Grangemouth woes…

We may well be faced with the gravest fuel crisis since 2000. Not only petrol and diesel – road fuels are threatened, of course  but also the wider risk of Gas and crude oil generally are at risk in the short to medium term.

 To the credit of the workers they are not really striking for themselves…rather future employees whose rights to pensions have been curtailed.

I believe the current  pension scheme at Grangemouth was/is non-contributory. from the employees standpoint. 

Whether or not this is correct I’m afraid the luxuries enjoyed by some groups of workers down the  years…perks within the press (print) oil, and other spheres sooner or later have to follow the likes of the National Dock Labour scheme into the annals of history.  Filed under the heading ‘False Dawn’   Referring to the chapter of British socio-economic history when it appeared workers were making  real progress’ Common sense and pessimism should have told us to know better.

 

The closure of that chapter was kicked off by a weak and indecisive James Callaghan, and honed into a precision cutting instrument by Margaret Thatcher….two subsequent decades have seen  a steady erosion of terms and conditions for very many people in this country. The minimum wage, intended to help, has merely served as a stilleto to the heart of the low-paid, as it’s become an aspirational benchmark for foreign workers who view it as a lure beyond avarices wilder dreams.

 

Workers in the few remaining  cosseted pockets of industry must realise they’re on borrowed time. This is a much harsher world, and a much smaller world. Britain cannot compete with powerhouse economies like India and China if key industries are operating more like welfare societies.

 

I’m not proud to be writing such words…indeed there was a time I’d have railed against them. From railism to realism over half a painful lifetime. It’s just the way it is.

What needs to follow is a levelling of the playing field and a re-adjustment of the wealth gap in Britain. Boardroom deals rewarding failure, and huge bonuses , even in good years need to be seen to be fairer. I’m not holding my breath.

 Britain is in the middle of  a post industrial trough…battling to keep afloat with a huge expansion of service industries and financial firms as real manufacturing continues to decline in the face of cheap competition from abroad.

Everything is cyclical…even over centuries..I can foresee a time when this small island..teeming with people by the end of the 21st. century will be almost an irrelevance on the world stage…distant memories  from dusty books the only reminder of such luxuries as occupational pensions.

Viewing this glomy scenario from the lower section of the economic ladder I’m reminded of a 1940’s Labour electioneering poster.

The flat cap bedecked head just clear of the water…the bowler just above clinging on for his dear, comfortable life..and the fat bloated barrister/company director type at the top saying…’times are hard we’ll all have to step down one rung’…sums things up nicely for me.

Just where are the Labour party when you need them? Sucking up to the Chinese and the Indians…and feathering their own temporary nests.

Search for a sparrow…

A Cockney sparra ‘ to be more accurate….a singing cockney sparra ‘

When it comes to being partial to Nancys , then blokes from my walk of life usually keep quiet about it.

Mentioning the subject at work brought blank looks and baffled silence from the two colleagues I’d ‘come out’ to.

Macho types, one loud and boorish…the other quiet and boring.

I’d do Anything’ ? I offered…saturday nights…? Nothing…in terms of reaction I couldn’t ask for less.

I was fishing of course, simply because I am hooked. Yes, I actually relish the weekly parade of talented totty, gracing our living room with energy, buoyant optimism, and above all melodic voice.

Gaudily turned out in a myriad of colour….feminine, feisty, and oozing the kind of confidence I can only dream of. These songbirds are all worthy of a role somewhere, and I’m not talking haystacks. Each and every one can carry a tune with aplomb and shining eyes. I actually find the standard quite staggering…for these are hithertoo unknowns on a quest for fame and fortune…above all though I think they just love to sing.

Under an intense spotlight, beamed almost live from a heated studio environment, before a rapturous and partisan audience. Not forgetting the judges….who for the most part actually seem to know what they are talking about, these kids (they’re not much older than kids, most of ’em) radiate a confidence I could only dream of.

The ubiquitous John Barrowman…whose face has now become so familiar, though I have no idea where he sprang from….or why!

Denise Van Outen, who seems pleasant enough, and offers encouragement and positivity. Any hint of criticism is couched in gentle terms. I like her style, she is human…above all she’s not rude, rudeness is catered for in other places on t.v. talent shows…this production has a little more class, decorous Denise included.

Then, bringing up the rear, and with his eye on several is Barry Humphries….an ex-Fagin. An ageing degenerate with a glint in his eye, who focuses on the physical side of Nancy. The wiggle or the warble..I’m not sure which means most to Barry, bless him.

These three musketeers of the musical world all bow down weekly in mock homage to the master.Sir Andrew…arguably the grand master of knight music.

Andrew Lloyd-Webber has the look of a misfit. A man who wears his heart on his sleeve. His strange facial expressions might render him vulnerable outside the world of showbusiness. A hugely talented billionaire, he’s found the formula for success once again. Yes, he’s quids in, but I think he genuinely enjoys himself here. He seems to revel in the new found attention mass media affords him. He’s hamming up that gleeful little boy ‘expression of approval’ look…along with his inmitable harrummph of withering disdain. Pure theatre. I bet Andrew’s a good egg in reality. He couches his criticisms with words of comfort and is only harsh in extremis…he can’t please everyone.

 

So, to the main players. The aspirant actresses and singsters…with an energy you can feel. These decked-out Dickensian belles, belting out tunes to rapture and applause from all in that excited audience, or sinking to their knees to render an emotional ballad. This is British youth as it’s best , and such a relief to see it portrayed as such on prime time t.v.

I have no idea who will win in the end, and frankly I don’t care…though I’m rapidly tiring of Jessie’s crooked smile, and Aysheas saucer sized eyes. Yes, these are real women with slight imperfections…not air-brushed celebrity dolls there is little to choose between any of them in singing terms. I carry a torch of support for the be-freckled Ashley, largely because she’s been written off by Webber, yet refuses to lie down. She seems the least emotional of the bunch from this distance.

For tears flow almost weekly now in a salty show of sadness, disappointment and public rejection. A reaction somehow appropriate for disappointed folk of the fairer sex. Casting my mind back to the quest for ‘Joseph’ last year, with all those lachrymose lads…so many I created a collective noun for the squawkers…a ‘blubber of Josephs ‘ which at times made me feel quite queasy. Nothing wrong with a scrike men, I do it myself on rare occasions but best kept private eh? Surely, reaching the final hurdles of such a national hunt is something to celebrate, post-puberty… not drown your faces in glinting rivulets before millions. A stiff upper lip and all that…we are British after all.

…Of course the young cheeky chappy candidates for ‘Oliver’ are exempted from such responsibilities…no stiff upper lip expected from this bunch, who all display panache and wide eyed optimism on a weekly basis. There may well be another twist in the tail of this particular search…a black Oliver? He certainly has a smashing voice.

I just doubt , back then if he’d have asked ‘for more’ pre Trevor Phillips & Co….precious little equality in the London of Charles Dickens. Good luck to all the lads.

So, my saturday night telly has had a boost of late. A shot in the arm of light entertainment…I’m so entranced I’ve forgotten to dislike Graham Norton…one of the biggest Nancys of all…I think he’s found his metier here…and I’ve seldom seen him less camp.

Bravo! to all involved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

why do people say ‘I’m Good’ ?

Another one this morning on the radio…on the VD phone in on BBC five live. Victoria Derbyshire welcomes a drippy, motor-mouthed female ‘social commentator’  to the phone-in: today about women who do not want children.

“How are you”

“I’m Good…”

Good at what ? I muse inwardly…for I detest this daft  answer to  a traditional everyday pleasantry. It’s so commonplace now I do not steam from the ear-holes, merely simmer. I’m good…whatever happened to ‘I’m well, thank you’ or similar responses which at least make grammatical sense. It’s pure lexical laziness…

…this little irk  was indicative of an unsatisfactory contribution. The call soon went further  downhill. When giving her febrile opinions the lass lapsed into socio-scientific mediaspeak about ‘biological essentialism’ and the like. Basically she felt women were still being pressured into having kids. Nowadays apparently 25% of childless thirty five year olds will never have children…which to me sounds as though three-quarters of women who haven’t bothered by their mid-thirties are very keen to do so before it’s too late. The human race need hardly panic….it’s a personal decision hardly worthy of debate…but there were some strange responses. 

 

One bloke rang to say he and his ‘girlfriend’ …who was 44 for goodness sake could buy anything they like. They were childless….he said if he had kids he’d not have been able to visit Zambia last year…now to me that sounds like a good enough reason to start decorating a nursery, and applying for a Mothercare credit card. Not him though…he declared forcefully he wasn’t going to share any of his ‘great wage’ with  a ‘third party’…by which he meant his child. Sounds to me  like some unborn sprog has had a lucky escape.

Personally, I think the country is overpopulated anyway…we have to keep more room available for immigrants. Soon, not only Africans will be heading our way escaping the desertification of their continent, but half of southern Europe might plump for these shores. Add the Polish plumbers and the Latvian bricklayers…however did we manage without them? These people are all very welcome for they may well be paying my old age pension. Another statistic today was ‘fifty-five year olds alive today have a one in two chance of living until they are ninety!’ 

There will soon be three times as many pensioners as there are children. What a topsy turvy nation we might become. When developing countries are becoming overwhelmed with their youthfulness, their vibrancy and energy…most of us indigenous Brits will be looking forward to  a gentle game of bowls or a nap in the communal garden….no matter the immigrants can see to  the chores of commerce and industry and we can decay into our well earned dotage safe in the knowledge that our grandchildren live in a glorious multi-cultural micro-cosm of the whole darn world….those of us that have them of course.

Sixty per cent of  U.K. adults are making no provision for their old age…no pensions no nowt. I suppose in a money grubbing country like Britain has become , when one has to run to standstill just to keep yer  head above the economics of everyday life…where houses cost a fortune and fuel has hit the roof…we should not be surprised.

Britain has now become a rock between the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean where people flock to make money….for a better life…where half of those who’ve always been here would love to escape from…most of the other half escape without going anywhere…apart from the drug dealer or the off-licence.

I know this has wandered a bit but I’m feeling out of focus…not good…which reminds me that ‘not bad’ is at least  a sensible, if vague answer to the question  ‘How are You?’  Yes, not bad is better than good.

shifting stuff…

Meander through Tuesday with me? …I thought I’d blog about my day.  Like yer doo…try to make it sound interesting when I know it’s not. Silk purses and sows ears spring to mind.

I ‘Woke up to Money’ The BBC’s daily diet of impending doom on Radio 5 live.

Five forty am….hit the snooze button..no good…I needs a pee! Job done…start with the socks: as  the chastened tone of the financial reporting these days in stark contrast to the years of ‘good times’ which some fools thought would go on, and on. Experience suggests otherwise….and I’m an ‘umble lorry driver.

 Oi! not so much of the ‘umble. I breakfasted, as always… like a King…well, a Prince at least with grand granary toasties and a dollop of baked beans. Radio 4 delivered via digital now, upmarket cerebral radio…serious…gravitas…I smeared some jam on me last bit of toast. I still like the look of this newish kitchen…it’s a pleasure to come down to. Still need the light on…but as the year advances toward the one third gone mark it’s becoming borderline….and energy bills are an item these days. The kitchen windows face west…so  early mornings are dull affairs at the best of times. The house is seldom cold though…no need for heat.

 Out of the door at six-thirty five…like clockwork..but the automaton cursed inwardly  on seeing  bits of litter some carefree kids must have strewn… I grunted out loud as I stooped to pick ’em up. The nip in the air early doors is going on and on this year. The ‘long john’ thermals serve me well but when is Spring going to arrive? No hint of sunshine yet again  as dampness pervades…the grass verge muddied and ploughed into irregular narrow furrows with tyre tracks of kids bikes…God! I’m a moaning  sod, I mused to myself,  a rare grin cracking the default grimace.

Flipped the garage door &  fired up the Audi…I daren’t say it’s built like a Swiss watch or tomorrow it will let me down…the law of the sod….that’s two sods in quick succession.

Drove to work listening and inwardly digesting French linguistics via c.d….it’s actually sinking in well and I’m rapidly becoming versed in some vital basics. Time well spent….continued in the cab for about three hours every day.

 Gaul interrupted as I stopped for  my Daily Mail from  my daily muslim…almost a different one every day, it seems… at least no eastern music today…I mean I like it…I doo…but not at this hour…mangled wailing is all very well and diverse but   I’m torn  between  a  daily detour to an English newsagent..however,  they had sold out of stamps last week! Puh!

Arrive at work…such as it is…a faded empire that’s never really  shone. A family affair…decent enough, regular enough..an un-exciting, comfortable rut.

Still, I’m not there for long..the big DAF snarls into life in that latterly  sophisticated,  hushed and highly engineered  diesel kind of way that always induces a sense of triumph. There have been occasions…not many..when the turn of the key has brought no response whatsoever …often when hundreds of miles away from home…so when it works, it’s worth celebrating with  a mental smile. Four hundred and twenty horses…and one mug.

Destination close…a cockstride really…there were times when I’d clock up a couple of hundred miles before breakfast but no longer…not these six years.

Thirty minutes tops and I’m there. A down at heel mill, almost Dickensian in nature…needs more than   a facelift. No great expectations here…none beyond next month’s pay-packet anyway  I’d wager.  A dishevelled army of men in grubby hi-viz shuffle about.  Twenty, thirty years many of them have worked here….those six years suddenly do not look quite so bad…quite so futile.

One visit I could gloss over…two might be a chore…I was to ‘tip’ my load here three times today ! Seventy five tonnes of stuff . Dirty, used stuff…the detritus of a consumer society cubed up into big, heavy square cubes of….stuff.

Take some time out to climb  a flight of concrete steps a regulation twenty times…exercise…I’m told it’s good for me…my gluteus muscles , of late..seem to agree. Progress.

Dinnertime: I’m not posh….parked up and had a break from the French to tune into Radio Manchester  as I chomped a chilled  egg and bacon butty, prepared ‘with love’ I was assured last evening.  

A local curmudgeon who could even  give me lessons in the art …Allan Beswick…infuriating, and entertaining  Greater Manchester..seldom playing Devil’s Advocate for he’s his own man…good stuff. I learned what the ‘&’ sign is called…began with  an ‘A’ but I’ve already forgotten…such is life…maybe the French is squeezing other stuff out of my overburdened  head.

My loyal Mail – I agree with 80% of it’s comment grabs my attention for a while…do the thirty second maths challenge in about two minutes…not bad for an oik…can’t get six, or twelve down  in the crossword but Sue will finish it later methinks. (she did and I kicked meself with ‘bluebell’…the ‘wild, wood hyacinth’)

Later : last load done…heading for home . the kids are out of school like liberated lemmings they run across the road…taking chances…silly…lollipop lady shakes her head. Fifty yards on I stop  at a red Pelican light. Moving off half a minute later my peripheral vision just ..and I mean just catches sight of a twelvish year old lad crossing when the green man has long gone…right alongside my cab he was lucky he was tall ..lucky I was alert..at the top of my game…he skipped across the road and the driver who’d been waiting opposite me,  in  similar pole Pelican position did my remonstrating for me…frankly I couldn’t be bothered…I don’t think the kids peril registered inside his lemming like head. I wrote just the other day about folk making eye contact with drivers of big vehicles before they cross right under their noses……..take it on board please….or you might end up on one.  We can’t always see you.

 Suddenly  things took a turn for the better…the French tape  (newly recorded on an aged  cassette I’d cadged from my Mother-in-Law Muriel’s vast, and  totally neglected collection at the weekend) comes to an end…only to segue into South Pacific !! Yes, that long lost soundtrack from my childhood. Mum loved it and saw it several times at the cinema…she even dragged me along to ‘The Forum’ one night c. 1959 to be totally bored. Only now with the benefit of rose tinted hindsight, lost youth, lost Mum and a lost sense of anything remotely young and   trendy did the music elevate my spirits. And then some.

 ‘There is nothing like a Dame’….how very true…and a song about teaching kids of ‘six, seven and eight’…to ‘hate’…the things their relatives ‘hate’.. the simply lyrics made me think, although I need little encouragement these days.

It was the  the gloriously un-p.c. “broads who are broad where a broad should be broad”  made me smile… and that’s twice in one day!  Rodgers and Hammerstein in all their pre-feminist glory. Of course we’ve moved on but what  a blast from the past. I wonder how many hard pressed career women juggling life, and kids, and a career would really like to just concentrate on being a ‘broad’ Answers on a post-card to the daily male.

As I joined the M60 to the strains of Rossano Brazzi’s ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ my mind turned to Mum and my eyes moistened as I gazed skyward…only the great, grey bulk of Brinnington’s huge  railway bridge obscured my view of the dark, angry looking clouds. I remember her openly admitting she thought the Italian crooner top crumpet….albeit in slightly couched terms… I dunno where he is now but I’m now  probably older than he was in his finest hour…across a crowded room. My mind flashed back to that sparsely populated cinema in 1959…my whole life ahead…it wasn’t ‘Bali-High’ that called me…just Wythenshawe Tech ! The head my whole life depended on was called Walter…and he seemed to write me off at an early age…oh well.

Another soaking on the cards before I reloaded …for the same damn place tomorrow…and made my way home. I stopped off at Tesco to collect my free Daily Mail dvd. ‘In Which We Serve’…pure propaganda from World War Two but worth it for nowt ! Noel Coward contemplating and Naval, gracing the cardboard cover… looking every inch the heterosexual he wasn’t.

Homeward bound..even  via picking up my better half the commute is mercifully short…..waiting a few minutes I moaned under my breath as Radio 5’s newscaster delivered yet more doom and gloom …. emerging from work my Wife was  clasping a bulky bag…pour moi?  I wondered to myself in French….  Not likely ….’Val’s given me bagful of horse-muck for the Rhubarb’ …fine….from grumble to crumble in seconds. Still, I do like a good crumble.

So here we are…home before five and sat at the keyboard within minutes of arrival back in the sanctuary. My default position before tea. Wife busy preparing  home made chunky chicken soup and blueberry stroodle…a bottle of Hardy’s red putting it’s stamp on the early evening…all is well with  my world….’til I ‘wake up to money’ in t’mornin’ 😉

to be continued…tomorrow…and the day after…and the day af……………

I have to be there….count yer blessings 😉

 

 

 

double standards….

Double standards…we all know they’re out there…they probably exist in all of us.

 

Yet last weeks brazen exposure of double standards left me almost lost for words….

Karen Matthews…the mother of the young girl Shannon, who went missing recently. Seven children by five fathers…villified….castigated…I joined in, I admit it…she was a sink estate bike…ridden by many…so thick she though twins were any kids who had trhe same Dad!

 

Then: Nick Cleggover…as he is now nicknamed…revealing in an interview to  a ‘mens magazine’ that his bedpost bears fewer than thirty notches…how many is that then? All these dalliances before the age of 24 apparently, when he married the woman he ‘hopes to be faithful too ( that nugget must have bucked her up no end!).

 

Clegg,  recently installed by the narrowest of margins leader of the very Liberal-Democrats…a serious political party that has concerns about sexually transmitted diseases, teenage single mothers etc…yet hardly anyone raises an eyebrow at his revelations. I have no idea how many women the average University graduate has sex with before the age of twenty four but if it’s anything approaching thirty it doesn’t say much about the females of his manor.

 

While we’re on matters of gender…what if this had been party leader Nicola Clegg…confessing a score and ten suitors…just how would that have gone down with the rank and file ? Not to mention the public at large.

 

As for Clegg’s judgement…well at best he should have kept his mouth shut and parried the intrusive questioning. He has shown himself inept…it will not be long before those famed long knives in the Lib-Dems are once more being honed for a back stabbing…I think he deserves it.

 

Next it emerges that Ken Livingstone…Mayor of London…Guardian of the planet earth…congestion taxer extraordinaire….has five children by three different women. He had his fourth at the ripe old age of 57, so it’s not as though he was late to fatherhood and felt he was missing out. He has chosen not to marry any of his impregnated partners and intends to keep the matter private! He must have a lot of favours to call in from the press.

 

Am I alone in thinking him not fit to hold office…in a city blighted by absent fatherhood…where so many youths are running wild partly to lack of a male role model…ie one who is there…at home..day in day out…or at least coming home for their tea! A support mechanism for Mum…and her hard pressed daily grind.

Fathering five hardly serves Livingstone’s green agenda well either….if we all had five kids it would be standing room only by now!

 

So do we have hypocrisy at our heart….is it , as the old song suggests…’the poor that gets the sorrow….the blame?…

 

Karen Matthews has not risen in my estimation…but these other two jokers…educated…supposedly intelligent..supposedly honourable….have slipped beneath her in my book…the uberclass descendeth…not fit for postions of trust and judgement.

Charlton leaves the field…

He must have stopped taking those tablets then!

 

‘The Ten Commandments’  a memorable milestone in my childhood. My dear mother took me along to the Forum…nothing comical happening along the way…Homewood Road as dead-pan as ever.

 

Seriously: A  Hollywood Great who thrilled me as a child by parting the Red Sea almost single handed…okay so God helped…but he didn’t appear in the credits !

 

Who could forget the final scene in ‘Planet of the Apes’ when Charltey realised with slowly dawning horror that he was in fact on planet Earth, the torch bearing hand of the Statue of Liberty thrusting out of epochs of accumulated sand.

 

Ben Him…as it’s now called in gay circles  featured the chariot race to end all chariot races…Handsome Heston…Humble Heston…the man could portray humility and awe…and might and wisdom. Not just anybody can do that you know. Charlton scored in every area of the filmic field…athletic and striking…he looked good in sandals.

In later life a staunch defender of his own values…whether you agreed with them or not. He was President of the ‘National Rifleman Association’ and firmly resisted plans to introduce gun control Michael Moore tried to make him look silly in ”Bowling for Colombine’ but I don’t think  he succeeded. Heston had too much credit in the bank of public respect for that to happen…well, in my branch anyway.

 

An Icon in his time, sadly his time has gone.

 

RIP.

that darn cat….’Smudge’ is history…

I’m afraid that the jury returned it’s verdict on our quite nice cat ‘Smudge’.

A lodger these four months I’m afraid the poor pussy has had to go back to the animal shelter from whence she came. Two more early morning wakes ups for me this week…2-30am….more damage to the sofas and a welsh dresser…and she even had a go at the almost new front door trying to get back indoors after she’d only just been let out !

She was an affectionate, clean cat but I’m afraid the experiment was not working out. She’s returned with full vaccination record , I was told Smudge  will be ‘easy to rehome’

All we have to do now is tell our grand-child…although the puss  would hide himself * away whenever she called, Eve was interested in her welfare.

We donated a lot of food and along with the fifty-five quid ‘adoption fee’ we’ve come out evens…if a little bit scarred (furniture wise , not mentally) I like animals but seldom get emotionally attached to them.

* I never quite got my head around the gender mix-up…Smudge was a she, of course !

 

unusual holiday?

Have you had any ‘unusual/busmans holidays’  I wonder?

In 1999 I’d been out of trucks for a couple of years in the print industry…driving a van and managing  a ‘film archive’…which was nowhere near as stimulating as it sounds.

  It’s an industry  generous with it’s holiday entitlements though.In stark contrast to what I’d been used to before…or since!

 I was so flushed with holidays I didn’t want them all….in truth could not afford to take advantage of all the time off in the shape of excursions.

“You’ve no choice, you have to take them” said the dragon who posed as Margaret the ‘Managing Director’ A dried up woman of fifty odd with an un-naturally brown face to go with her un-naturally brown hair. All personalised  number plates and Mercedes- Benz

She never liked me , and the feeling was mutual.

 But…Fair doo-s I was never one for rocking the boat ;-p…

but what can I do…I mused to myself. My wife was working…no fun sat at home alone…not driven  a truck for a bit…let’s see what’s available.

 I contacted a local ‘driver agency’ and as they were fairly desperate they took me on ! Hardly any questions asked.

On the first day of my ‘holiday’ I found myself in a seventeen ton rigid box-van, backed on to  the  loading bay of a fruit machine company in Manchester. I could feel the trundling of the wheels of ‘sack-barrows’ as dozens of one armed bandits were wheeled aboard into the body of the wagon.

 The spotty youth shielded his eyes from the April sun as he reached up to the cab with  a clutch of delivery notes.  It was about half an inch thick!

Starting off in western Cumbria , up though the central belt of Scotland and ever onward to the ancient kingdom of Fife it transpired. Caravan parks, holiday camps, pubs and clubs alike were all to be found and blessed with the one armed bandits I’d lumbered myself with.  Not so bad, I thought…makes a change etc. etc. Money will come in handy…

 ….Nine hours later,  with Cumbria behind me, the light fading ,  I got myself parked up..alone and hungry on Galashiels lorry Park I realised I’d dropped a cod…the first night sleeping in a lorry for almost two years…why?

 All  a part of life’s rich tapestry though. The work was different, and not unrewarding..I saw sights I’d not seen before.. a ‘holiday’ camp just outside Musselburgh for instance. Fair enough. It takes allsorts.

This place was so uninviting in it’s blandness I pondered just how much they would pay people to stay there! I provided up the east coast in sunshine and showers and suddenly the decision didn’t seem so bad after all. MY gamble with the fruit machines had certainly paid off in one way, the big vehicle felt as familiar and as easy to handle  as ever.

 The money? well it was kind ofincidental though not insignificant but it  was taxed to the absolute hilt…a real dis-incentive to anyone to work their holidays.

All in all  a mediocre move but one I’ll always remember…if only for the toothless old guys in the pub in Galashiels with whom I spent an evening reminiscing over pints of ‘heavy’ ale.

 Salt of the earth….and salt and vinegar to follow on me fish supper!

An upholstered tin box my dining room cum  bedroom, with only  late night radio to lull me to sleep. Garish curtains and no night heater… A  starkish reminder of a life gone before…and an kick up the arse dis-incentive to never to go back and do it again. So far, so good…almost.

 Anyway, just over twelve months later the print job was history…I’d told Margaret to ‘stick-it’ in a fit of justified pique….and I was workin’ neets driving an artic….the rich (maybe not so rich) tapestry constantly evolving.

someone mentioned ‘dream holidays’..

..here’s one we had earlier…..2000…seven months of seven days a week working and extra overtime to pay for it…worth every penny !

We flew via Toronto, and  landed in  Denver, Colorado on a Saturday night in September, the temperature at seven pm. was eighty degrees as they were experiencing a heatwave… and Denver is about 7,000 feet above sea-level! After an initial cock up with the hire car Alamo did us proud, we had a huge Chevrolet Suburban 4 x 4 for the first night and the next day they came good with a convertible – a red Mustang 3.8 in red. It was drop dead gorgeous.We drove through the southern Rockies like two kids in a sweetshop! Panoramic views at every turn and the big rigs and weekend Harleys just added to the magic of it all.The landscape changed as we headed south and west. MonumentValley – the terrain that made the likes of John Wayne celluloid heroes had an eerie presence as we ventured from our motel in Mexican Hat at dusk to catch the sandstone monoliths in their best light.Twilight.The Grand Canyon was awesome and the heat was growing more intense as we explored Arizona and Utah. The seemingly mile long freight trains added to the atmosphere of our own road movie – partly filmed to a soundtrack of early Fleetwood Mac twelve bar blues. Route 66 beckoned and we enlisted the help of some bikers ‘doing’ the route for some great shots, especially as a fifty ton Peterbilt passed ‘em with an accompanying hoot of his air horns. The memorabilia of some of the old diners and gas stations on the route was mesmerising, and yes, we bought a few tee-shirts. The one with a red mustang on it just couldn’t be resisted! Route 66 for me was one of the highlights of the trip. Las Vegas was next, but to be honest, although we were glad we saw it, it didn’t really appeal. Rather vulgar (in the truest sense of the word) and phoney, we didn’t linger beyond one night. The motels were cheap though – a good standard for less than thirty dollars. The hookers and their pushers lent to the generally seedy, but all pervasive larger than life atmosphere. Next morning we struck out for California and Yosemite National Park. The unbroken sunshine began to falter as we climbed into this wonderland of natural beauty in low cloud and drizzle which marred our short stay a tad. El Capitan, a huge slab of granite that commands the area was shrouded in low cloud – not that low really at nearly ten thousand feet above sea level!No matter – we headed for the coast. The distances were almost unreal and the end of our first week saw us put almost two thousand miles on the Mustang’s electronic clock. Heading into San Francisco on a ten lane freeway late on a Saturday afternoon was something of an adrenalin rush. Motels were hard to find here as there were a lot of festivals and conventions going on in the city. We eventually had to drive ten miles south and stump up a hundred and ten bucks for a room. I managed to get a four pack of Boddington’s Bitter with which I consoled myself in our pricey chambre.We explored the city a little the following day the sea-lions at fisherman’s wharf were amazing, hundreds of them basking on floating platforms in the warm sunshine. We couldn’t tour Alcatraz ‘cos it was booked up for two days solid. This trip was about covering ground anyway, we don’t know if we’ll visit the states again., after all we’ve waited thirty years for this holiday. What followed was a real delight. We headed out over a mist enveloped Golden Gate Bridge (which added a certain magic) and picked up highway one, north of the city. This is a meandering, coast hugging single lane road, which would be great if you’re thinking of a bike trip. We ended up at Bodega Bay that night, where Hitchcock filmed ‘The Birds’ one of Sue’s all time favourite movies (which funnily enough was on cable t.v. a night or two later). We got a lock in! (sadly, at the ‘chippy’) The area boasts beautiful and quiet beaches, the blue Pacific Ocean throwing modestearly autumn rollers at the craggy coastline. North of here lies the ‘Russian River Valley’ with towns caled Sebastapol, and Moscow. Tree canopied roads, lined with Redwoods. We stayed in a gorgeous timber lodge by the river as an Osprey circled overhead looking to pick up a fish supper from the shallow and sedate river.A lone canoeist skulled by and images from the film ‘Deliverance’ entered my feeble mind.The nights were fairly quiet affairs. The beer was not brilliant, mostly bottled, gassy and weak. We didn’t stay in one place long enough to make any friends, but we spoke to lots of people of course. They tended to think we were Australian! And had difficulty understanding me (in particular) at times – no change there then!! We headed inland for Sacramento and beyond. Stopping at a huge ‘Walmart’ in Reno to check out the merchandise and the prices. To be honest the difference to the UK was not that marked. Another of our preconceptions shattered. The food to was, contrary to popular myth not served up in huge quantities. The standard was mixed, we had great meals and some not so great. Price wise, eating out is not that different to the UK either, we found.Maybe the gargantuan platters we have heard so much about are more of a Florida thing, I don’t know and it didn’t really matter. We were replete, and never hungry. We drove seven hundred and fifty miles from Lake Tahoe (Sue said after seeing Loch Ness from the shore and the Loch itself, she wasn’t too impressed by Tahoe), Nevada to Yellowstone Park, Wyoming in two days. An overnight stay in Elko – a major beef town in Nevada was another highlight. We got drunk in the ‘Stray Dogs Bar’ Meandering back to our modest motel via a superbly kept war monument, poignantly remembering the dead of four wars, from Flanders to Vietnam. Yellowstone Park was incredible. We ‘treated’ ourselves to the hundred plus dollars a night ‘Old Faithful Lodge’ reputed to be the finest and largest timber lodge in the world. The whole area was smoking – literally. Dozens of underground cauldrons shooting plumes of steam skyward. None more regular than ‘old faithful’ itself. A heard of wild Bison caused a small traffic jam as we toured the parks roads, Elk stood in shallow rivers and the trees were alive with Squirrels and Chipmunks. (I think – but I’m no David Attenborough!) Montana beckoned next. ‘Big Sky’ country. Huge expanses of prairie, and long drives between clusters of trailer settlements and small towns. A macho culture here as cowboys in huge hats, trading horses for gigantic pick up trucks filled the saloons and bars. When the talk wasn’t of hunting it was of sport – baseball and American football, both still mysteries to us. The enigma of the ‘big sky’ is a real one. It seems all around you and stretches further than we had seen anywhere else in our travels. We had a night in Gardener, on the edge of the park, where I played pool with cowboys in an old time saloon – except for the magnificent juke box. We saw the hill where General George Armstrong Custer made his last stand against the Sioux nation at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.A 110mph hour ride over superb undulating Wyoming prairie , slicing through Indian reservations (where we slowed down a bit) brought us to Broadus. THE (surely) original one horse town. Saturday niught and not much going on. We filled up with a ‘Rib Dinner’ and a Bud at the local watring hole before returning to our lonely, desolate motel – empty save for us two – to watch telly. Ironically ‘The Byrds’We both wanted to visit Sturgis, the home since 1940 of the biggest bike rally in the world. So big now that visitors spill out to surrounding town in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Estimates this year range from three hundred thousand to close on a million. The town of Sturgis is full of shops flogging bike and rally memorabilia. We were a couple of months late for the real thing, but tagged on as welcome guests to a Harley owners ‘re-union’ at One Eyed Jacks!! A superb venue for a booze-up. All they need is a decent pint!! A live band played outdoors but the weather was starting to deteriorate now and the heavens opened. We toured the Black Hills for a couple of days. Deadwood and Hill City still have a frontier feel. Mount Rushmore didn’t disappoint, the four presidents heads hewn from a granite mountain, a fourteen year project started in 1927. A potent symbol & a tribute to democracy without being triumphalist. ‘We want to show the white man that the red men have heroes to.’ The words of Standing Bear, a latter day Sioux chief who persuaded one of the main sculptors from Rushmore to carve a a similar figure of Crazy Horse a few miles away. This has been ongoing since 1947 and will take another FIFTY years to complete. Privately funded, the original sculptor, who worked alone for the first seven years is long dead, the work continued by his wife and ten children. The mountainside is gradually being blasted into shape, eighthundred million tonnes of granite already excavated! This is a powerful place.When finished, the heads of all four past presidents on Mount Rushmore will fit into Crazy Horses head alone. The end result will feature the warrior, astride a furious stallion, pointing with one finger. Answering an early US. Senators derisory question “Where are your lands now?“ the emphatic answer “My lands are where my dead people lay buried“ Crazy Horse who, at thirty four years of age was stabbed in the back whilst under a flag of truce, never lived on a reservation and never signed a treaty of any kind.He wore a single red hawk feather into battle, and fought to preserve his way of life the only way he knew how.His monument will be six hundred feet wide and four hundred feet high, taller than the highest pyramid. In ten thousand years (twice the age of Stonehenge) his granite image will have been weathered but one tenth of an inch by the elements.The last two days of our trip, spent in Cheyenne & Laramie *(Wyoming – the slogan says ‘Like no place on earth’— we have to agree) were easy and uneventful. I wandered alone through Laramie – had three pints of Newcastle Brown on draught – in the ‘Buckhorn Bar’ first really decent beer of the hols. Pondered dozens of trophies of shot and stuffed elk, moose, wart hog, and an animal sanctuary collection box on the bar. Later we feasted on steak as the Union Pacific railroad thundered by fifteen yards from the windows of the restaurant, an 1890 Hotel in downtown LaramieThe weather turned cold and foul. Denver on Thursday was a navigational night-mare – we got lost!! Even having to buy a map. We put 4,300 miles on the Mustang which was without doubt the best car I’ve ever had the pleasure to drive – a stick shift would have been even better though. Flights home were not too arduous. Just lengthy. The first airliner had to be de-iced before take off, the snow flakes were gently falling from a steel grey Denver sky.

Thanks for your time…..

P.S. we even had an hour and a half in Glasgow on our way back thanks to Air Canada’s arcane schedules. Unexpected and a bit of a nuisance to be honest – at least we maintained our record of a visit to Scotland every year since we can remember.!!