Three Minute Boy

Minus twenty two degrees. So fucking cold that I felt the need to write it out longhand.

What’s that all about? Looks like it’s going to be another weekend of shutting the door and huddling round the radiator at Chez Palmer. I had harboured ambitions of catching a bit of footy at the weekend, however just about every game in the country has been called off. With the weather set to continue and a fixture list which puts my team away from home in the coming weeks, it may well be that next match I encounter live in person will be Cardiff City v Peterborough in early February, the ticket for which I bought earlier in the week after discovering that I will spend a week working in the Welsh capital.

The kids are going stir crazy with the weather as well. When you live in a third floor tenement flat, you feel an obligation to take the nippers out once in a while for a bit of fresh air and a run around but it’s not really been possible in this weather. At times, it’s been a struggle to keep your feet. Hopefully Sam will have had a trip to the swimming pool today though.

We are eight days into 2010 and already I am now regretting not having started one of those projects such as a ‘project 365′ photo style log or something like that. I suppose I could probably start one now but a year in my life running from 8th January – 8th January reeks of being slow off the mark. I think my aim instead this year will be to do a bit more writing, including this blog. Last January I had a short story published in the Scottish Book Trust’s “Days Like This” book and I’d like to do something else along those lines. Maybe a course in creative writing beckons.

2010 is my oyster. Apparently.

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Right. I’m officially sick to the back teeth of snow. I mean, building snowmen, snowball fights and sledging are indeed endearing side effects of the current cold snap but quite frankly it’s gone on too long. I want a fucking inquiry into this.

Temperatures are so low that our central heating is overwhelmed and just can’t take the edge off the cold. Our central heating is no slouch either. Cast iron, school style radiators which pump out a ridiculous amount of heat and retain it for a considerable amount of time as well. As the first person up and into the shower every day, I am treated to the full blast of the barely heated air.

Add to that the fact that the TV and internet news channels are completely overflowing with footage of stranded planes and people kipping in their cars, interspersed with the odd snowman or Robin Redbreast for ‘light relief’. We get the point. It’s getting boring. You can’t go anywhere without slipping and sliding and nearly falling on your arse. As well as that, the bottom of my jeans are almost permanently sodden with icy water, so you can see how the whole thing starts to become old very quickly.

We’re not a snowy country. We’re a grey and miserable country. Let’s get back to the status quo.

By the way, mention Francis Rossi and you are dead. He’s even more tedious than three weeks of snow.

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I’ve almost forgotten how to use the interface in Wordpress. That’s how long it’s been since I last posted on this blog. I’ve missed it.

I’ve become far too fond of posting my thoughts immediately through Twitter, which whilst useful, leads to bitesize snippets of my day to day existence in 140 characters or less. Not much room for descriptive posting unfortunately and I think my writing has suffered from it.

So here I am. First post of the New Year. 2010 in all it’s glory. 2009 was a good year. The birth of our second child saw to that. 2010 should be equally momentous. We plan to sell our flat and move to a ‘proper’ house with a garden and such like. In many ways we’re loath to leave our lovely Georgian flat with it’s fireplace from the 1790’s and it’s ornate arches. It’s been such a beautiful house to live in but it’s fast becoming impractical being 3 floors up in a tenement.

Anyway, my resolutions for 2010 look something like this:-

• Spend as much time with the family as possible. After all, you never get that time back.
• Sell the flat and buy a house with a garden (and preferably a garage to store our ever increasing amount of stuff in).
• Get my knees fixed. I’m now crippled to the stage whereby I can’t even kneel down for any length of time. The issues with my knees are hindering my ability to do even basic tasks at times.
• Update this blog more often. Ideally, I’d like to update 2 or 3 times a week.

Whether I’ll keep these resolutions or procrastinate as usual, only time will tell.

Happy New Year.

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Yes indeed. That’s how rare posts on this here blog have become. I can’t believe I’ve not update since August. A lothas happened since then. Not much of it exciting. Mostly working, eating and in the case of the kids, growing.

I’m finding that Twitter is stealing most of my good material from the blog these days. Whereas before I’d store up all the foolery which I saw around me then blurt it out in one fell swoop, the combination of an iPhone and Twitter allows me to post about it that very second. Like I did when I somewhat disturbingly walked through an old gentleman’s fart cloud in Grays of George Street this afternoon. It’s closing down you know. Grays that it. Where will old men buy dimmer switches and have a sly fart then?

We are off on holiday next week. Our first real extended break as a family of four. Bloody hell. Seems odd to say that really. Four. Two times more than the two we started as. We are off first of all to stay in a ‘yurt’ (a Mongolian style tent) just outside York for four nights then on to the Lake District for a week. We’ve rented a cottage there. It has no washing machine. This lack of Hotpoint may not prove to be one of our better decisions but we’ll see how it goes.

We’ve got the first flat on the market (not the one we live in) and our flat is currently getting the finishing touches applied to it. Hopefully we can get them both sold quickly and purchase somewhere with a garden and not up three flights of stairs. Don’t get me wrong, I love living in town but it’s getting to the point where the nippers need a garden and a small slabbed yard isn’t cutting it.

Back to the blog and it’s not only Twitter which has resulted in me being a bit short on observations lately. I just don’t seem to meet the loonies I used to on my walk to work in the morning. Except one that is. The guy, who looks a bit like Charles I who walks to the top of Broughton Street every morning, looks around the corner and then turns on his heel, bolting back up Queen Street. I’d love to know his story.

I’ll endeavour to find out shall I?

Until later. Peace etc etc

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It’s been over four weeks since I last posted here. The lack of input has been for no other reason than a complete lack of time. Why so busy? Well, July 8th 2009 saw the arrival of our baby daughter Elise. With two kids now, we are suddenly three times as busy (how does that work?). Never seem to have a moment to ourselves. I’d give anything to sit down before 10 or 11pm every night, hence the tongue in cheek title of this post.

Three weeks paterntity leave didn’t really inspire me to post here or anywhere else really. I felt acutely aware that I had to squeeze as much out of the available time as possible. However, the routine is now back to normal or as normal as it ever can be with two kids under two years old.

I must be blissed out because I don’t even feel the need to rant about trams today, even after a months abstinence from tram bashing.

We spent a few days of my paternity leave at Crieff Hydro. If you’ve never been you should go. We had decent enough weather to enjoy the facilities and had a really great time. The best way to describe the place is like being in the modern equivalent of an Agatha Christie novel, where everyone lives in this massive hotel with huge grounds where ‘one’ can play tennis and partake of other civilised pursuits. Collar and no denims is the dress code for dinner. Odd but curiously like a 1930’s health spa.

Anyway, normal service is resumed. Back down to London working next week and another trip on the overnight train. Thing is, the thought of the shoogly, noisy cabin doesn’t particularly concern me this time around. I’m so tired these days, I reckon I’d sleep through an airstrike.

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I’ve got feck all to write about today. I’m lacking inspiration on a totally colossal scale. The usual round of jakeys, junkies and reprobates which punctuate these pages must be on their summer holidays. I’m suspecting there’s some kind of package deal on offer where they can presumably go to Spain for a fortnight and get bevvied in Spanish all day drinking dens before retiring to their self-catering skips.

Anyway, in honour of such creative downtime, I’ve decided to use this post as a ‘delurking day’ kind of post. I pour my thoughts out regularly into this blog but know next to nothing about most of my readers. In the spirit of information sharing, if you read this blog regularly then please leave a comment on this post to let me know.

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Cheeky wee turned on it’s head Wonderstuff reference there for anyone old enough to remember or care. Never was a man more appropriately named than Miles Hunt but that’s another story for another day (specifically a day when we are discussing the Livingston Forum gig circa 1992).

Anyway, lets get this post back on track. Many longer term observers of this blog will have noticed it change over the years from personal life stuff to observational humour, sometimes for the better, sometimes for worse. My Twitter account is pretty much in a similar vein. The beauty of Twitter and the iPhone of course is the ability to document crazy shit (and Leith is full of it) on the spot. Believe me, you’ll see things in the span of one walk along Junction Street that you wouldn’t see if you wandered the world like Grasshopper for a century or more. Most of what you see will leave you feeling morally and socially superior, and rightly so.

Every so often you strike comedy gold. A month or two back I was traversing said Junction Street when I found myself standing behind a lady in a mobility scooter at the crossing. She was larger than life and fully ‘accessorised’ with sovvy rings, Gypsy Rose Lee ear-rings and obligatory John Player kingsize.

I nearly laughed out loud when I saw a sticker on the back of her scooter reading ‘Classy Bitch’. Sheer brilliance. I would have snapped a photo with the phone but for the fact I was terrified of the consequences of being caught. With a beep of the green man and the high pitched whine of a battery operated engine this vision was gone from my life forever.

Or so I thought.

I always believed that comedy lightning never strikes twice. How wrong I was. Walking down Leith Walk this evening I spotted a mobility scooter parked outside one of the better known drinking establishments. On the front was a large plaque reading ‘Elvis Presley – The King of Rock and Roll’ complete with photo of Elvis in his full glory.

Brilliant I though. I’ll snap this one. “Too good to miss” I thought and said so to one of the guys standing at the pub door smoking.

“You hink that’s funny pal. Wait till ye see the back.” he said.

Round I walked. There it was. That same ‘Classy Bitch’ sticker. The holy grail of Leith mobility scooter related comedy. Comedy lightning had struck twice and I chuckled all the way home.

I may go to church on Sunday and thank God. I really am that happy.

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A provocative title, I’m sure you’ll agree. Cue a deluge of abuse from Pearly Kings and Queens in my comments page.

I’m not saying London always smells of jobbies. But it did yesterday. In the vicinity of London Victoria tube station to be precise. It smelled like the drains used to smell on Spanish package holidays in the 1980’s.

Ahh. Laaandaaahn Taaaan. I can’t fail to be attracted to it’s buzz and almost constant motion but by the end of a day or a few days there, I’m glad to get home to the more sedate city of Edinburgh. Yesterday I barely had time to take it all in as I arrived at Gatwick, got the train to Victoria and then got the tube to my meeting. One hour later, I did the whole thing in reverse. A thirteen hour round trip for a one hour meeting.

A trip of very little event as it turned out although I was mystified to see signs on tube station ticket machines stating that Scottish bank notes would not be accepted. I mean, I know that Scottish banks have been crumbling lately but that’s a bit harsh.

Us Scot’s have suffered from this phenomenon for years. of course. Cross the border into England and hand someone a Scottish tenner and the reaction is akin to that of Billy Bones when he received the Black Spot in Treasure Island. God forbid you hand then a Scottish £20 note or something even more leftfield like a Northern Irish fiver – you know, the plastic coated ones with the transparent stars on them.

At a gig at Wembley Stadium a couple of years back, I handed a Scottish tenner to a bloke behind the bar. He turned to his boss and asked him “Do we accept Sterling?”.

Honestly………

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If you want to wipe out Ned-dom in one fell swoop, there is an easy solution. Bomb every fairground and amusement arcade in the country. That’s the conclusion I’ve drawn from last nights trip to the fairground at Leith Links.

Arriving prior to the 6 o’clock opening time, we decided to kill some time in the kids playground on the links only to find it full of more tracksuits than JJB sports – all sporting a Regal King Size, hooped ear-rings, the obligatory scruffy bairn and a collection of ’sovvy’ rings. Perhaps the most shocking aspect was that about 80% of them would legally qualify for a ‘half’ on the bus.

Throw in a liberal sprinkling of pit bulls and you’re half way to picturing the scene.

The fairground evokes strong memories for me. The ’shows’ in Port Seton were next to the outdoor swimming pool and you’d regularly trot over in nothing but your swimming trunks and a towel to the amusement arcade to play ‘Scramble’ or beg someone for their ‘last man’ on ‘Moon Cresta’. The arcades were great to be around in the early 80’s as video gaming took it’s first tentative steps from baby to toddler.

There was also the lure of the more expensive rides such as the ‘Waltzers’ and the terrifying looking ‘Dive Bomber’ where the metal bar holding you into your seat as you spun upside down at a terrifying rate would be unlikely to pass any kind of safety standard nowadays. All this with a backdrop of chip vans, candy floss and toffee apples.

I don’t seem to remember any neds either, although there must have been the equivalent. Maybe my memory has airbrushed out the unsavoury elements to leave me with a rose tinted view of the past. They say that happens as you get older.

No need for airbrushing to get rid of todays neds though. Just a big fucking humungomegaton bomb would sort it.

As long as it only wiped out the neds and left the ‘Gonks’ untouched. I always loved to try and win a ‘Gonk’.

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It’s been exactly ten days since I last posted here. Piss poor statistic I know, but ten is a nice round number.

So what’s been happening? Well, we are now just over 3 weeks away from the due date of the baby. That’s not a piss poor statistic. That’s quite  a scary fact. There are still a number of things to be done around our house. Added to that is the fact that our tenants vacated our rental flat recently, so it’s sitting empty in need of sprucing up and selling.

Unfortunately, in their haste to leave, they accidentally left a huge bag of prawns in the fridge. I could smell the prawns from the second floor landing of the common stair last night when I went up to the flat. Upon reaching the flat and opening the door, the smell hit me like a wave. Cue much ‘dry boaking’ and the escape through the door of a number of bluebottles. You know it’s bad when the flies can’t stand it.

I eventually managed to stop retching long enough to deal with the situation, however I felt fairly unwell for the rest of the night as the smell seemed to linger in my nose. Terrible experience.

Probably the biggest event in my life in recent days has been the death of my Grandmother on Saturday night. Whilst it was completely expected – she has been ill for some time – nothing quite prepares you for the finality of such events. After being told on Saturday afternoon that the end was near, I decided that I did not want to witness her last moments. Call me a coward but I was distinctly squeamish about the prospect of being present when someone so close drew their last breath.

I went home Saturday evening, visited the supermarket and upon returning home decided that I couldn’t stay away. I headed back up to the hospital at around 7pm and at 9.40pm she passed away within a few minutes of a single tear running down her cheek. Instead of being unsettling, I actually found the whole experience uplifting and I was glad I was there at the end. And so an era ends. A massive part of my childhood, gone forever.

In three weeks time (or thereabouts) another era begins, with the second child of a new generation.

The expression ‘one in, one out’ never seemed so true.

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