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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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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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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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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Hopefully, I’ll still manage to find the odd wee gem to comment about on here. In fact, I need to look no further than this morning. I was passing the Central Bar at the foot of Leith Walk when some wild eyed denizen of the all night bars approached me tapping his wrist (presumably where a watch would be if he hadn’t pawned it for Buckfast).

“What’s the time pal?”

“Ten to eight”, I replied.

<pregnant pause>

“In the morning”, I kindly elaborate.

The new baby is fast approaching. Launch is imminent. With only about 5 weeks to go, things are starting to fall into place. The one thing which ultimately needs to fall into place though is selling the house and buying somewhere more suitable for two kids. A third floor tenement flat is not the place to be living. The house is big enough, but it’s too many steps up from the ground.

Unfortunately, the market is poor and the house still needs some final work before it can go on the market. Hopefully we’ll get it on somewhere around August time.

In some ways, I’ll be loathe to leave Leith and all it’s little quirks. I like it’s ability to bring all levels of society together on one flat playing field. You can eat in a Michelin star restaurant but you may have to step over a junkie to get in the door.

Other aspects I won’t miss though. Particularly the cretins who think it’s funny to kick the wing mirror off your car as they return from the pub on a Saturday night or run a key down the side of your car.

This past weekend was spent doing some really nice stuff. On Saturday, my wife stayed at home sorting through and tidying stuff in the house whilst I took Sam to the beach at Portobello. Good fun building sandcastles although what is it with kids and their magnetic attraction to water. I couldn’t take my eyes off him for two seconds without him making his happy little way down to a ‘stream’ of water running into the sea. For anyone born in Scotland in the 1970′s, it’s difficult not to associate such streams with effluent, particularly as Scottish beaches of that era regularly had sewerage streams into the sea or sewerage pipes which spilled out their contents half way down the beach.

Portobello beach was rocking though. On a walk along the promenade it was possible to see Mr Whippy ice-creams and jaded amusement arcades – symbols of Scottish beach resorts past – alongside more modern seaside pursuits such as beach volleyball and even some dude lifting weights.

On Sunday, we all went to East Links Children’s Park which was magic fun. Sam’s expression as the miniature train pulled away with a ‘choo choo’ was priceless. Sheer excitement. It was blisteringly hot though. We’ve all come home with more than a hint of colour about us. The heat eminating from my body last night was unbelievable.

Nothing else to report really, although I have developed an unhealthy fascination with North Korea lately and have just had a book about life there delivered from Amazon. I’m eternally fascinated with the idea of the last truly Communist state on the planet, where everyone has food and accommodation supplied by the state, people disappear overnight (rounded up by secret police) and the entire city of Pyongyang is woken up every morning at 7am by patriotic songs blaring out through loudspeakers.

Same thing happens in Leith, only it’s the drilling that wakes you at 7am.

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Over the last few weeks, it’s started to dawn on me that he isn’t actually heading anywhere. He’s not checking the bus times or looking at his watch. In the course of the last few weeks, I’ve also realised that at some point or other, every bus service which stops at this bus stop has passed him by without him making a move to get on the bus.

I suspect he is going nowhere. Just killing time in the bus shelter watching the world go by. Perhaps he wants to stay a part of the working world for a little longer. I don’t know whether to admire him or feel sorry for him.

In other news, it appears that archeologists have recovered 18 medieval bodies from the big holeright outside our front door. I knew they had been busy but 18 bodies? Our street is giving up it’s dead like Dennis Nilsen’s drains. The photo in this post was taken by my wife and shows a skull and some bones which made an appearance about two weeks ago.

Read the full story courtesy of the BBC here.

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The cast list

Assistant 1: Middle aged lady, serving the customers.

Assistant 2: Another member of staff, standing on the shop floor, having a cup of tea and clearly contemplating a fag break.

Customer: An elderly lady with a walking stick purchasing cigarettes.

The conversation

Assistant 1: What can ah get ye?

Customer: 20 of my fags.

Assistant 1: What do you smoke

Assistant 2: It’s 20 Rothmans. Christ, dinnae ask here what she smokes, she cannae mind her name half the time.

Assistant 2 (to customer): Here Betty, could you no find a brush this morning?

Customer: Aye. Enough o your cheek.

Assistant 2: Whit part o’ yer heid did ye yase it on? Yer teeth?

Customer: Ah’ll gie ye teeth.

Assistant 2: The day might be the day you meet the man o’ yer dreams. Wi hair like that, you’ll terrorise him.

Customer: I wouldnae swap my cat for yin o’ thae fuckers.

Assistant 1 (to me): Just the pint of milk son?

All true but all names changed to protect the innocent.

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First port of call was the endless array of Russian spammers who think that I (as forum administrator) won’t be suspicious in the slightest of around 400 registrations on a Scottish non-league football site from users with .ru email addresses. Hmmm. No brainer.

I decided to leave them a message on the forum using Google Translate:-

Я на вас душ спам, Виагра продаже bawbags. Вы никогда не получите прошлом мне и зарегистрироваться в нашем форуме. Понятно?

Now class. Notice anything odd?

Я на вас душ спам, Виагра продаже bawbags. Вы никогда не получите прошлом мне и зарегистрироваться в нашем форуме. Понятно?

That’s right. There is apparently no word in the Russian language for bawbags. Which is a huge oversight really, given about a dozen of the aforementioned bawbags try and register with the official Spartans forum each day.

Second target of my anger today. The tram pricks. As usual, they surpass themselves. A note was left in our stair last week outlining the work being carried out from Monday onwards. Fair enough. We read it and there was no mention of not parking in our street. In fact, reference was specifically made to maintaining local access.

Today, whilst working from home, I nipped out to buy some lunch only to find our car surrounded by police cones with notices in front of it outlining the fact that any vehicles ‘parked illegally’ will be towed. Better move it thinks I and proceeds to drive to Leith Links to dispose of the vehicle in a less controversial spot.

Except of course, they’ve obviously been out ahead of me and painted double yellow lines just about everywhere. In fact, the roads around Leith Links are so yellow that half a dozen Munchkins would not look out of place. I ended up driving round for about fifteen minutes (essentially because everywhere is diverted so you can’t just go direct to where you want to go in Leith at the moment)

Brilliant. I love trams.

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