Maria! Maria!

For the last week and a half I have swung calamitously from one hangover to another via extreme excesses of alcohol and absences of sleep. It all began last Wednesday with a trip to London. Half cut before we arrived we quickly checked in, dumped our bags and headed into Soho. A bottle of wine in the first bar, an early meal and another bottle of wine in the next, two killer cocktails each in the next and then beer with Christian before jumping on the tube and going to the Brits.

Sadly (ahem?) we missed U2 because we were late and drunk and really needed a wee. We did however see Duffy - who was very small and very far away despite her quite large head, Girls Aloud - great stage show, shame about the music and Take That - although technically I did not see them because I was refueling on white wine and trying to convince the bar lady that she should take my five pound note even though it was now cleft in twain.
I nearly wet myself when Estelle and The Ting Tings came on together (secretly I am a thirteen year old girl) and the Pet Shop Boys were very exciting and quite brilliant.

After the show finishes we trollopsed down the stairs and straight to the tube. I seem to remember getting off at Piccadilly Circus but I can't be completely sure. I do remember going to one of my favourite bars - The Friendly Society - and was pleased to see that they had been partially re-vamped. Many of the Barbie dolls had been removed as had the fur on the wall of the grotto and the ceiling is now adorned with a large selection of Trolls.

I do not remember what we drunk there but I do remember that when we were asked to leave (the bar was closing - it was nothing personal) we still had a drink each in our hands. This is when Maria came to the rescue. Maria told me that she had owned the bar since it opened - strange because of all the random nights that I have spent in there I had never seen her.

Whilst socialising with the adorable and slightly curious Maria we were introduced to two chaps (I think one of them works there and the other is a DJ but for all I know they were Russian political activists with a penchant for sea horse meat - I was so drunk by this point.) These chaps then led us across Soho on a magical mystery tour and took us to another bar where I think I danced a little bit and I may have had another drink but that escapes me - which is exactly what we did soon afterwards. 

We discreetly did one and headed off toward Trafalgar Square, down the Strand and to a club which Chris had sorted out guest list places at. Heaven - as I'm sure you can guess by the name - is a gay club. Normally. Last Wednesday night however it was more of a black R&B club. So we went to be frisked, wandered through the metal detector doorway to ensure that we had no weapons (I'm gonna stab you man!) and I think Chris discussed the guest list. The rest of my time in there was a bit of a whirl. I vaguely remember pushing my way through a very packed bar area, I actually do remember dancing badly in one of the bars and apparently Chris gave me some money to buy another drink which I found in my pocket the next morning. We didn't stay there long for some reason. We left through the brick lined arches narrowly avoiding a bitch fight which was about to break out between a couple of young ladies and at this point I don't remember much at all - the lions in Trafalgar Square - being cold - a book shop on Charing Cross road? And then it was morning! Ta da!

The Cool Kids

As I have written previously, pubs have played a pivitol part in my life and just so you know - so have night clubs... To think about it my experiences in nightclubs seems interesting and varied but in reality I just got wrecked and danced strangely whilst wearing a variety of fashion statements.

My first night club at the age of sixteen was Henry Africa's in Oldham. I distinctly remember wearing a shirt, tie and jacket because that was what my dad used to wear when he went to night clubs - in the late sixties... I spent many a pointless night in there drinking blastaways (a pint glass with one bottle of castaway mixed with one bottle of diamond white - I've always been classy.) and pretending not to look at Stan the man (the stripper) and vice versa pretending to be interested in Sexy Sue (the other stripper.) One of my enduring memories of this place was Alison going arse over tit on a wet patch on the dance floor and flashing her undergarments to one and all as she lay there splayed across the middle of the dance floor.

I used to go to a club called Ambition - again in Oldham. This was known as Oldhams best alternative night - it was actually Oldham's only alternative night. The music was quite a range from Metallica, Nirvana and Rage Against The Machine (who I insisted on calling rage against the washing machine much to the chagrin of the alternative fans) to Blur, Adam Ant and Madness. There were lots of people with long hair, lots of people with shaved heads, lots of ripped jeans and a sea of Doc Martins. I fit in there very well...

Bowlers was interesting. A club that opened at eight and closed at two, sold no alcohol and had a massive following right the way across the north west. You were frisked by the doormen - who were terrifying - and the only words you needed to make a new friend for life were "What's your name? Where're you from? What've you had?" Which invariably would be answered with "Alright mate, I'm Gaz from Warrington. I've had a gram and a pill. Safe, I'm going for a dance now." I would leave Bowlers dripping with sweat and once even had an imprint of my tartan trousers on my legs when I undressed later that night.

I remember going to Sankeys Soap in Manchester for the first time - it was very exciting at the time! I didn't know where it was so we jumped in a taxi and had him drop us off. He pulled up outside a closed door at an old warehouse on the wrong side of Great Ancoats street and said here you go. There was a funny little, rough looking pub on the opposite corner which we went into for a pint and about twenty minutes later came out to find a queue outside the little door. We eventually went in through the door to a courtyard and then into the building. The music started incredibly slowly - almost a just a deep drum beat and over the course of about an hour slowly sped up and people started joining the dance floor. A couple of hours later I was dancing to very hard, very loud techno.

One of my favourite clubs was Paradise Factory in Manchester. I went there for the first time on my twentieth birthday and hadn't ever seen seen anything like it. On one night in there I found myself dancing with a roller skating nun called Sister Marta and a giant piece of toast called Mrs Crusty. I nearly got kicked in the face one night by Fernando doing high kicks in his high heeled platforms - Fernando is now April. There was a guy there every week who must have been in his mid sixties. He was called Tony and he always wore a dinner jacket and bow tie and smoked what looked like huge joints firmly jammed into a cigarette holder. I also remember a woman who was a regular who wore a long trench coat and had big eighties hair. Underneath the trench coat she just wore a skimpy bikini and she looked and danced like one of the women from that Robert Palmer video.

On the door was Nicki Pennington who always had a clip board for the guest listers and grilled everyone else about their gay credentials. She would ask if you knew that this was a gay club, then she would ask if you were gay, then she would ask which magazines you read - which you would have to reply Gay Times and Boyz magazine - well you could hardly answer New Scientist and The Times Sunday supplement could you. She would finally ask you what your favourite page of Boyz was and the standard answer had to be - the back page. That's where the naked man picture was. Whilst waiting for this grilling you would be entertained by Lady Lola who would tease people in the queue and give out lolly pops. I believe she went on to be a producer for The Trisha show.

Also amongst my favourites is Space in Ibiza - not so much inside but definitely the outside terrace. There's something spine tingling about dancing, off your tits, in the middle of the day and watching an aeroplane coming screaming over your head as it goes in to land at Evissa airport down the road. You can read the letters on the bottom of the plane and everyone throws their hands in the air as if to touch it as it comes in. It's thrilling.

I met Chris at the Hacienda in Manchester on one of their Flesh nights. I've still got the ticket. It was called Flesh FC and had a football theme. I was dancing up on the stage when I turned around and saw him there. He was the boy I had been dancing with at Paradise Factory the week before but hadn't spoken to. Fate or just the small world of clubbing in Manchester in 1996? That was the first night that I went to Danceteria at Central Park. A dirty, nasty club if ever I've been to one. It started at midnight on Saturday and closed at ten thirty on Sunday night. Oil from the Chorlton Street car park above would seep through the concrete ceiling and stain your clothes as it dripped through to the club. I far preferred The Breakfast Club which ran from three till six after Paradise Factory had closed. No booze, just soft drinks and coffee and after a quick sit down and chat the dancing would begin again. This is where the cool kids went - and I was one of them. What happened?

She seemed pleased...

For about five years I have been looking for a family recipe for stuffing. After hunting high and low on many occasions I finally gave up and then on Friday I found a letter from my mum in which she had written the recipe! It was quite odd reading a letter from my mum that I hadn't read since before she died but quite comforting at the same time. I found the letter inside an old diary from when I was a teenager and after reading the letter had a quick flick through the much scrawled pages of the diary. It is full of gems...

Monday 20th January 92
It's 11.39pm, mum and dad are in bed already and Robert's snoring - wish he'd shut it. Hadn't done my maths homework for school and I still haven't. I've just been gluing monsters, men and dogs on the ceiling...
Mr Turvey asked Matt Haynes if his thirteen colour biro was a vibrator or a pen - ded funny.

Thursday 13th February 92
Last weekend I went to Jonny's - his mum wasn't there. Me and him and Darren got rat arsed. Darren porked Simone.

Tuesday 19th January 93
Nearly got in trouble because of my foul mouth again in Biology 'cause that cunt Haynes put prit stick in my hair and forehead - little bastard.

Wednesday 5th May 93
I'll start with what's going on with me & Shan. Last Friday I saw her after school and we were in the church yard on the steps, I ended up fingering her - she seemed pleased.


There are some notes in there from when I did a week's work experience at Oldham hospital:

Fri 9.20am Woman fallen suspected fracture of sternum
10.15 am Outside N wards meeting Harish in approx 15 mins, he'll probably be late.
This nurse is doling out coffee from this big jug with a ladle. Half of them are having it in beakers with mouth spouts like babies, it's really sad to see these women deteriorate like this.
Harish is talking to some doc at the bottom. This big fork lift has been shifting a big concrete planter about. I'm in N now There's this old lady whose wig has fallen off - total baldness.
Harish just asked me if I'd had a late night because my eyes were all frogged up.

Other notes from my work experience include:
Old biddy had arm put back in shoulder socket.
Contact lens stuck in eye
Bead in ear
One bad fracture, bone sticking out of leg.
Stroke - didn't see it
Heart attack - just missed it.
Thursday - sod all so far.

Splat!

It's funny the way things happen isn't it? Until two weeks ago I had never heard the word spork before. Now they're everywhere - I don't know what's going on. I saw them again today in a shop window at lake Windemere. I have obviously seen them before and also used them but I never knew their name.

Another repetitive theme of late has been road kill. Last Sunday on the walk to work I was shocked to see a cat on the side of the road which had been hit and killed by a vehicle. It's legs were stiff and sticking up in the air, there was blood and meat coming out of its side and the poor thing's face was split right open. It was, as I have written, shocking. The next day its appearance had changed. It was now missing anything that resembled a head and now looked more like meat and less like a cat. There were bones clearly visible - strangely lying separate from the rest of the body - and almost a smear of ginger fur over the double yellow lines. Bit by bit the cat has disappeared over the week. I think it's very sad that somebody's pet just didn't come home one day.

Since last Sunday I have seen a flattened fox, a stiffened squirrel, a run over rabbit and a splattered seagull.

Pandora's Box

I haven't eaten meat for over fifteen years. I don't have a problem with people eating meat - it's just something that I choose for myself. I know quite a few people who have been vegetarians and have gone back to eating meat after a length of time. I don't think that I will ever do that and as time goes by my conviction grows stronger. I still cook meat for Chris or guests and I have occasionally questioned this - particularly at key moments such as when your hand is inside a chicken and your fingers are gradually separating skin from flesh in order that the stuffing can go in.

I will still make a point of watching documentaries about animal slaughter and this is what sparked me off today - last night's television programme Could You Eat An Elephant? in which two chefs travelled the world sampling meat which in this country would be taboo. I have always maintained that if you are happy to eat cows or chickens there is some hypocrisy in refusing to eat cats or monkeys. The chefs in question ate snake's heart - still beating at the bottom of a glass of vodka, cheese which had been extra matured by maggots and the living maggots remained in the cheese and were part of the delicacy and dog amongst other meats - although they weren't particularly happy about meeting the dog livestock which were caged up in very tight confines. They refused to eat monkey, likening it to looking like a butchered baby, elephant and sewer rat - although free range rat as they termed the ones from fields did not disgust them to the same extent.

Another television programme that fascinates me is Kill it, Cook it, Eat it. in which - as the name suggests - animals are slaughtered then cooked and then served to the people who watched the slaughter. Until recently I had never seen the slaughter of turkeys or geese and it was bizarre to say the least - once the bird had been put in a cone and its head electrocuted its wings slowly and spookily rose up in the air behind its back as if still alive.

It was a documentary that finally convinced me to stop eating meat. It was called Pandora's Box and it was an expose on British abattoirs. It highlighted some of the malpractice that occurred in badly run slaughter houses in the UK. Included were cows that were not stunned sufficiently and were still conscious whilst being tethered up by their back legs and bled to death. Chickens which were still alive and badly mutilated in the head area whilst being dipped in boiling water in order that their feathers could be plucked more easily and then, still alive, having their feet chopped off. After seeing this documentary I knew that I couldn't be sure that the animals that I was eating had been treated correctly and processed humanely and therefore I couldn't eat them any more.

Chicken face

Everybody has awkward moments in their life. Take me this morning for example, I had to phone up Prowler and have a heated discussion about why my bottle of poppers and erm... magazines hadn't been sent through their mail order system despite my ordering them a couple of weeks ago and chasing it up with an unanswered email. The nice young man at the other end kindly informed me in gentle (camp) tones that my card had been declined, they had emailed me on my other address and if I cared to pay now they would dispatch the porn immediately.

Many incidents from yesteryear stick in my mind, such as the time at primary school when someone pulled my trousers down whilst I was standing on a chair at a high window thus flashing my bare bum to the entire class and the excruciating moment when I called Mr Melican, my second year history teacher, mummy. I am still cringing now...

That little anecdote, however, segues nicely into the queen of embarrassing moments - my mum.

There was the time at the post office when she felt something uncomfortable on her leg and shook it to try to alleviate the problem only to fling a pair of knickers out of her trouser leg and across the floor of the post office. Such tumble dryer mix ups were a source of hilarity in our house - I mean, who can resist laughing at someone with a sock stuck to the back of their cardigan by the awesome power of static electricity. Then there was the time that my parents were at one of my school's parent's evenings and she realised the importance, half way through the evening, of getting dressed with the lights on. She was wearing a lovely pair of kitten heel shoes, identical to each other in every way other than their colour. One was blue and one was green.

My favourite however was the heroic moment that she lurched to the rescue of a baby that was about to topple out of a trolley at Tesco only to realise upon successfully completing the heroic rescue that said baby was made out of plastic.

Maybe it's something about mums - my friend Janine's mum spent a couple of hours shopping around Chester with a substantial piece of chicken firmly stuck to her spectacles after putting them down on the table during lunch.

Buckley has made a few such faux pas in his time too. In a supermarket in Sale he picked up kangaroo steaks, started singing the song from Skippy the kangaroo and turned to me, steaks thrust forward and asked in a sing-song voice "Do you like Skippy?" Trouble was that I was a couple of metres behind him and he had just serenaded a stranger with kangaroo meat. My favourite Chris moment though was the train journey back to Manchester. He trotted off to the loo for - well let's call it a sit down - and dropped the loo paper on the floor. It was at the precise moment, whilst trying to retrieve it, when he was head to the floor bare bum pointed at the door that he discovered, much to his chagrin, that he had failed to lock the door - swoosh it opened. Chris remained in this position until the unwitting spectator had moved on, so as not to be recognised and then had to do the walk of shame back through the carriage to his seat.

My friend Janet... well there's potentially a whole other post about her. The tin of green paint on head, the man with the stutter that she offended and, as I remember, asking the customer at Habitat when her baby was due despite the fact that she had already had it. La la la la la la...

Samantha from Burnley

When we first moved to Preston we went to Chris's chairman's house for drinks one evening. He lives in a lovely house overlooking Stanley Park in Blackpool. As we were leaving one of his neighbours was shouting coo-ee and doing high kicks in the front garden. Turns out that this bloke was otherwise known as Betty Legs Diamond and was the headline act at Funny Girls in Blackpool. Chris's chairman tried to reciprocate and made a valiant effort to high kick back at him but when you're in your mid sixties and you've had half a bottle of red wine this can appear quite graceless. Betty put me in mind of a transvestite I met two August bank holiday's ago called Samantha from Burnley. Samantha from Burnley was a bus driver during the week and came down to Manchester at weekends to get all trashed up and drink pints of bitter.

I love trannies - not drag queens, just trannies - especially the ones who look like they've just come off the building site and put a frock on for the night. The librarian ones you see standing quietly in the corner on a Wednesday night on canal street talking to the teacher ones - all tweed skirts and cheap pearls. The cocky ones who've gone a shade mad with their human hair wigs and plumped for a shade of maroon that will show off their glittering cleavage enhancer and the married ones who are out for the night with their ever so understanding wives.

I can't imagine wanting to dress up like that - either as a lifestyle thing like a transvestite or as an entertainment thing like a drag queen. I did once wear a skirt on my head though when I was five years old.

Savick Brook to The Bamboo Take-away

On the far side of the roundabout, across the road from the old Victorian bus stop and the Spar corner shop is the Plungington pub. This marks the top end of Plungington Road and the main stretch of my walk to and from work. So far this is the most interesting part of Preston that I have found. This evening there was a large group of people in the Nippon yoga and martial arts centre, most of them looked quite uncomfortable. Perhaps they were about to take their first class. The Happy Haddock had also attracted a large group of people but this group seemed far more relaxed and jovial.

At one of the beauty shops a little girl sat grinning at a table in the window, hands outstretched, whilst the smiling assistant painted her nails. Her mum watched on, head crammed under a hair dryer. This evening, as I walked past, the butcher on the corner was bringing his sign in. At the bottom of the hand written sign read the legend 'Sausages on special offor!'

I suspect that there was an egging incident last night - I counted five of them broken on the pavement at various intervals down the street. Not sure what happened to the sixth - maybe it hit it's target. There are always lads bombing up and down the road in Novas and other such boy racers - I suspect the eggs emanated from one of these.

At the bottom end of the street, before you get to the university, the street suddenly gets busier with take aways, charity shops, food shops and student rental estate agents. I'm tempted by the doll with knitted dress loo roll cover in one of the shop windows. I turn left at the Bamboo.

Dover Beach

When Ray Bradbury wrote, in 1951, about televisions that covered an entire wall of a room in his novel Fahrenheit 451 do you think he thought that this would happen? And that the output from those televisions would be so consuming and pointless? When his character Montag questioned the misnomer 'living room' do you think he thought that what he wrote was more prophetic than science fiction?

Walking home from work recently I was being nosey and peeking in people's houses. It struck me that practically every house had an oversized television in the corner blaring out meaningless quiz shows and soap operas, that the viewers had more time in their lives to watch the events of fictional characters in a fictional landscape than to do something worthwhile with their own time. I am as guilty as most in this. I go home after a day of trying to convince strangers that they should buy my product rather than my neighbours and watch television - and not usually something that I choose to watch but just something - anything. I rarely learn anything from it and it never provokes an emotional reaction. I can't remember that last time that I questioned anything or had my thoughts provoked from watching television.

Is this a good use of my time? I don't think so. It concerns me more when I equate time with life and I ask the question - Is this a good use of my life? If I learned anything from my mother's death it was that you can't expect to live a long life - it just might not happen and so I should try to make more of my time / life.

In Bradbury's novel Montag provokes an emotional reaction from one of his wife's friends by reading the last two stanzas of a poem called Dover Beach which was written by Matthew Arnold. The poem was written soon after the author honey mooned on the south coast of England and begins with an air of optimism mixed with melancholy. This feeling diminishes as the poem progresses and he reflects on, amongst other things, the retreat of faith in the modern world (this was written in 1867 by the way.) I particularly like the final stanza which seems to be a call to his new wife to stand strong together in a bleak and dark world.

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Agaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

I Thank You

When our mum died my brother Robert, who writes songs and is a musician, wrote a piece which he sang at her funeral. This is it.

I Thank You

.

Whisper

I hear a finely spoken line

Though we'll miss her

She'll always be in our minds

Now I wonder

If things could have been changed

And I honour her

Till the end of my days

.

So mum, goodbye

Is all that I can say

And please thank her

For all the happiness she gave

Time gives memories

For all that we do

For this I thank you

I thank you

.

Till the end of my days

I'll honour her

If things could have been changed

I wonder

Though she'll always be in our minds

We'll miss her

And I say these finely spoken lines

In a whisper

.

So mum, goodbye

Is all that I can say

And please thank her

For all the happiness she gave

Time gives memories

For all that we do

Richard, Matthew, dad and I

We thank you

Girls Girls Girls!

In a previous life I kissed girls. Many and varied were they. Some hot, some not so. Some interesting, some not so. Some good experiences, some not so. 

There was Michelle who worked for the police and had a terrible reputation, there was Gillian who was a swimmer and an accomplished self harmer, Orietta Lorenzini was wonderfully naive and once did a naked dance around my bedroom about a day or so before she sought out the morning after pill. 

Kristel was a quarter German and had a terrible time with spirits bothering her at train stations. She was best friends with Shan until we split up and I started seeing Shan. Shanaz was, as I remember, a bit hairy and I occasionally helped her brother Shabaz with his homework. 

There was Rebecca - not to be confused with Becki who I did not go out with - who was lovely but short lived because she was the sister of my best friend who was not best pleased when he found out. In turn she was not best pleased when, before I ended the relationship, she found out that I had been kissing Phillipa. She found this out when she saw me kissing Phillipa when, by chance, she found herself sitting five rows behind us at the cinema. Terrible timing. 

There was Alison who I am still friends with now - I stole a crumpet from her parents' house and had a moment in the car park at the back of the dentist which resulted in gravel encrusted knees. Another one that I am still friends with now is Claire - she had the misfortune of going out with two people called Richard who both turned out to be big old gays. 

I seem to remember a rich girl who fell down the stairs and broke her arm when she stuck it through the banisters on the way down - perhaps Sarah? I can't remember. There was another one whose name I forget but I do remember that she was a Christian body builder.

As an aside I would like to post this photograph in remembrance of Eartha Kitt who died on Christmas day 2008.
.

Violent Vera

Christmas day this year was an interesting one. Interesting? In what way Richard? I hear you ask. Well for one I managed to get a photograph of every one of the sixteen guests wearing a false moustache - quite an accomplishment I'm sure you'll agree. Secondly I had the great fortune to referee a very drunken conversation between one of my cousins and one of my brothers about the true reason for the invasion of Iraq and the state of the situation in Afghanistan. Neither Rachael nor Matthew had the slightest clue what they were talking about in their drunken state and I, in my drunken state, grasped the opportunity to throw in all manner of pointless - and in some cases untrue - tit bits of information just to encourage more ridiculous claims and counter claims regarding the various situations.

It was also on Christmas day this time around that I learned of my cousins' grandmother's nick name. When Vera arrived my dad asked her in a loud voice, "Have you got your machine gun Vera?" which struck me as quite odd. Vera being nearly ninety and not so nimble on her feet. Within half an hour someone else asked her the same question which again was a little puzzling. Anyway it turns out that Vera (pictured with moustache) is also known as Violent Vera and has a reputation for fighting, using excessive violence and killing people with semi automatic weapons.

Other highlights of Christmas day included a walk on the beach at Rossall near Fleetwood (picture taken about 2.30 in the afternoon on Christmas day) and the hunt for spirit orbs with my Aunt Amanda at my dad's house - made all the more amusing by the fact that my cousin Rachael kept referring to the whole experience as 'hunting for oicks.' Rachael is 33 years old.