Author: Smokehouse

Well that’s it, the deccies have come down and it’s all over for another year. So what did I get up to? Well at short notice it was decided to have Xmas dinner at Château Ghastonbury instead of Little Miss Sunshine’s house. This meant a flurry of activity to finish the decorating and have the house fit to accommodate nine guests on the big day. I finished the decorating on Xmas Eve and with the smell of paint finally beginning to recede I started prepping the dinner.

The day arrived and with it the guests, LMS, her beau and her daughter and beau. Chef, Bean counter and her eldest, myself and I did say nine didn’t I? Yes of course I was forgetting Angel the dog or four-legged eating machine, as it should be known. It was a great day and I fell asleep face first in the ample bosom of BC soon after the Dr Who special. Boxing day and I did it all again only this time with seven people instead of nine and although it was a much gentler affair it was still a wonderful day.

The day after Boxing Day the Driver came to stay with me for a few days but had to leave on the Sunday. He had not been feeling well and drove home to his local walk in health centre. From there they rushed him up to Wigan Infirmary where he spent the night in an oxygen tent. He had apparently suffered a huge asthma attack. He was to spend the next few nights there, struggling to get his breath.

Onto New Years Eve, for the first time in what seemed like forever but was probably only 10 years I celebrated away from Château Ghastonbury. A massive formed at BC’s house and we partied until the early hours. The highlight coming just before the bells when one of the youngsters told us oldies that “all of the cool people” go to the roundabout nearby a large supermarket just yards from BC’s pad. So about 20 or so of us trotted off to the roundabout to meet a gathering of assorted revellers and we all hugged and cheered. The more adventurous of us decided to have trolley races using the roundabout as a circuit. I have no idea how this happened but I found myself piloting a shopping trolley propelled by The Beast and LMS’s Beau. I understand the video footage is hilarious and is somewhere on U Tube. As soon as I can obtain a copy I will post it here. I am also led to believe that I finally made it to bed at around 5am but not before me and TB had attempted to make fire with a Leylandii tree in BC’s garden.

I went see the Driver in hospital on Jan 2^nd and as he was being discharged that day I took him home. He has decided that it was a wake up call and has vowed never to smoke again. After chewing the fat for a few hours I was touched by his comment, “mates come and go. Friends are for life, I am proud to call you a friend”. It made me realise that I am blessed to have such a good social circle even though it is spreading further a field on what appears to be an almost monthly basis. News reached me yesterday that The Teech will be heading towards the sunnier climes of the middle east this September to take up a new post lasting for at least two years. Hopefully this New Year will take me further to reaching my goal of leaving these shores. 2007 has not been a good year for me and I am glad to see the back of it and so hello 2008.

Farewell 2007! A Happy New Year to everyone, may 2008 bring you all that you wish for. (Sorry its short post, I still have this stinking cold)

And so it came to pass, Led Zeppelin had been and gone and one of the most eagerly awaited concerts of the millennium, indeed perhaps of all time drew to a close. It will always be a deep regret that I was not there. It was during a film about a weeping camel in the Gobi desert that I started pondering on life’s disappointments. Apparently this mother camel had given birth to fine young colt but would not feed it, indeed it was rejected. However those mystic nomads who herded camels found a musician who played and sang to the camel until it cried then led the young colt to the mother who suckled her young charge with no problems. The connection between the two? hmmm.

While I was compiling a list of all the things I have either missed out on or would have liked to have done but either didn’t or could not I also began a list of things I am rather proud of. I suspect most of us have lists like this. For example who can forget the time each of us managed to tie our own shoe laces with asking for help or actually telling the time from a clock without having to ask some one what time it was? The first time you rode a bicycle without a steadying hand behind you or skated across an ice rink without hanging on to the sides? Perhaps the first time in a new job that you felt everything clicked and fell into place and it all made sense. I was so proud when I received my honours degree at the age of 42 and even more so when I made the last payment on my mortgage, the shackles of debt finally broke. For some it may have been the birth of their first or the arrival of a grandchild.

Ok onto disappointments. Maybe it was the time you realised that your father was not superman and could not fix absolutely everything or the time you realised that your mum was not the best cook in the world. It could possibly have been when you discovered that truth about Santa. Indeed in a long list of disappointments is the reality that I am a rubbish musician and will never be able to play like Jimmy Page. I will never be a martial artist of the calibre of Bruce Lee. I will never meet Marilyn Monroe. Perhaps among the two biggest disappointments are the facts that I never really got to understand and like my father before he passed on and the realisation that I was a national dried baby and not weaned on draught. Some things may seem disappointing at the time but less so with passing of time, in fact some of life’s disappointments turn out to be positive blessings. A pivotal moment for me was New Years Eve 1999; a decision made then has shaped the last few years since and will continue to affect me for the rest of my life. I could go on but I am sure that each of you has your own corresponding list.

It was with this in mind that I compiled a new list, a list of things to do and see before I shuffle off this mortal coil. When time allows I am going to practise music more often. I intend to set foot on each of the six continents (I have four more to go). I intend to meet up with old friends where ever in the world they may be. I may not be able to alter the past but I may be able to charter the course of my own destiny. Now if only my mother had listened to a musician in the Gobi desert…

This cold refuses to go away despite my best efforts to get rid of it. It has now turned into what I believe is a chest infection and a trip back to the doctors is imminent. My best intentions of launching myself into a flurry of activity and not sitting back and feeling sorry for myself have been scuppered by a microscopic bug. In spite of this life goes on and the only good thing to come out of this is that shares in paper mills and the pharmaceutical industry must be soaring judging by the amount of paper tissues and cough medicine I have gone through.

More than ever my thoughts are turning to the lifestyles of Ted Magnum who is in Argentina having the time of his life. The Traveller is ringing me up tomorrow having come back from Thailand with the latest news and gossip and The Tiler is complaining it is too damn hot in Oz. Apparently no matter how he tries he cannot chill his beer to a suitably low temperature. How my heart goes out to these poor souls and their life threatening disabilities. Yes it is hard not to feel envious when you are lying in your sick bed feeling less than sparkling, looking out at black clouds and the plummeting mercury and listening to the weather people telling me that more bad weather is on its way.

At least I am not on my own. No indeed there are now some new residents in my house. I have discovered that mice have moved in. I suspect their motives are not entirely altruistic and that they have not arrived just to keep me company. Château Ghastanbury has not been bothered with rodents for many years’ thanks mainly due to the best two mousers on the planet, Claws and Fang respectively. Sadly however Fang passed away in January 2003 and Claws followed him to that great sunny garden in the sky in January 2005. I desperately need to obtain another mouser and I have thought of borrowing one of the many cats that frequent my garden. I suspect that “borrowing” is not the correct term and catnapping is closer to the actual act of enticing a cat into your house and keeping it there for a week or so. Maybe I can borrow several for just one day at a time. It does not seem fair to buy a kitten when I could be out of here and into some foreign land within 18 months. I doubt if the cat would be coming with me and it hardly seems fair to get rid of it just because I no longer have any use for it. Offering free bed and board to a couple of strays for a short while seems the most humane thing to do.

Until the next time I would ask you all to spare a thought for these poor souls in hot climates who are struggling to chill their beer and wondering what part of the country they should travel to next. It’s a hard life all round!

In what has been the most heated item I have seen in years certainly on the web and in forums across the world, the British teacher imprisoned by the Sudanese courts Miss Gibbons is now back on British soil. This was due to the efforts of two UK muslim peers,  Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, and Lord Nazir Ahmed who’s efforts must be praised. Sadly it had nothing to do with our leaders or foreign ministers.  Hopefully the fanatics, spurred on it has to be said by outraged Sudanese citizens demanding the death sentence and marching swords in hand to the Sudanese courts,  who were calling for “Air Strikes” will keep quiet. It won’t stop the “merely outraged” from asking that all aid to the Sudan be suspended. Conspicuous by their absence were the moderates who did not parade in the streets and March upon our government to do something. I think it was Edmund Burke back in the late 1700’s who said   "all that is necessary for the triumph of evil, is that good men do nothing”. Sadly the episode has shown that a British citizen in trouble abroad cannot depend upon the efforts or goodwill of the UK government or it’s embassies to help out.  You can already see the BNP and other right wing movements making political capitol out of this. The whole episode of appeasement and laissez-faire reminded me of a poem by Phil Appleton entitled The responsibility.

I am the man who gives the word,
If it should come, to use the Bomb.

I am the man who spreads the word
From him to them if it should come.

I am the man who gets the word
From him who spreads the word from him.

I am the man who drops the Bomb
If ordered by the one who’s heard
From him who merely spreads the word
The first one gives if it should come.

I am the man who loads the Bomb
That he must drop should orders come
From him who gets the word passed on
By one who waits to hear from him.

I am the man who makes the Bomb
That he must load for him to drop
If told by one who gets the word
From one who passes it from him.

I am the man who fills the till,
Who pays the tax, who foots the bill
That guarantees the Bomb he makes
For him to load for him to drop
If orders come from one who gets
The word passed on to him by one
Who waits to hear it from the man
Who gives the word to use the Bomb.

I am the man behind it all;
I am the one responsible.

Doing nothing, it sorta sums appeasement up doesn’t it?

Damn colds! I am in the fourth week of real stinker that won’t go away despite massive doses of vitamin C and increasingly large doses of cough medicine, more about that later. The news seems to have been filled with the shortcomings of our wonderful government and what can only be described as an alarming ineptitude to deal with matters of finance, party donations, border security and our armed forces to name just a few. It does make me wonder what will turn up next and how long this government can hang on to power.  It only seems like a short time ago that I stayed up all night to watch a historical landslide election take place that was supposed to have given us all hope and renewed faith in British politics. That was in 1997 and all that Faith, hope and tolerance has been slowly eroded and washed away. Pete Townsend summed it all up in his song, We won’t get fooled again. The last words are “Meet the new boss, the same as the old boss”.

Another alarming piece of news this week is that an English supply teacher in the Sudan has been jailed for 15 days for allowing the children in her class to name a class mascot Teddy bear Mohammed. Apparently this is a huge insult to the Islamic faith. It should be noted that she herself did not name the Teddy bear, it was put to a vote and the children themselves chose the name. However it is the teacher who has been jailed and will have lost her job and then be deported at the end of her sentence. Mercifully it was only a teddy bear and not a farmyard animal. The outcry at beasts of burden being named Moses, Jesus and Mohammed does not bare thinking about. It is not just the British government who are eroding faith, hope and tolerance; it would appear that religion is now getting in on the act. It makes me rather glad I chose to be an atheist. Sudan is definitely off my list of holiday destinations.

Work has not restarted on the house but the good news is that I took delivery of a PS3 at the weekend just gone. Commander Riker and Miss Décolletage, the Revellers, BBB and Teech as well as the Bean Counter attended the grand unveiling and set about plugging leads and cables into all sorts of sockets to make the damn thing work. In fact I probably had the cream of the UK’s computing and gaming brains in attendance to set it all up. This is probably just as well as I don’t know any nine year old kids to do the job for me. Technology is a marvellous thing for the young and the older I become the more convinced I am that it is only for the young. I am still grappling the intricacies of my newest mobile phone. Half of the facilities I do not need and will probably never use. I sometimes yearn for the days when we had bakelite phones that would merely ring when some one was trying to contact you instead of belting out mind numbing ring tones. Despite all of this my MP3’s, MPEG’s and my DVD’s now look and sound wonderful. I just wish it was all easier to use instead of having to have four remote controls at my disposal.

Back to the cold from hell. I am now four weeks into what has turned out to be the worst cold I have ever had. Nothing seems to shift it or ease the symptoms. I have perhaps single handedly contributed to the destruction of half a rainforest through the use of paper hankies in a month. In an effort to stem my destruction of the ozone layer I have taken to drying them out on a radiator to be re-used and I have discovered that you can re-use them up to four times before they disintegrate. I have gone through copious quantities of vitamin c and gallons of fruit juice in an attempt to rejuvenate my immune system. I have taken to using increasingly large amounts of cough medicine to ease my aching throat. I have also discovered that there is a limit to how much cough medicine you can take at any one time. This was accidental and completely unintended however I had my breakfast and then took a particularly large draught from the bottle, it saves having to wash a spoon afterwards. I woke up on the couch some nine hours later wondering where the day had gone.  I guess a lot of people must have wondered where I had got to as well as there were messages on my answer machine and a lot of missed calls on my mobile. I am not sure many people will believe me when I tell them but I will just have to rely on an ever decreasing amount of faith hope and tolerance.

Its here, I know it is. I have seen it in all of the shops! The tinsel and lights are up and the turkeys and crackers are flying off the shelves, (more about that later). I even heard Slade on the radio yesterday. Christmas is definitely here. Yes it’s that annual event when we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. It’s where the name “Christmas” comes from, the mass of Christ. Actually he wasn’t born on December 25^th, the bible does not even mention his date of birth so the Romans, in approximately AD 227, came up with a date of 25^th December. The Catholic Church and the pagan’s merely added embellishments, combined them all and Christmas as we know it was conceived.

I lost my faith many years ago and have happily been an Atheist for some time, although I have ambitions to one day be an Agnostic. I figured it this way, if there were so many religions they could not all be right, although the Jews, Christians and Muslims all believe in the same God they differ in his interpretations of how to live and how he sent his messages to earth. Add a billion or so Buddhists and their own different sects and maybe a billion Hindus and Sikhs with a handful or other religions thrown in and you start to get the picture. We are not all singing from the same hymn sheet, oh no. In fact I was recently ordained, online perhaps but ordained nevertheless, as a Jedi Priest and have the documentation to prove this and it’s legally binding and all above board in some states of the US.  I can now carry out Baptism’s, Christenings, perform weddings and I expect if I put my mind to it I could perform the odd exorcism or two if required. I am not the only one, there are quite a handful of us out there and our numbers are growing!

However we in the west praise our own gods even more than Christ. We worship the cult of consumerism and commerce.  Christmas is merely a good excuse to get involved in a punch up at the tills while trying to purchase a cabbage patch doll or the latest must have games console which the makers have not made enough of to go around. Add to this a huge dollop of excessive drinking and the consumption of enough calories to solve the whole of the worlds famine crisis’s in one go with the ability to be drawn into so much debt that we are still paying the bills until the middle of the following year. Sadly if you don’t buy into this game then you are accused of being miserable and mean, "Bah Humbug" springs to mind, along with comparisons to Ebenezer Scrooge.

Now I have nothing against having a “good old knees up” and a great time or party at the drop of a hat, and I can get into debt at any time of the year but I refuse to use religion as an excuse for it. In a time when many adults do not care and lot’s of kids do not know who Jesus was, but know that a big fat old man climbs down the chimney each year and leaves them with a sack full of presents then perhaps its time to scrap Christmas. Let’s be honest and say we are going to have a two week party every year just for the hell of it and to make manufacturing and foodstuff shareholders and factory bosses happy. Well most bosses anyway. Back to the turkey saga…..

Avian bird flu has broken out in Norfolk and turkeys are being culled in an attempt to stop the virus spreading. This will inevitably mean a shortage of that old Christmas favourite, the Turkey for dinner on December 25^th. Other foodstuffs such as potatoes, broccoli and peas have already increased in price due to the wet weather of this summer. Rumours are surfacing that there will be a champagne shortage to boot. With this in mind I popped down to the local supermarket and bought one of only six turkeys left in the freezer compartment. Well I am having dinner at Little Miss sunshine’s house this Christmas and I promised I would get the meat in, I could hardly turn up with a packet of beef burgers could I? Indeed I am going to get as ratted as everyone else this year and stuff myself to excess. The difference is that I will be doing it for myself while most other people pretend that they are doing it in celebration of, and in homage to their God. Happy Xmas!!!

Monday came and I could not move. I spent most of the week in bed unable to do very much other than go to see Nurse C on the Tuesday morning and she told me I was run down, had a bad cold and would change my blood pressure tablets. The advice was to stay in bed until I felt better. By Saturday I had shaken the worst off and I even went out on to Ted Magnums official leaving do. On the Sunday morning I went to the cenotaph in the centre of town. It was a bright day when I left but it started raining at around 10.50am and did not stop for well over an hour until the service had finished. From there I went to the local army barracks to see Bean Counters son who had been in the parade. It was after a few hours at the barracks that the shivers started again and I went home to bed. I probably should not have stood around for 3 hours in damp clothes but at the time I figured it was the least I could do to honour so many who have fallen to give me and many millions of other people the right to live in a free democracy with out fear.

The next day and I was feeling worse than I had the previous week and so I went back to the doctors and explained what had happened. The doctor signed me off for another week with the advice to stay warm and dry. There is not a lot you can do when you don’t feel well other than make yet another Lemsip and watch day time TV. The house is a mess as I started decorating a few weeks ago but have been unable to complete any room and autumn has arrived with a vengeance. The long dark cold nights and the grey skies have done nothing for my mood or temperament.  It’s time to dust off the light box and start taking the serotonin tablets once more.

A phone call from the Tiler informed me that it was spring in Oz and the flowers are blooming and everyone has their shorts on as temperatures soar. TM is probably sipping a cold beer in Argentina as he waits for his iron horse to arrive by steamer and the Traveller is going to Thailand for three weeks. It’s hard not to feel envious when all you have to look forward to is another Lemsip and the next instalment on the shopping channel.  The desire to pack up and leave is stronger than ever. A couple of short weeks ago it felt as though time was flying by, right now it feels rather like it has stood still.

A few months previous, the doctor had been out to see my mum and I remarked about the bad weather we were having at the time. He agreed and told me that he fully expected his surgery to be full of people during September that he would normally see in January. I asked him to explain and he told me that Just after the New Year was when he would normally see people with seasonal depression.  These people did not know why there were depressed they just knew they were. As I have been a sufferer of SAD for some years I knew exactly what he meant. The SAD season has arrived early this year and only good weather and vitamin D will cure it. For more information on this subject check out http://www.sada.org.uk/whatis.htm

No matter how down in the dumps I feel, the trip to the Cenotaph brings back a sense of reality. I am one of the lucky ones and feeling a bit lousy is only a small price to pay when compared to the ultimate sacrifice so many have made.  With this in mind I have copied what are probably the most famous lines of any war poem ever written.  They were penned by Laurence Binyon and come from the fourth verse in his epic poem “The Fallen” from 1914.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.