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.

Tweet This Post

Bookmark It

Tweet This Post

Bookmark It

Living where we do, we have experienced major disruption at the hands of the new Tram Network. Not being able to park your car in your street may sound trivial. Build that up over a period of 9 months though. Then add the fact that the having the car outside the house is critical for us with a small child and add the further fact that the guys undertaking the work for the trams arrive on site at 6am every morning and have a shouted conversation the length of the street then you can probably see how the annoyance builds up.

Imagine my rage then when I stumbled round the corner from Lidl last night to see a fully constructed, replica tram at the top of my street full of ‘dignitaries’ quaffing champagne and patting themselves on the back for a sterling job well done. That’s champagne. Not tram pain. Tram pain is for those of us who have to live with the consequences of their decisions.

- Cheers lads. Mine’s a pint of Best.
- Oh, sorry Mr Palmer. I’m afraid you are not invited. Your name’s not down so you’re not getting in.

I’m starting to feel this is becoming the tram blog so I’ll hastily change the subject.

Chimpanzees on Segways.

Tweet This Post

Bookmark It

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.

Tweet This Post

Bookmark It

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.

Tweet This Post

Bookmark It

An Irish guy who I used to work with once told me that the Scots were the most divided, beligerent people he had ever encountered. In his words, “the east hates the west, the Catholics hate the Protestants, the north and south hate the central belt and there are people on the islands who refuse to speak English”. I took that as high praise indeed from an Irishman, given their history of not being able to get along with fellow countrymen who essentially believe in the same God.

Lets face it, Scotland for all it’s beauty and culture is essentially a craggy outcrop in the middle of the freezing atlantic. To survive here for thousands of years we needed to be a wee bit spiky.

That aside, I couldn’t believe my ears this morning when I heard that the Leith/Edinburgh rivalry (conflict ?)had been sparked back into life by Forth Ports decision to rename Leith Docks to Edinburgh Harbour. Some bloke has even written a folk song about it. You can hear that folk song here.

To be fair, the song is absolutely murder. The bloke who wrote it should be thrown in Leith Docks, I mean Edinburgh Harbour, I mean Leith Docks.

Tweet This Post

Bookmark It

I’ve not felt inspired to post this year. I’d love to get all deep and say that the prospect of 2009 and the credit crunch became too much for me and I couldn’t bring myself to put my head above the parapet. The sad truth however is that I just couldn’t be arsed. That and doing a bit too much relaxing.

New year was really relaxing. We did nothing. That may sound shit to everyone else but for me it was great. Having a 15 month old means you are up early and by extension usually struggling to stay awake at the end of the night. Hogmanay is no exception. Besides, anyone who has lived in Edinburgh for any length of time will be acutely aware of how fucking annoying the city can become at New Year when the pissed hordes from all over the world descend on the place.

The run up to new year was nice and relaxed. All very calm. The only incident of any worth to report was “the security van robbery that wasn’t”.

Venturing out of the flat between Christmas and New Year, I heard a strange siren and a repeated automated message saying “Help, help, this security van is under attack. Please call the police”. Standing outside (the now defunct) Woolworths was a security van with all doors open and no-one in sight.

Polis were duly phoned.

Cue a screeching of tyres, blues and twos and a lot of running and shouting as 3 squad cars came flying in from all directions, much to the bemusement of a slightly embarrassed looking security guard (who had now appeared on the scene) who spent the next ten minutes getting the “waggy finger” from the polis about turning his alarm off the next time he accidentally triggers it.

Other than that it’s been quiet. Back to work yesterday.

One observation I’ve made since walking to work in the last couple of days is the huge number of shitey wee dogs which seem to suddenly have appeared post-Christmas. All either wearing stupid wee coats or being carried in peoples arms as they go about their journey to work.

This is Edinburgh. Not Hollywood. Gonnae no dae that. You look like a complete fool.

Talking of complete fools, anyone seen Coolio on celebrity big brother? I’m embarrassed for the lad. It’s still entertaining though. In my wildest dreams I couldn’t have imagined a house populated by LaToya Jackson, Coolio, Ulrika Jonsson and Tommy Sheridan.

Who do you think Tommy will proposition for sex first? My money’s definitely not on Coolio.

Tweet This Post

Bookmark It

I recently won a huge ham in a draw at work. I had no idea how big it was until I had to transport it home last night. Not only did I have to carry it home, I had to do some shopping en route. In preparation, I decided to ‘double bag’ the fella. It’s a long way from the city centre to Leith when you are carting a 4 kilo ham and you are never sure how these recycled bags will hold up.

To summarise: 1 feck off bit of pig + 1 recycled LIDL carrier bag  (3 pence variety) + 1 slightly too small John Lewis carrier bag + 2 shops to visit + 20 minute bus journey = potential disaster.

I was hardly half way round Boots before the arse was hinging out of the John Lewis carrier bag. The ham had a big bone in it which due to the tight fit of the John Lewis bag had caused an ugly gash to appear in the side of the bag. It was touch and go.

So I swapped the ham to the inferior quality LIDL bag. The dead pig weighed heavy and I could fell the bag handles stretching under the strain. It was going to be a long journey. I had visions of the bag bursting at the foot of Leith Walk and loads of wee dugs devouring my ham before I had a chance to safely store it at Chez Palmer. I admit it, for the first time that evening, I was worried.

The bus journey was relatively uneventful. Only two people tripped over the beast. I only had Scotmid left to negotiate.

Apart from some difficulties around the extraction of some frozen chips from the freezer, the rest of the journey was smooth. The handles on the bag were stretched to buggery though and I had weals and red lines across my hands from the thin, sharp plastic.

The ham had arrived and it was tasty. I can’t believe I have managed to get an entire blog post out of a bus journey with a ham. Just goes to show that if you put your mind to it, anything is possible.

By the way, there are 3,000 ham sarnies round our house if anyone fancies dropping in…..

In other news, an old bloke got on the bus this morning clad entirely in corduroy products (well, except his shoes and I can’t vouch for his socks or underwear). Cord hat, cord jacket, corduroy trousers. He looked like a big McCoys crisp.

Tweet This Post

Bookmark It

Not THE Elvis. An impostor.

He was standing there getting what looked like a Superking fag down his neck. All wig, shades and jumpsuit. In typical Leith fashion, no one was even giving him a second glance. Elvis? Smoking a fag ootside the Marksman? Am ah supposed tae be excited aboot that?

On the subject of Leith, I’ve started reading Trainspotting. Twelve years behind everybody else but never mind. It’s actually a lot better than I thought it would be. I recently read “Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs”, another of Irvine Welsh’s books and thoroughly enjoyed it which is why I’ve decided to give Trainspotting a spin.

Scottish literature, film and television so often focus on Glasgow and Glaswegians. “No mean city” and all that. It’s refreshing to read about Edinburgh, particularly given the broad Edinburgh dialect in the book. Even though it’s set in the Leith of the mid 1980′s, many of the establishments mentioned are still in existence.

The Marksman bar is one of them. Elvis was probably kicking about back then as well. In those days though, he could have had a fag INSIDE the boozer.

Tweet This Post

Bookmark It

I was entertained by one this morning whilst at the bus stop. Two ned type gentlemen were in the process of giving each other “deid airms” when a wasp from a nearby bin intervened. The two halfwits decided to form a hasty alliance and take on the winged insect in a “square go”.

The wasp however is a mere background character in this story. The main star of the show was ned number one’s neatly trimmed bumfluff moustache. This wasn’t one of your random wispy and straggly efforts. This was quite clearly trimmed in a neat line to about 3mm above the lip line.

Just goes to show you should never judge a book by it’s cover. I already had the young ruffian labelled as a ne’er do well based on his scruffy tracksuit and proliferation of Elizabeth Duke sovvy rings. Quite clearly the young fella has pride in his appearance after all.

Tweet This Post

Bookmark It