. Her highlight was the wrestling on ITV every Saturday.

Poor old Mum, she died October 29^th 1991 about 7.30am. She had always phoned me when I was divorced on a Saturday afternoon and left a message that used up the 30 minute tape on the answafone. She knew I was playing football. But she always wanted to speak and not listen anyway. I wish I had kept those tapes. One of the reasons for writing this is a legacy. At her funeral I made a speech on the basis I did not want her existence on the planet to go unnoticed. By the time I wanted to keep, not wipe, the tapes, she had fallen too ill to communicate further. 6 strokes and 6 months later she was dead RIP. 74, she had a hard lonely life. She would always take me to Hampstead Heath on a Sunday on the 266 or the 260 trolley bus. I had to squat low in the seat to get a half fare from the conductor. I had a toy yacht and always sailed it on the horses pond near the Jack Straws Highway Man’s pub. I loved that. Hampstead was so open with the trees and grassland, Mum even tried to bowl, and I would act out Geoffrey Boycott forward defensive batting. She always wore a colourful frock on Sundays. Though most of the time she embarrassed my sister in Boots the Chemist. She had bad eyesight, so would speak to all manner of customers and staff alike as to the whereabouts of Pat, she’s the supervisor you know” she said proudly. Poor Pat would be hiding round the back store room. I liked comics and Mum acted the part of Mr Blimp arf arf, though she never quite conversed with a pillar box. I remember Pat and Mick collecting Mum and I from the Cornwall train at Paddington station once. Pat said we were dressed like refugees. I think we only had one suitcase, so we had to wear all the clothes for the week, yes 3 jumpers, all at once………. Probably had not washed for a week either. That was the holiday in a caravan park on the Lizard cliff edge. We had Chum, a big brown hairy bundle on four legs and always panting. Another dog used to terrorise him every day then on day 5, a la Danny Jones style, Chum finished what had been started. He grabbed the dog in his jaws by its tail and literally swung the dog from side to side yelping. That dog did a huge detour past our caravan after that, with Chum sitting and panting outside in the sunshine, the wind blowing his coat.

Chum saved me once. From the Essex Road Gang, about 12 strong. They chased me after school down the road. I guess they resented a grammar school kid in uniform. Only 4 of us at Oldfield passed the 11+. By the time I got to the front door the kids were close behind me, shouting and waving broom sticks etc . Chum was always poised like a coiled spring and always excited, so the noise had brought him to a peak. As I opened the door, Chum was there panting, I said go get them Chum and he did, woosh he jumped over the gate and hit them as if they were ten pins, strike, they were fleeing in disarray up from where they had come with me looking over the gate waving, Chum caught up with Johnny Doyle and grabbed the rear of his trousers and in true comic style action ripped the back on his trousers off, with the trophy still in his mouth and his tail wagging as he trotted back to me. Those kids never went near me ever again. Good Boy Chum.

But Chum alas turned on me one night, when he wanted my wagon wheel chocolate, and attacked me, then attacked me again later when I was in my bed. I was about 12. The Vet said he had got jealous of Mick and saw him as an intruder, but maybe he just lost it in his head. Poor chum had to be put down. He had already eaten my grass snake that I had just bought. I knew it was him, when I came back with a metal cage, No grass snake and Chum’s stomach doing an impersonation of a washing machine, and a mouth that was firmly closed and in need of alka seltzer. He had also attacked the hamster, Goldie, who tried the Great Escape and sort refuge from its canine preditor behind the TV covered in dust………..I told you it was grubby.

I had spent time decorating, I painted the small hall and wallpapered it once age 17 while News at Ten was on. My first demolition was age 12 the grate fireplace. I nuked the front hedge, painted the outside of the house. Zapped the antnests in the back yard with molten plastic, true bombing raids. Set fire to the Castle I had just built with matchsticks fired from toy cannons. At 14 I even set fire to the door of the outside toilet when a spark got into the suitcase of fireworks. Mum Pat and Mick were all sitting there when I eventually ran in as a smoking joe after taking in initial shelter in the said toilet as rockets climbed the walls and ceiling, and bangers bombarded the smoldering door, before in true Towering Inferno tradition, I lept to sanctuary through the flames. All Mick did was smirk and my mum thought it was all of my traditional display! I liked games. Mick had introduced me into Subbuteo table top flick football. He bought me 2 teams as a Christmas Present. I had discovered there was no Father Christmas at age 5 when I woke up one Christmas morning at 3am to see my mum and sister putting presents at the foot of my bed. The same bedroom when I woke one night to see the bogey man sitting on a chair behind the door. I never have a chair facing a bed anymore. He had long blonde hair and long red coat and he had a hideous laugh. Every night after he used to step loudly pace by pace down the hill from the Church in Church Road to Essex Road. He had big vivid red lips too.

I had lots of games to take my mind off the boggy man and stop me from hysterical crying. I asked for a lolly on a hot day once, and mum refused thinking I said lorry. But I had Monopoly and soldiers and guns, bats and ball. I would play right foot against left foot and right hand against left hand against the toilet wall. I would play games myself versus myself, and take each player in turn or play left hand against right hand, ambi dextrous huh!!!! Multi talented, they don't know the meaning of it !!! arf arf. I would climb onto the toilet roof, fell off once, cracked my head open, never been the same since. I climbed to the top of next door’s cherry tree swaying in the breeze, overlooking the rooftops. That was in Aunty Solly’s garden, she lived in the dreaded Curzon Crescent, but her house was private and posh. She was a neighboutr not an Aunty, but this was the world of discovery I was brought into. Confused you will be. I was 12 before I realised my Mum’s version of events was not always accurate. For instance, attaché case, really meant suit case. She asked for a marriage licence at the Post Office one, and was told of her misspelling by the teller. Only to repeat Colonel Blimp style that oh it’s not marrage it is M A R R IIIIII AGE…………arf arf!!

Yes I liked the Beezer and the Beano, Desperate Dan and his Cow Pie, Dennis the Menace. I also liked the Charles Buchan football annuals. Mick was teaching me how to be a goal keeper, and narrow the angle, dive at the oppositions feet, all glory.

My world was one of discovery and reactment. I was clever at passing tests and exams because I developed a photographic memory, I literally turned the pages of the books I had read in my head when asked a question, in order to give the answer. I had no father figure. I only got into trouble with the law when I got a scooter and became a late Mod with Parka, mirrors, racks and chrome panels on a Lambretta TV175.

Pulled up and chased regularly by the uniform men. Accused on swerving round lollipop women and Tony Macedo on the back giving her a V sign. Even dressed in school uniform with a prefects badge on, did not get me off a not guilt plea, fined £15.

To be continues, stay tuned to this channel……………….

wheels on fire

2008-12-12T21:54:00.000-08:00

As Julie Driscoll said if your memory serves you well.

These days I sit behind a steering wheel reflecting on life’s might have beens. The girlfriends I have known, that once were part of my daily breath, then time changes everything. The jobs I had, where I was important, hey at least I thought so.

Now life continues as a struggle, alright I am not in the Sudan or Afghanistan, and yes I know about the cup being half full, but my cup has no handle and is chipped.

I will recount my past deeds in other blogs. This is a kick start.

Today I delivered a Bosche washing machine to the Baron of Amersham, well he thought he was, he acted as if he was, and his mansion and grounds magnificently portrayed his lifestyle and grandeur. As he arrogantly and angrily strutted around, not helped by the fact my co driver had reversed into 2 of his trees, I thought, why has he got all this, not only compared to me, but to another house I delivered to, which was total squalour, stuffed full of life’s bits and pieces, and where you trod on coat hangers and white bras to get to the kitchen.

Anyway, back to the Baron and his red vintage TR4, but mind you it did have a flat tyre, parked in the basement garage the size of 8 squash courts, with several internal Roman pillars holding up the roof. Such a miserable lord of the manor aka the Sheriff of Nottingham, I doubt if he was more clever than me, even though he had the gardeners, chamber maids and butler. His old washing machine was hard wired and hard plumbed, so I went in search of him, got to the winding marble staircase, and the chamber maids, said they would get him. John Lewis had got his custom, and it is customary for them to take the old one away. “Have you not got tools?” he barked. “No” I replied, “normally we can disconnect them by hand, pull the plug and unscrew the hose”. So he begrudgingly provided a tool box, then wrote down on the delivery note the damage to the trees, which in truth was just a few twigs. But, he did not see it that way, and wanted my co driver to “fix the trees”. Errrrrrrrr what with selotape or bostik I thought.

Now it was day 3 of working for Night Freight home delivery. Yes night and day. These days I leave in the dark and come home in the dark. Driving a lorry in the dark and icy winter mornings and late afternoons with no windscreen washers, broken rear lights, no fuel gauge, indicators held on by duck tape, a sticky gear box, and mirrors that wobbled independent to the suspension. I am sat next to Negative Nick, “I am not cut out for this job”, “I got the sack from my last job at MFI ‘cos I hit the Manager, only once mind you”. Nick has worked there for a year he is early thirties, hates the job, hates Night Freight, hates the customers. He is also mute, most of the time and miserable, a real team player. I gleamed his qualities after 3 days, when he spoke just those three times. He should go to the Job Centre for the Grim Reaper vacancy, but, hey, makes me look good, makes me look like the personification of charm , a saint next to the sinner………….hahaha.

Just in case you were thinking of the John Lewis Premium delivery service, Night Freight, who operate from what looks like old milking sheds, not even a sign at the gate, depot 10 Earls Barton, also contract for B&Q, Victoria Plumb and a few others. I saw the trailer delivering to the Depot and all the boxes were just thrown in, large crushing small, and boxes completely distorted and split, god knows what damage there was to the contents. Yes, I did say Premium Service, 48 hour delivery for which the customer pays extra. 20 deliveries a day in about 9 hours across home counties.

Wonderful thing the internet, except you can’t see what you are getting till you get it, and a filthy, scruffy, unroadworthy lorry appears in your road and 2 “nice” men at your doorstep.

As I said, the old appliances are collected, the new ones just left in their packaging. But, some lady, again in a grand home, clearly did not have the means to fit the new one, I do not understand why she did not have a husband who could do it, in such a mansion. So I told NN I would fit it, “why” he moaned, “kindness and service” I replied as he stormed back to the truck. When he drove the truck, the customers got courtesy calls to say we were on our way. When I drove the customers got a surprise.

Even the other agency drivers won’t work with Nick the miserable mute, one said earlier to the Management “piss off” and walked out, when they were told he was with NN. So I did my sentence, 3 days, hopefully Night Freight’s sickness record improves next week, and my phone will not ring at 06.37 hours. Finally, a last note. Just to improve the condition of the truck NN took out the rear lights completely backing into a grass bank of another customer, and then, swerving to avoid an uncoming bus, he headed for the country roadside shrubbery and sorted out the wobbling mirrors once and for all, leaving the parts on the grass verge in our exhaust fumes.

A bit careless you may think, but that’s Nick, he does not care.

It’s days like this that you wish you had a hidden camera.

Bon Chance…………….

December 10-12 2008 Taskforce