Ghosts are Just a Load of Old Ghoulies!

The problem with ghosts is that they don’t exist!

I know that you’ve seen one with your own eyes, and that you felt a presence in the bedroom one night.

I know about all the people that have been warned about terrible disasters that are about to befall them by long dead relatives.

But the reason for all these was something far more amazing than a ghost; it was your own mind!

Are you really angry with me now? How dare I call you a liar, I wasn’t even there, but your friend was, and they will corroborate your account of what happened.

Firstly, I’m not saying that lots of people who think they saw ghosts didn’t experience something, and corroboration is quite easy when you are in a scary situation and someone suggests something; it’s the way our mind works.

The mind has to make sense of things: look at the picture of a piece of toast below.

 

Nothing special about that, or is there? Can you see the face? Is it just a face or is it… JC himself?

No it’s just a piece of toast; your mind has done the rest.

Before I move on, if Jesus existed (another, later, blog, no doubt) how the hell does anyone know what he looked like? What people believe to be the image of Jesus is the European renaissance image that we have all become used to.

Still not convinced that your mind jumps to conclusions? Well, can you read the phrase that is obscured
below?

Of course! Easy, isn’t it? Except it actually says:

See what I mean?

When you hear a bump in the night, you never think it’s your shirt that’s fallen off a chair - you automatically think it’s a man with an axe!

It’s just the way we are all programmed. Fight or flight!

There’s a really interesting theory at the moment of why we see our lives flash before our eyes before we die.

Your mind is like a search engine on a computer network when faced with a situation it looks for a previous experience that is similar so you can deal with the problem.

Because you obviously haven’t died before, your mind just keeps on searching, hence your life flashing before your eyes.

I visit lots of secondary schools and I love to tell horror stories the students love them. They all tell me of their experiences with ghosts and they are always the same in every school. But in different countries they have different ghosts, demons, ghouls! They depend on the major belief system of the country, to show how they materialise and behave.

This is just one of my ghost stories, that hopefully proves my point.

When I was thirteen I went on holiday without my parents for the first time. I went to Ireland to stay with family with my brother John and my friend Nidge.

My friend and I were obsessed with ghosts and while walking through a graveyard in Galway we saw a grave that had stone slabs on the sides and on the top. When we approached the grave we noticed that the stone slab on the top was broken, there was a hole big enough to climb in.

“Let’s come back tonight and climb in there I bet there will be a tomb under there with ghosts and gold,” I said, hopefully (Come back at night! What a knob!)

My friend agreed, so we came back that night. The moon cast an eerie shadow and bats flew an erratic dance. My friend and I were armed with nothing more than a small torch. On reaching the grave all my pretensions of being a fearless vampire-hunter melted away, leaving a cowardly halfwit with more mouth than heart.

My friend on the other hand only had two brain cells, both of which were concerned with eating, so he would dare to do anything.

I gave him the torch and he climbed into the hole in the grave by himself.

“What’s in there?” I asked in a whisper my heart pounding with fear.

“Nothing!” he snapped back.

“Crawl to the other end, there’s got to be a way down to a tomb!” I was much braver when someone else was doing the deed.

As I said these words I heard a loud creak. I looked up to see the gate of the graveyard swing open; it was the priest of the church making his way home.

“Nidge, turn the torch off, the priest is coming, the priest is coming!” I urged, as loudly as I dared, then ran and jumped over a wall to hide.

My friend was having none of it; he thought it was me just messing about, so he kept the torch on.

When the priest turned the corner of the church he was greeted with the sight of a grave with big shafts of light emitting out of every crook and cranny. He immediately starts to bless himself, while muttering the Lord’s Prayer as he moved cautiously towards the grave.

My friend, meanwhile, still thought it was me just messing about, so he put the torch under his chin and stuck his head out of the hole in the grave and shouted, “CLEAR OFF I’M TRYING TO SLEEP!” The priest folded up like an ironing board and fainted on the floor.

My friend climbed from the grave and ran towards me. “YOU’VE KILLED A PRIEST!” I screamed in terror.

“RUN FOR IT!” he answered.

“No! Go back and look to see if he’s ok!”

We nervously edged back towards the grave. As we arrived at the grave, the priest stumbled back to his feet giving us the fright of our lives, so we let out the biggest girliest screams ever heard and the priest promptly fainted again.

The poor man had to have three months off work; his story made the news! If you go to Galway you will still hear in a few bars the story of how the priest saw a ghost rise from the grave. He didn’t; he saw two idiots from Huddersfield messing about, trust me I was one of them!

And finally, if I’m ever woken by a bump in the night, I would rather it be a ghost with his head under his arm than a drug crazed youth with a knife in his hand!

Inaccurate Histories!

It has been discovered by professor Noah Ideeas of North Dewsbury University that the reason for the expansion of the Roman Empire was not for reasons of colonialism, but because of fast food franchises.

This astonishing news has just come to light, when Professor Noah read about it on the internet!

It seems that the first of these was a general Dominus; he had worked his way up the ranks of the Roman army to become a feared General. But because of his humble beginnings his English was not that good.

Professor Noah explains, “Anyone who has seen the ‘Gladiator’ film knows that the Romans spoke perfect English. But Dominus put an ‘a’ on the end of each word which often confused people.

He invented a pie where the filling was on the top, and when he tried to sell the franchise he kept on asking who woulda likea pieca pie?!

Others would mock behind his back shouting, ’You wanna pizza pie?’ and the pies soon became known as pizzas.

The pizza phenomenon swept across Europe; even the British, who are slow to try new foods, embraced this new craze, because of the magic word, ’Pie’!

Dominus set up franchises all over Britain, which in turn anglicised his name to ‘Dominoes’.

Professor Noah explains that the Latin ‘Anno Domini’ literally means ‘after dominoes’ which became the bench mark for fast food franchises.

The next Roman who tried to conquer the fast food franchise in Europe was a young emperor called Caesar. He had an eye for the ladies and would tempt them back to his place to try a glass of Asti and his own salad bar.

Professor Noah said that Caesar soon had ideas to take his salad around the known world. It went down a storm in most of the garlic-eating countries, but ran into problems when he reached Britain.

A few of the southern counties who had pretensions of being Roman bought into it, but the further north he went, the more he was ridiculed.

When he reached Scotland the head of the chieftains, one Ronald McDonald, was horrified to think that salad and vegetables would be introduced into Scotland, so he asked his brother in law, Adrian McAlpine to build a wall around Scotland to keep salad and vegetables out of Scotland for good. This was so successful that, two thousand years later, you still cannot get salad or vegetables in Scotland.

“Anyway” said the professor, “McDonald had ideas of his own fast food outlets, but no one knows what happened to him.”

But the main reason he was unsuccessful was that in Yorkshire there were already two fast foods.

First, in Pontefract, there was a man named Kenneth Tucky, known as Ken Tucky to his friends. He was selling fried chicken to the locals, but had run out of chicken after a couple of days so he found another source of meat - rats! He found that if he put them in batter and deep fried them, no one could tell the difference.

This also proves the point that if you batter it and deep fry it, the British will eat it.

There was also a young entrepreneur from Leeds called Greg Pasty. He had taken Dominus’s idea of a pie with the filling on the top and folded it over; this became known as Greg’s pasty fold, later shortened to the pasty. This killed off the spread of Caesar’s salad in Yorkshire.

Professor Noah says he doesn’t know what happened to these entrepreneurs or their franchises. But a lot of the fast food merchants nowadays could learn a lot from them. He added, “If these fast food outlets were still around, I’m sure that we wouldn’t have the obesity epidemic that we now have.

Other historians have ridiculed the professor's findings, but he has the proof; “it’s all there on the internet,” he says!

Strictly No Dancing!

Britain seems to have gone dance crazy!

We have street dance, strictly, dancing on ice, Zumba and many more. I don’t get it! I really don’t see the point of dancing.

Now before I start, I must own up to having all the grace and skill of a Walrus on an assault course when it comes to dancing.

I start off moving my head to what ever music is playing, but end up looking like someone in the later stages of dementia by the end of the song.

When it comes to the faster more upbeat tunes I just look like someone having a grand mal seizure; it’s not pretty. I can clear a dance floor quicker than a vindaloo fart, when I get into full swing.

The most embarrassing thing is that it’s not genetic. My father was one mean jive dancer; my brother John was a brilliant Northern Soul dancer, and even my son Lee can cut some mean shapes on the dance floor, while I look like a special needs Christmas disco.

What makes dance worse for me is the clothes that they wear. On ‘Strictly’ they dress men up in clothes that make the most masculine of men look as butch as Priscilla Queen of the desert. Even Mike Tyson would look as camp as a row of pink tents in those clothes!

When I was much younger, my trainer thought that going to ballet lessons would make me more mobile in the boxing ring; he also thought it would help to build strength and stamina, he was right.The male ballet dancers are incredibly strong and very lithe and not in the least camp, as I thought they would be. But as soon as they put the tights and little jackets on they remind me of drag queens.

Street dance looks good for about 30 seconds, then it just looks like kids desperate for attention.

I know that I’m in the minority. When I organise festivals or theatre events, I get inundated with people wanting to be part of the dance troop.

So what is wrong with me? I love music probably more than most people. I have a radio show on radio Phoenixfm 96.7 (Wednesdays 2-4pm British time) and I play all different types of music including dance, but it doesn’t make me want to dance.

I’m quite fit, and when playing one of my favourite games, badminton, I’m quite agile (sometimes). But if you were to put music to it I would probably fall over.

I think that I should travel around the world experiencing different dances. I think I should start with Cossack dancing and end up with something really twatty, like Morris dancing.

Now I bet that would be fun, travelling the world, making a fool of myself.

Do you want to know the weirdest thing of all? I’m quite famous as a dancer, seriously!

I’m famous for dancing not only in Britain, but around the world; my most popular comedy routine ends with ‘The Chicken Dance’

You can read the dance in one of my children’s poetry books ‘The Return of The Spot’ it’s called ‘The Classic Dancer!’

Now that’s what I call dancing!

Men: Porn, Posturing and Paranoia!

I get fed up of hearing the above accusations about men. Of course there’s always going to be an element of truth in any stereotype, but the above could just as well apply to women.

Let’s start with ‘porn’.

I can’t remember the exact statistic, but men are supposed to think about sex every three seconds; whoever said that has never had to build a flat pack wardrobe! I have, and for a whole two hours I thought about smashing up the useless pieces of chip board they sent me, crying, going to the pub and just sticking a hook on the wall! At no time did sex ever enter my mind.

I have, in the interests of research, been looking at certain porn sites. (Honest, no lies!) It seems to me that most porn is designed for thirteen-year-old boys who have never had sex or fifty-year-old men who can’t get sex.

Most of it seems to be about fitting big things into little holes! It’s fast and brutal; is that really what men are supposed to find sexual?

I know we, unlike women, like things big. On the first night of sleeping with a woman if a man were to remove his pants and the woman gasped, “Oh my god it’s massive, it’s like a telegraph pole!” The man would be the happy little bunny.

Where as if a woman was to remove her pants on the first night and the man gasped, “Oh my god, it’s massive! You could plant a Redwood in that!” she would, I’m sure, inflict serious damage on him.

And the amount of fetishes is amazing! If it’s between two consenting adults I don’t have a problem with any fetish, what people do in their own bedrooms (and others) is none of my business. But most of them would not appeal to me, I don’t like being hurt or hurting anyone for sexual stimulation and as for someone shitting on me, well I’ll leave that to the government.

But there are, of course, the usual perverts who prey on children, that I’m afraid is where my liberal attitude ends. The people (if you can call them that) who practice this perversion know what they are doing, it’s not about sex, it’s about power and control!

But having said all this I know that lots of women love porn, I know a few that openly admit to watching porn with their partners. And I know that it’s usually the women in the relationship that comes up (forgive the pun) with some of the more risqué suggestions in the bedroom.

Next we have the posturing.

Now I’m the first to admit that nothing winds me up more than ‘macho’ men. You know the type; the snarling fuckwits who walk around like they have two invisible rolled up carpets under their arms!

It’s usually young men that suffer from this; they want to prove just how much of a man they are by acting like little boys.

I know some seriously tough men, I have been a fighter for a most of my life, and some of the men I have trained and sparred with are more than capable of dealing with any situation. But they are all happy, polite people. I know you would expect fighters to be ill-educated idiots but this is far from the truth, it’s just our sport.

The toughest man I have ever met (who shall remain nameless) is the softest teddy bear, who has a constant smile on his face, just don’t try to hit him!

I’m not in the first flush of youth anymore (or second, third or fourth). It’s fair to say that I’ve been about a bit.

I now spar one day a week and because I prefer mixed martial arts; I’m not interested in kicking and punching I would rather get my opponent down and put them in a choke hold. I spar with guys that are half my age, big burly types. Most of these guys are a good laugh and I’m able to pass on a bit of knowledge to them. One week a guy turned up with all the trendy fighting gear, he really looked the part.

When I sparred with him, he threw a few fancy kicks and made some chicken-type noises, before I managed to throw him to the floor and put him in a choke.

When I released him he stood up with tears in his eyes and I swear this is what he said, “That’s it! I’m off, and you are just showing off and trying to hurt me!” 

If you were to see him walking in or out of a gym you would give him a wide berth he really looked the part of the menacing fighter.

But again having said all this, I know see groups of women out for a night. They get pissed out of their trollies and start fighting. They swear at the top of their voices and intimidate people around them. I have witnessed a girl stick a glass into another girl’s face, and a girl bite the nose of a doorman in a club. A good friend of mine was a doorman and he always claimed that women were far more vicious than men when they were drunk. So it seems we are still on an even keel with women, so let's move on.

Paranoia.

All I have to say about paranoia is that I know a few blokes who, when drunk, worry about certain things, usually who their other half is with. I must admit that in my circle of male friends I don’t really know any that really suffer from this.

I’m trying to think of a way of writing about paranoia in women without coming across as a sexist misogynist, but it’s difficult.

So here goes, I have been married for over thirty years. I have lots of female friends and it could be said that living with men causes paranoia. But when it comes who said what to who and when and why and because, sorry girls, but us boys are just amateur compared to you!

Harry Muntz!

In the mid 'seventies I was in my mid teens. I used to go to the local pub (bar) - it was a place where my group of friends met and where we met various girls, if we were lucky enough to have a date.

One evening, I was standing in the pub waiting for a girl who had foolishly agreed to go on a date with me.

Little did I know, but the girl in question had a burst appendix that day and was rushed into hospital (or she’d had a better offer) so I ended up standing by myself, looking like a lost sheep.

As I looked around the bar, I noticed a man reading a newspaper; the headline of the paper read "Zeppelin!"  Because I was an avid Led Zeppelin fan, I tried to read the article.

The man holding the paper noticed me looking, so he put down the paper and said in a thick New York Jewish accent, “What? you want to read the paper?”

“Yes,” I replied, thinking I could kill a bit of time while I waited for my date that wasn’t going to turn up.

“Well go across the street there and buy yourself one from the shop, you can read until your eyes fall out!” was his unexpected reply.

He then picked up his paper and carried on reading it. This was my first introduction to a man who I would later change my outlook on life, Harry Muntz.

He was a short thin Jewish guy in his mid sixties; if Google had existed in those days if you had typed in ‘typical American Jew’, it would have replied ‘Harry Muntz”.

How he ended up in a small Yorkshire town I will never know. I don’t even think his real name was Harry Muntz; he told me his name was Harry, but it was someone else, years later, who told me his full name.

I would also later find out that he wasn’t even American; I never could find out where he came from.

That evening, I couldn’t help but to keep on trying to read the article. I was dressed in the fashion of the day; baggy flares, fancy shirt with long lapels, and I had long thick hair (fuck knows how I had got a date).

Harry again stopped and looked at me, “You waiting for a girl?”

I nodded, he looked at the way I was dressed then added, “Are you sure you’re not just an ugly broad that’s waiting for some poor sap?” Honest, this was like something out of a 'thirties gangster movie.

“Don’t worry kid, I’m just messing witcha, I can see you’re a guy; let's hope the girl notices.”

Any normal person would have moved away by now, but this man not only looked like a lot of my Old Italian Uncles he was also as mad as a box of frogs just like all my old Italian uncles. I loved him!

“Look kid (he always referred to me as ’Kid’) I know you want to read my paper, but why should you get something for free that I have to pay for, and when you meet your girl you’ll be getting something else for free at the end of the night that I have to pay for!”

“Are you always this tight, or is it just the time of month?” I asked him.

“Look get me a whisky and you can have a read."

So, that’s what I did. I bought him his favourite tipple, single malt, and then spent he rest of the night chatting but not finding anything about this strange man. This was the start of a very strange friendship.

Harry had a wicked tongue, and he knew how to use it. He was quite a dapper man, wearing an expensive suit, topped with a gangster hat. He looked every inch like a 'thirties gangster. He smoked large cigars, drank whisky, and talked tough. All the locals mocked him, calling him ‘Al Ca Moan’ because to others that’s all he ever seemed to do, moan!

He used to say, "A man can go a long way with the right clothes and cigars”.

I once asked him why he didn’t ever take his hat off, “It covers my most valuable asset kid” he replied.

“What’s that?”

“My head, you schmuck!”

Schmuck was one of his favourite words. Another favourite saying was "You’re as dumb as a pickle on a Babka!” I don’t know what that means, but I like it.

I would often sit with Harry. My friends didn’t get him, and avoided him, although my brother John loved his company, it must be genetic.

When Harry went to the toilet he would give me his hat and say, “look after this kid, I’ll be back soon.” if he gave you his hat, you knew he would be back

When he had had enough, he would just get up and walk out, without a good bye or even an acknowledgement.

I later found out by accident that he wasn’t American. A large woman who decided she wanted to chat to both Harry and myself started to babble on without taking a breath.

Harry gave the impression that he was a tough New York mobster type, but I knew by conversations that we had that he was a very intelligent and articulate man. I don’t know why he felt the need for the American pretence. I later found out that he had moved to America after the war to find fame and fortune. I think he tried his hand at script writing for the film industry, but again, like everything with this man, it was all just speculation.

Harry was polite but his patience was wearing thin, finally his patience snapped when she said,

“I hardly eat anything but I still put weight on, I must be big boned.”

Harry shook his head and sighed, he had had enough.

“You know, lady, big boned people are the most intelligent people in the world? I was in Birkenau-Auschwitz for three years and in that time the Gestapo never once found a big boned person; it was full of skinny-arsed schmucks like me!” 

The woman got the message and left.

Harry would never talk about his time in Auschwitz. He would also never say anything bad about the German people, either. He always said that the German people were good people, who had fallen in with a bad bunch. "Once a German lady gave me a sausage and bread.” I don’t know what he meant by that, but whenever he got drunk he would often say that.

He blamed the Gestapo for what happened; “Little men, little brains but big guns!” was how he described them. But he would also add, “The Gestapo were just a bunch of low-life shits!”

One evening, he was showing me his suntan he had got by sitting in the park that day. I noticed a crude tattoo of a number on his arm. I was only seventeen at the time, and, although I thought I knew everything, I had a very juvenile outlook on life. I knew about the Holocaust, but had a very simplistic view about it, Germans gassed Jews! That is what I thought.

I didn’t know who else they hated, or that they were made to work to death, or that they all were tattooed on arrival.

I have recently been working with another Holocaust survivor,  Iby Knill. She was a political prisoner in Auschwitz, she’s eastern European and, like Harry, has a wonderful outlook on life and a wicked sense of humour. Her book is called A Woman Without a Number, as for some reason she was never tattooed. 

On noticing this crude tattoo, I asked Harry something that makes me cringe even today, “Harry where did you get that tattoo? It’s the worst tattoo I’ve ever seen.”

He looked at me in disbelief, then he smiled and replied, “See the man who did this tattoo, he was the busiest tattooist in the world during the war. But his work was so bad that, after the war, they took him out and shot him!”

I still had no idea what he meant (I was a complete fuckwit!). “So what is it supposed to mean? I asked again”

“What this?” he replied pointing to the crude tattoo.

“Yes”

“That, my friend, is in a long forgotten language, it says ’Jew’ in Gestapo!”  When he said the word ’Gestapo’ he spat out the syllables, and he always pronounced it as ‘Geshtapo’

I never found out what Harry did for a living in England, he was probably retired. but I think he was a writer he always had a note book with him and would always make a note if he heard something funny. He would never laugh he would just say, “funny” and note down what he heard.

He once asked me, “Why do you keep hanging around with an old bum like me, kid?”

“Look, Harry, you’re so old and ugly, you make me look good. And the girls love it because they think I’m so kind taking out my Granddad for a drink.

“I like your style, kid, you're only a moron by oxy,” he replied.

I didn’t know what he meant by this, so I said, “Don’t you mean proxy?”

“You don’t know what an oxymoron is?”

“Is it going to be me, by any chance?”

“I’ll show you; go get me a drink, I’ll have a double single malt.”

I got him a drink, still not knowing that this was a lesson in my own language.

Harry realised this, so he said to me, “How much did my free drink cost?”

I told him the price; he gave up the lesson after that.

Harry taught me about the power of comedy. It can be used to build bridges, knock down barriers. It can heal wounds and bring people together.

Harry always said that Bullies and oppressors were defenceless against humour. If you can laugh at them they loose their power. But he warned me that humour can be the drunk in the room that says all the wrong things and spoils the party. I can vouch for that!

I hope that the people of Boston realise this at the moment. The city has had a terrible time, my heart goes out to the people that have suffered. But just like Harry wouldn’t ever blame the German people for what happened to him, they must rise above what has happened and not use this for the blame game.

If it is proven that it was an Islamist plot, it was not perpetrated by all Muslims. It will have been perpetrated by young men that have been marginalised and then used by some beardy weirdy puppet master. Most of the American Muslims will be just hard working people trying to get on with life like the rest of us.

If you have read my previous blogs, you will know that I don’t much like religion. I think it’s just intellectual custard, but you will also know that I believe passionately that people should have a right to believe and practice what they want without the fear of persecution.

The family of the young men are also innocent of any blame, any blame should be laid firmly at the feet of the radical puppet masters. These young men will have been passionate and impressionable, the puppet masters know this, that is why you never see a fat middle aged beardy weirdy with a suicide bomb strapped to him, it’s always a young person who has just slipped through the safety net of family and friends.

When Harry always spoke about the lady who gave him bread and a sausage, it was no doubt at a time when he was starving and scared and frightened. This act of kindness changed his view of a whole nation of people. If it ever happened.

If the people of Boston can find it in themselves at this terrible moment in time to do one act of kindness to a stranger, the bogey man will soon loose his power to threaten and scare.

One evening, I went to the local pub as usual with my friends. Harry was in his usual chair reading his paper.

I walked over to him to say hello, but before I could say anything he snapped, “Not tonight, kid!”

I left him alone, the crotchety old git. I soon noticed that he didn’t have his usual single malt on the table in front of him. And that the ash tray was empty, without his usual cigar. One thing that I did find out about Harry was that he was a serious gambler, but with his life who wouldn’t be.

I walked over to him and asked, “not drinking or smoking tonight then?”

He replied, “Piss off kid!”

I also noticed that the news paper he was reading was from the day before.

I gave it ten minutes, then walked over to his table and put a double single malt on the table, along with a pack of his favourite cigars. I was shocked how much they cost me, no wonder the old bastard had no money!

I walked away, leaving them there for him. He put down his paper,  looked at the drink and the cigars, then  looked across at me. He waved me over, I smiled at him, not wanting his thanks, which was a good job really, because when I spoke to him he snapped, “I don’t have a light, you schmuck!”

He didn’t show no thanks or emotion, that’s just the way he was.

We spent the rest of the night getting pissed out of our minds, me paying of course.

At the end of the night rather than just walking out like he always did he tapped me gently on the side of the cheek and said, “Did I ever tell you that a lady in Germany once gave me bread and sausage?”

He then turned and left. I never saw Harry Muntz again.

I have no idea what happened to him, why he ended up in a small Yorkshire town or why he just disappeared.

I often think about him while I write, and when I’m trying to think of a comedy routine.

I only hope that when the end came for Harry there was someone there with him. Someone to hold his hand. Someone to give him reassurance that he was a good man who had lived an extraordinary life; he at least deserved that.

I wish that I had been there at the end, I would have held his hat, then I would know that he was coming back!

PS: Just looked up Babka; I now get the phrase, ‘as dumb as a pickle on a babka’ I think?

It's better to give than to receive!

It may sound strange, but I do agree with the above title; let me explain.

The month of April, due to my wife’s family having some unknown weird genetic mutation, is full of birthdays.

My wife is a twin so that’s two before we start. Her brother, nearly all their children, even my son Lee was born on the 30^th. To make things even worse, Lee’s partner Kim has her birthday a week before Lee!

So the whole month is taken up with parties and presents. I’m not that bothered really I like buying presents. I spend time looking for something that I know the recipient will like.

My wife is quite easy to buy for; clothes and perfume. A friend of mine thinks it’s a cop-out when men buy women perfume, but my wife loves the stuff.

But one thing that everyone who knows me says is “He’s a git!” No, besides that. They all claim that I’m very hard to buy a present for. I like books and music and I have a large collection of pens (sad I know!). Other than that, I’m not really bothered about anything else. I’m a lucky little bunny that has everything he needs.

Clothes are a necessity, so is my car, I don’t like perfumes, not keen on parties, or gadgets.  But I do like to travel, so we usually go away for a few days for my birthday and I regard that as the best present.

My friend claims that when I receive a present I look like someone’s just pissed on my chips! He says that I never look happy. I am very grateful for any present, but I don’t know how to react.

When I was a child it was so different. The week before Christmas I used to think that my head would explode with the anticipation of what I would receive. The problem was that my parents had so many kids they couldn’t afford any of the presents that we wanted, so they bought the cheaper versions, and when I say "cheaper", I mean it!

I once asked for a Dalek, one of the evil machines from Dr Who. In my mind I would, on Christmas morning, awake to a large silver machine which I would climb into and drive around the neighbourhood, scaring all the local kids. I got a piece of polythene with spots painted on it and a plastic helmet!

I put it on and went outside and lost my whole circle of friends who didn’t want to be associated with such a twat!

But my parents did get it right once, I asked for a ‘Johnny Seven’. No, it’s not a multi-tooled sexual aid, it’s a gun that could be made up in seven different ways. I received something called a ‘Martian Bazooka’ which was obviously a much cheaper version than the ’Johnny Seven’ but it was brilliant!

We are talking about a time way before health and safety here, this plastic piece of loveliness could be easily modified to maim and injure people; every eight-year-old's dream. For weeks, I was the envy of the neighbourhood, until one day my mate Mick received two air pistols as a present from his Dad (honest!).

Now I ask you, what sort of Father would give a young eight-year-old boy two guns that obviously the potential to cause great harm. Only the best Father in the world! I can’t begin to tell you how many times we had to go to hospital to have pellets removed from various parts of our bodies.They were only taken off him when he accidentally shot my brother John in the back of the head. Don’t worry it wasn’t as bad as it sounds… Well it was for my brother, but the pellet only stuck in his skin.

As an adult, the best present I have received was a sat nav; I don’t know how I used to travel to schools all over the country before I had this little piece of wizardry!

A friend of mine once received a washing-up bowl as her one and only Christmas present from her partner. She had mentioned weeks earlier that they needed a new washing-up bowl so he thought that he would surprise her. She later surprised him by dumping him!

My mate who shall remain nameless (Mick) once bought his then girlfriend a vibrator for Christmas, as a joke he said! She wasn’t very happy but strangely, one evening while the story was being told to a group of us, one of the group cheekily asked ,”Did you ever use it?” To which she replied, “Of course I did, it makes fantastic frothy coffee!” I don’t know if this is a euphemism for some sexual deviancy that I know nothing about, or if she really uses it to make cappuccinos.’

And finally, when talking to a friend about presents, and what’s the best and worst you have been given.

When asked what the worst thing he had ever been given, he replied, “Gonorrhoea!”

Feeling Flushed!

One of the best thing about being bilingual is that you can always play the ‘Sorry, but I don’t understand’ card.

Today, while walking through the town centre where I live, a lady came bounding up to me with the intention of either getting me to sign something or buy something. I don’t ever do either, when accosted by people in the street.

Normally I would just say "no", and keep on walking, but today I just fancied doing a Gezzy (see previous blogs).

So instead of the short shrift, I reverted to my second language, which is Italian. I smiled sweetly at the woman in question and said, “Mi dispiace, ma…”

But before I could go any further the woman snapped, “Gez Walsh, you were in my class at school, so don’t even think of trying that shit with me!”

The Nemesis (my wife, Carol) who was with me at the time coloured up red and made a bolt for it; I burst out laughing.

The Nemesis asked me later if I wasn’t at all embarrassed. I thought for a while, then realised that I couldn’t remember the last time that I was embarrassed. I seem to have become an embarrass-free-zone. Don’t get me wrong; I cause embarrassment to others on a daily basis, but I don’t seem to get embarrassed.

Lots of people tell me about how they have been embarrassed. My favourite was a female friend of mine who in the nineties went for a day trip to the city of Chester.

While there, busy shopping, she was caught short and need the toilet. She noticed, at the side of the road, an example of what is laughingly called a super toilet. These are the concrete structures built at the side of the road, where you put a coin in the slot and a semi-circular door swings open to reveal a toilet. In the nineties these were quite a new concept.

My friend inserted her coin into the slot on the door and the door swished open with all the modern efficiency it could muster. She entered the toilet at the side of the road pressed the button and again the door swished shut. My friend then did what women do when using a toilet she pulled her knickers and tights down lifted up her skirt and sat on the toilet to do what must be done.

She had no sooner started when to her absolute horror, and without warning, the door, with its usual modern efficiency swung back open, revealing my friend on the toilet with her tights and knickers down and her skirt hoisted aloft.

To make matters worse the toilet had been placed next to a bus stop, and there was now a queue of people who looked quite surprised to be introduced to my friend this way. A little old man smiled a toothless smile and said, “Looks like that door's broken?”

My friend smiled back, hoping that the toilet would be sucked up into some black hole at that moment in time. Before he could say anything else, the door, like the door on the bridge of the starship Enterprise, snapped shut again.

My friend quickly jumped to her feet and reached for the toilet paper and started to use it for the purpose which it had been made, when the door decided that it was now round two, and swung back open again.

There were now even more people at the bus stop, and just in case everyone hadn’t seen what was happening, the old man shouted to his wife, “See I told you, the doors broken!”

My friend was by now stood frozen to the spot like an Egyptian hieroglyph, her skirt hoisted, her under garments on the floor and her hand full of paper resting on her behind. The whole of the bus stop queue started to laugh, as the door swung shut again.

My friend decided that in desperate times you need desperate measures, so she did away with the paper and hoisted up her undergarments just in time for the door to swing open again.

My friend made a run for it, hardly daring to look up. I would have at least taken a bow!

Now, I know it must have been embarrassing for her, but it’s such a good story I decided to put it into the book that I’m writing at the moment, Diva Dave and Fat Sue!

Twins!

Welcome to Great Britain, twinned with North Korea!

Our former great dictator… Sorry, leader, Kim Jong Thatcher, has recently been sent to her great ancestors in the sky. To commemorate her passing, we, the FREE and DEMOCRATIC people of Britain, have been told to spend ten million pounds and stand with a happy smile, waving as her over priced, unnecessary procession goes by.

And not unlike North Korea, we the FREE and DEMOCRATIC people of Great Britain, are being arrested in our own homes for daring to speak out against this great waste of public money… sorry... outpouring of love.

We, the FREE and DEMOCRATIC, people of Great Britain, are being told that we are not allowed to protest against a woman who, in her time, has destroyed communities and with her friend Ronnie Reagan was the direct start of what later led to the banking crashes a few years ago. We are to stand with a happy smile and wave our flags.

We, the FREE and DEMOCRATIC people of Great Britain, are having our e-mails and blogs checked by what was once regarded as one of the best police forces in the world.

At this very moment one of our brave cuntstables (Yorkshire spelling) might be reading my blog (it’s about time some fucker read it!). George Orwell knew what he was talking about when he spoke of the ‘Thought Police!’

We, the FREE and DEMOCRATIC people of Great Britain have been told by our Junta...sorry... government that we have to tighten our belts!  That there is no more money for pensioners, schools and hospitals, but we do have ten million pounds for a funeral. 

I don’t mind them spending that amount on burying her as long as her family pick up the bill.

So, goodbye for now, from the FREE and DEMOCRATIC police state of  North Britain. I might not be able to blog for a while, if the Thought Police pay me a visit!

Note: The views above are not the views of the blogger, but of David Cameron and Nick Clegg, so if any criminal offence has been committed by this blog,

please arrest them as soon as possible!

If I Had Ten Million Pounds

If I had ten million pounds ($16.5m), I would no doubt buy myself a nice car, but not too flash.

I would look after the car by cleaning it and taking care as I drove. Then after two weeks, I know I would treat it like a skip, as with all the other cars that I’ve owned.

If I had ten million pounds I would buy myself a new house. There’s nothing wrong with the house that I live in now, but when you come into money you have to buy a new house.

Well the truth is The Nemesis, my wife Carol, would be in charge of the new house.

She would then no doubt fill it with expensive things that we neither want nor need.

If I had ten million pounds I would use part of it to create more projects for Relight-ED.

Relight-ED, of which I’m a co founder, is designed to show young people who have no interest in education the value of education. We do it by organising one-off spectacular events and giving the students a one-off chance to do something different.

I would make the mother of all horror films using young film makers and young actors; it would be their film to market and create.

If I had ten million pounds I would invest some into areas where the industry has been stripped away, leaving a vacuum where apathy and drug addiction has taken hold.

I would again start new ventures while working with the youth of the area to show them that there is another way of living.

 

If I had ten million pounds I would develop ‘Twisted Minds’, giving artists of all genres a chance to create and develop without the need to conform.

If I had ten million pounds I would set up an overseas health aid programme, where people who have no clean water or basic medication get what they need. I would also have people working to deliver a sexual health programme. I would then also set up education programmes and help to develop an infrastructure, so they can build an independent society.

If I had ten million pounds I would bring smiles and happiness to my family and friends.

If I had ten million pounds the one thing I wouldn’t do, under no circumstances, ever is use it all to bury an old woman who, when alive, encouraged greed and caused suffering to those most in need!

Just saying. What could you do with ten million pounds?

Cheerio, Goodbye!

Elvis did it on the toilet, after a lifetime of fried peanut butter sandwiches.

Tommy Cooper did it on stage on live Television.

Attila the Hun is said to have done it while having sex with his new wife and her mother.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s death! I know it’s not the happiest of subjects, but it is funny sometimes.

I’ve been thinking about this since I heard of the death of Margaret Thatcher. No doubt people will eulogise and wax lyrical about the so called ‘Iron Lady’, but there will be no tears shed in my house.

She was a typical Tory with no regard for the working class, and the north of England, Wales and Scotland all suffered at her hands.

But it would be undignified for me to gloat at someone death, so I’ll leave it to others to sing her praises.

Major John Sedgwick, in the American civil war, tried to rally his troops by sticking his head over the parapet and shouting, “Don’t worry they couldn’t hit an elephant at this dis…”  and then promptly stopped a snipers bullet with his head.

Edward II had one of the strangest deaths. He was sitting on the toilet when an assassin thrust a red hot poker up his anus!

I don’t know if I believe that story. How did the assassin manage to climb in the privy unnoticed? Then how did he keep his poker red hot? I can’t believe that I just said that last sentence! But you get my drift, don’t you; he would have to keep it burning while waiting for the king to take a dump. I feel sorry for the assassin more than Edward; he had to stand up to his neck in shit while people took a dump on him.

And how come Edward couldn’t smell something burning in the toilet?

A friend of mine who lives on the moors over looking Halifax a small Yorkshire town. Once, sitting on her toilet minding her own business, she felt something tickle her bum (her fanny if you’re in America). Fearing the worst, she peered down the toilet only to be confronted with a large black snake!

If you’re not British you wont understand the amount of innuendo in this story. She quickly flushed it back down the toilet; seemingly it had escaped from a house at the end of her road.

In Britain, 12 people die every year by testing a nine volt battery with their tongue.

One halfwit decided to commit suicide by gassing himself. As the gas filled his kitchen he decided to have one last cigarette, the ensuing blast took out the whole road, but left him intact!

The wonderful Spike Milligan had, “ I told you I was ill” written on his grave stone.

One of my comedy heroes, W C Fields's gravestone is often misquoted, it doesn’t say, “On the whole, I’d rather be in Philadelphia!”

I would like to think when it’s my time to meet the grim reaper, I would have some James Bond type quip to part with. But no doubt my last words would probably be “argh!!” or “What are you doing in here with that hammer?!!”

What ever my last words will be, I hope that they are not for quite some time yet. I have a lot more people to annoy yet!

Now, I had best put the central heating on, before I catch my death of cold!

PS look at the side of this blog and click on the link below my new book ‘Changes’ and vote for it on the peoples book prize. If you don’t I’m going to send the boys around and you’ll be sleeping with the fishes. Yes a free one night stay in the Deep aquarium!